Discussion Main / CensorshipBureau

Anent the Lord Chamberlain's Regulations, it may be of interest that my late father was a theatre historian, specializing in 19th British Theatre. The L.C.'s office maintains an archive of scripts submitted for approval—both approved and not approved—which is a treasure-trove for scholars.

Didn't have the time and knowledge to dissect this Thread Mode, can someone lend a hand on it?

• The Hays Code (officially the "Motion Picture Production Code"), adopted in 1933, stifled American cinema for decades.
  • "Stifled...?" Well, YMMV. To quote critic Michael Medved: “While many of the specific rules in the old Production Code look thoroughly ludicrous by today’s standards, it is instructive to recall that Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, John Ford and Billy Wilder, George Cukor and Frank Capra and Orson Welles all somehow managed to create their masterpieces under its auspices."
  • But gave us a place for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, works of cartoon wackiness that truly were "fun for the whole family".
    • Looney Tunes, as well as contemporaries such as Tomand Jerry and Woody Woodpecker, also jump-started the nigh-immortal tradition of Western Animation Getting Crap Past the Radar.
  • It also changed over time, both in the actual text of the laws as well as their enforcement, ultimately leading up to the modern MPAA ratings system, which, although far better than the Hays Code of old, still has some problems.

I cut a bunch of natter in the BBFC and video games sections; there might be some worthwhile stuff there, but I've lost patience in reading it all. If you feel more up to the challenge, be my guest.

• Nowadays, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) must approve every film and DVD released in the UK. Items not approved may not be legally sold. This created a controversy in 2007 over the "banning" of the video game Manhunt 2. It should be noted that the BBFC nowadays concentrates on age-rating films, and officially declare that the only thing that will get a film banned outright nowadays is rape and torture filmed in an overtly erotic way.
  • A strange case with The Simpsons Movie and the BBFC. On the list of things that made the film a PG was use of the WORD "penis", but not the DEPICTION thereof!
  • For the most part the BBFC tends to do a very good job, unlike some countries they didn't mind the sex scene in Mass Effect (rated 12) or even care about Hot Coffee as it was Dummied Out a mod. In general (and Manhunt 2 aside) the anti-video game lobby isn't very influential in the UK, even without having as one of its main spokesmen someone best known for his role in a major corruption scandal (or Jack Thompson.)
  • Well, they ask a multiple of their "Handling fee" (Which is a few hundred if memory serves) for anything with a language option in it making anime rather expensive. They also recharge if your item gets resubmitted after a banning. Hence, there's a few accusations of them being corrupt flung at their direction.
  • Unlike the MPAA, the BBFC's ratings are legally binding for home video releases: it's illegal to sell a 12, 15 or 18 DVD to someone underage. For cinema releases, the BBFC ratings are only advisory, with the legal responsibility for deciding whether children should be admitted or whether a film should be shown at all resting with the local council. In practice, all of this is only really enforced by ID checks for 18s unless the customer is obviously underage. In almost all cases councils follow the BBFC rating, but there are occasional high-profile exceptions. Many councils in more red-necked areas of the country banned Monty Python's Life of Brian for its supposedly blasphemous content. The most recent case was when the Conservative-controlled borough council in Westminster (most of the central London cinema district) banned David Cronenberg's Crash, which had been passed uncut by the BBFC for adult viewing despite a ferocious press campaign over its alleged obscenity. On the other hand, a number of councils reduced the rating of Gremlins from the BBFC rating of 15 to PG, the controversy being part of the reason for the introduction of the intermediate 12 rating.
  • One of the key contributory elements of the gradual loosening of British censorship regulations was the 1960 trial of Penguin Books under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover. Intended as a test of the new law, the trial ultimately only showed how out of touch the authorities were when the jury returned a 'not guilty' verdict, after a trial in which the defence secured the testimony of some of the most respected academics and critics of the day. The prosecution's case wasn't helped much by the prosecutor's patronising query about whether the book "was something you'd want your wives or servants to read", which presumably charmed the socks off the three women on the jury and any male members who weren't upper-class.
  • Yet somehow Shaun Of The Dead, a movie full of gore and more F-bombs than anyone not deliberately counting could keep track of, got away with a 15 rating. In America the language alone got it an R.
    • The official guidelines say that "frequent use of strong language" is acceptable at 15.

• Nintendo seized control of the North American video game market in 1986, when the NES became a smash hit in the states. However, Nintendo of America still saw video games as children's toys and family entertainment at this point, and leaned on third-party publishers to remove all references to religion, drugs, alcohol, and adult situations from their games. Nintendo threatened to withhold the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" (and, more importantly, not manufacture the patented game cartridges) for companies that didn't comply. Even when Sega made a name for itself with the Genesis, Nintendo controlled enough of the video game market share to profoundly influence how games were localized for western consumption — resulting in Final Fantasy's "Holy" spell being renamed "Pearl", the hero of ActRaiser (God) being renamed "The Master", lots and lots of crosses being removed, and many many other changes. This eventually backfired once publishers realized that the "Seal of Quality" didn't mean jack, and they by and large jumped to another company's console (the Playstation) once it became financially feasible to do so, sending Nintendo into a slump from which it has only recently recovered. Nintendo has been cursed with the "kiddie" label ever since, even though they've largely abandoned attempts at censorship and encouraged publishers to develop "mature" games.
  • One of the games most affected by Nintendo's censorship policies was Maniac Mansion; one of the game's developers gives the inside story on the changes to the game here.
  • Another obvious example is the bloody arcade fighting game Mortal Kombat, where the Super Nintendo version had all its blood replaced by gray ooze (presumably sweat) and the more over-the-top Fatalities being neutered (Kano, for example, changed from ripping your heart out to just... punching you very hard). While being a smash hit on every single other system, sales were abysmal for the SNES version of the game.
    • This is especially egregious because the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat was inferior in just about every technical respect to the SNES version. The patronizing decision to take the blood out of the game alone killed its sales, creating buzz about how the SNES version was the "censored" and "kiddie" version. When Nintendo got its act together and allowed Mortal Kombat 2 to be released blood-included, it trounced the Genesis port in sales.
    • Here's an amusing fact: Y'know Sub Zero's iconic "deep freeze the enemy and then upcut the ice statue, shattering it" Fatality? That was one of the SNES-specific replacements — in the original game, he ripped your spine out. See? You can find good ideas anywhere.
    • Another amusing fact: Nintendo, after editing the original MK, got a ton of letters from parents about the change. Letters of praise for "thinking of the children"? No, actually; letters of contempt for Nintendo for thinking they could take the responsibility of regulating what the kids can play from the parents, natch.
    • Now if only it were that way today.
  • Nintendo tried to increase its adult audience by contracting with Capcom to make a selection of their upcoming games, including killer7, Resident Evil: Zero, the Resident Evil remake, and Resident Evil 4 into Nintendo Gamecube exclusive games. Only RE 4 and killer7 were ported to other systems.
    • One of those was itself a port from the Playstation, So Yeah....
  • Nintendo's attempts to prove to both the Moral Guardians and the US Government that game developers could be responsible in what content they put in their products (along with their hidden agenda of demonizing Sega and NEC to secure the lion's share of the the under-18 gamer market) helped lead to the creation of the ESRB, a voluntary ratings review board.
  • It could be argued that, for all the pain it caused, Nintendo's censorship and the "Seal of Quality" it posted on the covers of games it licensed may have actually helped the recovery of the industry as a whole after The Great Video Game Crash Of 1983. As noted on that trope's page, the Seal allowed Nintendo to filter out games like Custer's Revenge. It wouldn't surprise this troper if such practices ironically made the Moral Guardians more comfortable about purchasing video games for their kids, which only strengthened Nintendo's sales.
• While relatively short-lived compared to the other examples, Bernie Stolar's policies at SCEA (1995-1996) and Sega of America (1996-1999) were stifling, to say the least. At Sony, he wouldn't allow predominantly two-dimensional games, RPGs, or anything "too Japanese" to be released in the United States. His logic behind this was that the "system's capabilities needed to be showcased" and that "nobody buys RPGs/overly Japanese games". He only stayed at Sony for a little over a year before being fired. Sega of America (in one of many horrible moves during the Saturn period) hired him. He started a "five-star game" system, which basically translated to the same thing without explicitly being said as such.
  • It's generally accepted that Sony continues to discourage 2-D games. Even when the games are allowed, they force the publishers to package them together and to lower the price beyond what the publisher may be willing to accept.
    • ...wait, what? How do you explain Little Big Planet then?
    • You know what he means. Little Big Planet is a 2-D sidescrolling adventure modeled in a very 3-D based environment with interactive backgrounds and objects. The troper was referring to sprite-based RP Gs and Visual Novel type games.
    • Well then, what about Guilty Gear? The latest iteration of Guilty Gear XX, a 2D fighting game, released in 2009, sells for $50 on amazon.com.
  • Good examples include Mega Man X 4 and Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Sold really well, loved by their fans, hated by Sony.
  • The anti-2D practice was rumored to have been subverted by Capcom in the early years of the PlayStation: allegedly, when they approached Sony with the very first Resident Evil game, they said that they would only publish the game if Sony allowed them to publish 2D games (like, say, a new Mega Man game) on the system as well.
    • *slow clap*

Wow... this isn't at all any demonization