'Standard' review shows why Nasties' Bill is not so Bright!

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Censorship is bad, but 'video nasties' are worse. That's the attitude of many people whose normal stance is libertarian.

The revelation in a recent poll that four out of every ten children have seen a 'video nasty' has added weight to the demand for strict control. For it seems to be self-evident that video nasties inevitably corrupt and brutalise people, acclimatise people to the unspeakable; that a diet of horrors must dehumanise to one degree or another. Video nasties are the modern equivalent of Ancient Rome's savage gladiatoral The reaction against 'video nasties', however, threatens to inaugurate a new age of general censorship in Britain. Graham Bright's Bill, now before Parliament with government backing, will bring in general censorship. Isn't there a better way to When Alexander Walker, the respected film critic of the Indon Evening Standard. raised the alarm about this last week he found himself subiect to censorshio. His article appeared in the first (early afternoon) last Thursday, 17th, but was ripped We reprint Walker's piece here ber article and because we share his alarm. games.

control the video nasties?

editions by order of the top bosses.

SO YOU think 'The medium is the message" if you think at all, that is, these days of video overkill when pictures are all that fill the minds of the people.

But 'The medium is the monster" is the revisionist message that David Cronenberg's new hamn film "Vidandramo' hrinda to the big screen, even though I guess it's also available in a cassette format you play at home on your small screen.

If so, the message will be reinforced, for Videodrome is all about the power of cassettes not only to corrupt and deprave, but to melt, eviscerate, digest and otherwise do serious damage to the health of the viewer.

Fortune favours the exploitative. And the very week after the Graham brignt snow in Parliament, when MPs gave convincing • evidence of how little they know about moving images and how much they fear, here is a film-maker's timely argument in favour of one of the most restrictive and least necessary Bills ever considered by a British Parliament - the Video Recordings Bill that Mr. Bright is sponsoring.

Hero-victim

Thrills first, arguments later. The hero-victim (James Woods) of Videodrome is a Canadian cable TV operator doing what sounds like very responsible work with a service relayed to TV watchers called Civic Vision. His own home life, though, is a mess; his morality is even grubbier.

To boost revenues, he scavenges through the satellite transmissions from other countries looking for new video shows to buy, lease or, preferably, steal.

Up comes show called Videodrome, apparently Equal Opportunities Day for Lesbians and Gay Men in Nottingham Saturday 3 December 198:

9.30am - 4.00 pm International Community Centre, Mansfield Road Admission free Creche provided edition of the Standard out of the subsequent beamed from Malaya. A sort of "snuff" situation-horror spectacle in which people are incarcerated in a torture chamber and choose fancy ways of dying, by scourging, electrocution, the usual gamut ... All human death is there.

'Practically no production costs," notes our entrepreneu with a keen eye for the competitive edge that our own Channel 4 would praise.

Then he finds the show orginates in America, is sponsored by a media guru called Brian O'Blivion la close relation, it seems to the late Marshall McLuhan) who hasn't engaged in normal conversation for 20 years, logue on video tape to get his message to the world.

To get to the production HQ of the show, situated in a downand-outs' shelter called the Cathode Ray Mission, where the guinea-pig tramps spend their time staring at endless reruns of torture scenes, the smart operator picks a seductive girl (Debbie Harry, the singer) whose tastes - are obvious from the notches she encourages her lovers to cut in her collar bone.

she gode Well, int Whe e has literally and visually, it appears. For soon the hero's own TV set begins to make amorous advances to him when he slips a cassette into his VCR.

It bulges with mammary promise. It shrieks with delicious pain. It pouts its enticing lips from the big close-up on the screen to give him a big bedtime kiss.

The special effects are ingenious and funny - and soon Debbie become the cat on vid drome imagin and sli apertur obscen Yes, Cronen film-m: next 1 poking innard: viscera ing ag pulling gooey, starts! Who Minds Like movies the sty the a reactio Not as Mr supervideo on filr too.

For Bill, & throug to an panic saw, s casset entiatt its inti can C cinem wish t our ho The Assoc body, counti goods succe all the the E to im!

look privat The A scene from "Videotrome" - ironically not released on video cassettes; the style is anarchic, the argument reactionary: but should it be censored? • Harry in 'Videodrom • fearsome as well. ›le operator gets ho eo cassettes of Vi and starts hallucina ing he's a human pping a cassette int re that appears like : e stigmata in his tum we're into fan iberg country here. aker feels homeliest 1 to the mortuary and pulling at 3 and stirring up 1. The hero is soon s ,un inside his guts -¡ it out, all gobby when he goes beserl a moral clean-up of 1 Would Take Over so many of these h 3 made by cult direr re is agreeably anal rgument disconcert so disconcerting, the Bright's Bill to imp censorship not onl cassettes in Britain n shows in the cin make no mistake: i measure being n ¿h Parliament in rei artificially created 1 about what chi jee or might see on tes, is not going to i = in its effects, whe entions, between wh currently see in l as and what we : to show in the prive imes.

Reputable British Vider iation, a reputable anxious only to keel ers clean for sellin • across them, eded in calling into e latent desires ende English national cha pose one's own mori on one's neigh le habits. are were originally For oked ideoting, VCR o an some my. niliar This when slab, the the tashk and Chose Our LOTTOr ctors, rchic, ringly ough, ose & on but lemas this ushed action moral ildren video lifferatever at we public might icy of ogram ig the have being mic in tracter al outbour's half-a-dozen or so video "nasties" that created a minor problem - minor in relation to the much greater nastiness that takes human life daily on our streets, with special attention, it seems these days, to the lives of children and young people. Now some 6,000-7,000 video cassettes are going to have to be submitted to moral scrutiny before you or I can see them.

Already the British Board of Film Censors, which assumes (probably rightly) that it will be made the arch-watchdog, is taking on trainee examiners, eyeing the storey above its present Soho Square premises, and looking forward to the bonanza that will roll into its tills when the fees for certificating a bare 200 feature films meant annually for cinemas, are supplemented by the scale of charges proposed to license 7,000 video cassettes.

It's a policeman's dream:

wonder the Yard's vice no squad has been so active touting selected video "nasty" highlights around the European legislatures to show to awed, cowed and shocked law-makers.

Haven't they the patience, by the way, to sit through the whole video nasty, or would that risk diminishing the shock of seeing only the really nasty minutes in it?

Can you imagine censoring a book by only the dirty words or dubious sentences in it?

My friends, we are in for such a reign of intolerance as regards publicly imposed morality as I had never even guessed was possible in a country not known for its wisdom in such matters.

Beside this nightmare prospect, Videodrome's fleshly horrors are merely clever-clever antics. Beside the police who aim to control our minds and our emotions, what can mere filmmakers do to terrify us?

Keep watching your screens: the real horror show just beginning.

review Alan Clinton, (Chief Whip, Islington Council) reviews 'Struggle' (Channel Four TV, Sunday evening, November 27).

SUPPOSE that the national government was taken over by a group of humourless ideologues dedicated to an experiment in social engineering which included the large-scale transfer of resources from poor to rich, and the building of armaments up to a suicidal level?

Suppose this group expressed its philosophy only through cliches derived from the justly neglected works of the long forgotten economist Adam smith, as interpreted by dubious living academics such as Friedman and Hayek?

Suppose that all this was combined with the deliberate inducement of mass unemployment and the exacerbation of social misery and repression?

Suppose that the mass media greeted all these horrifying policies with virtually unanimous support and described all those who argued for active opposition or for other policies as evil or stupid or violent?

What do you think would be the response to this of the enlightened Guardian-reading and writing) elements of our society? How would they confront such an appalling prospect?

Yes, you've guessed it.

They would launch a relentless attack on any political ideas or actions that suggested that there might be alternatives to Smith and Hayek.

First of all they would attack them as dangerous and subversive. They would try to persuade the average tertiary-educated mortgage holder that though the yellow press was crude, those who they attacked were dangerous and for people to sleep easy in their ImDossOlt beds.

If these methods did not prove entirely etticacious, they would try to reinforce the ideas they had established by using the merest nod to reactionary prejudice in order to fan the flames of ridicule and satire.

Such is the basis of the new 'sit com' series on socialists in the "Town Hall' by Peter Jenkins. Through it the enlightened and the cynical - prepared no doubt with a few hand me down bits of reaction - are invited to laugh at the earnest and the committed Of course it cannot be denied that there is plenty to laugh at. There is always something faintly ridiculous in seeing the middle class and the educated trying to 'do good'. There are plenty of gestures made by those who started as student activists which are silly and incongruous, little harm.

Those of us who hold up all our political activities and ideas to public gaze do sometimes make stupid nustakes wnich can be subject to ridicule of the sort exploited by Mr Jenkins.

After this I suppose we must expect to see every tiny faux pas developed out of all recognition. Every single error can then be adapted into a system of prejudices and attitudes not normally thought acceptable in the media, perhaps especially on Channel 4.

So in this series we see as Council Leader a rather halfwitted person in a college scarf and cloth cap who talks in left wing cliches and knows nothing either about the working class or the concerns of rate payers, tenants and the like.

His followers include humourless feminist, and an antiracist black character who cannot possibly be taken seriously. There is even a pet ideologue and an old Labour stalwart, confused but loveable.

All other working class characters having this mediated to them through the Sun and the Mail regard everything left-wing councillors do as wicked or stupid beyond belief. This applies particularly when they want to change anything.

Chauffeur

Thus the Leader's chauffeur wants to retain his servile status and the old lady protests with mute incomprehension when he is deployed to delivering her meals on wheels.

This disgust at left wing councillors who attempt to reverse the true order of things is stated by the only articulate working class figure to appear so far, who of course is the leader of the Coun cil's Tory group.

This set of notions could easily develop through a further set of episodes. Every possible stereotype could be developed and milked dry.

• There is a lot more to be made out of the assertion that left wing councillors have no concern whatever for rate payers. There is of course much to be said on relations with the trade unions, who make up ludicrous demands just in order to see councillors squirm in satisfying them. Issues like antiracism and gay rights are certain to raise a laugh when they are just mentioned.

Of course it is not easy for socialist councillor to respond to all this. We must be able to laugh at ourselves, and we canno possıbly deny that many of the jokes at our expense are by nc means wide of the mark.

Yet will we just be accused of being numourless ideologues our selves if we complain that satire and ridicule has been added to al the weapons ranged against us!

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(SCIENCE) Socialist Organiser, 1 December 1983 Page 14