Arguments against Film Censorship

There is a difference between an argument that disagrees with all of the three statements above (i.e. a view that suggests films are not influential) and an argument that asserts that films can influence, but that citizens should not be all treated as though they cannot interpret filmic images safely.

What is really at stake is the assumed link between viewing and behaviour. This is referred to as the 'media effects debate'.

THE EFFECTS DEBATE

This debate rests on whether or not people agree with the 'effects model'. This way of understanding the relationship between film and viewer is grounded in BEHAVIOURIST Psychology which examines taught behaviour and 'stimulus-response'. In this framework, viewers of violent images take part in various tests. These determine the extent that people's likelihood to respond to certain situations violently is increased, as a result of exposure to violent images.

However, this approach has been refuted by those who think that this way of examining media violence is 'topsy-turvy'. That is, looking first at film violence and then at the social problem of violence as an effect is less useful than to look at the social problem first and research violent behaviour and the experiences and psychological profiles of violent people.

David Gauntlett, a much publicised critic of the effects model suggested that this approach is like implying that the solution to the number of road traffic accidents in Britain would be to lock away one famously bad driver from Cornwall! In other words, the effects model tries to approach things the wrong way.

Read Gauntlett's 'Ten Things Wrong with the Media Effects Model'
(A bit long but well worth the effort)

The many academics who have opposed the effects model have all argued against its central thesis - that we receive media messages passively, that violent films have a causal effect in the same way that cigarettes harm the lungs. While effects experiments and hypotheses have offered 'spins' on this notion, they have all tended to assume this passivity.

Another outspoken critic of the effects model and the justification for censorship that it offers, is Mark Kermode. It is useful to look at two arguments he has put forward against censoring films. Kermode argues that, to the true horror fan, the pleasure of the genre lies in the ironic, excessive send-up nature of 'graphic' scenes.

Hence, the horror fan is a sophisticated 'reader' of film references. Horror can offer a post-modern approach to film (where horror films all relate to each other in what is essentially an intertextual game). This means that nobody is more aware that horror films are not real than the viewers who the censors are trying to 'protect'. To take this argument to its logical conclusion (and it is up to you to decide whether you agree), the only people truly qualified to judge how harmful a horror film might be, are people who have seen other horror films and have viewed than with the sophisticated engagement that only a fan is capable of.

Kermode claims that the reason for the difference of opinion between censors and genre fans is not because horror fans have become hardened or insensitive to violence through years of exposure to sadistic material. Rather, the experienced horror fan understands the material through knowledge of a history of genre texts and this actually makes any sense or arousal, sadistic or otherwise, unlikely.

Have a look at the Kermode Uncut section at the Channel 4 website.