Why IBA is right in aiming to keep X films off the small screen

THOSE who are inclined to blame television for all the ills society is heir to should note the current annual report of the Independent Broadcasting Authority.
The IBA has given clear warning to the film companies that many-of the films now being shown in cinemas throughout the country may be rejected as unfit for the television screen when they become available. (There is an unwritten agreement between the film companies, I3BC and ITV that films may not be shown on television until five years after their first commercial screening.) To anyone who has recently scanned a list of films on general release, the reason is not far to seek. The current overkill or sex and violence would not make for good viewing in the more intimate setting of the home. • The authority's decision is wise, and most people will agree that it is desirable. It is also a brave declaration of intent, since it places them on the horns of a very painful dilemma. We are back in the old debate about censorship and obscenity which is almost as old as man himself. When is censorship not censorship? Must one draw the line? Who's going to draw it — when and where? In some cases the decision will be easy: films in which the attitude to sex, violence and bad language is utterly exploitative and irresponsible. But the Authority is well aware of the tightrope decisions which it faces: Many responsible and thoughtful films have been produced over the last five years or so dealing with controversial subjects and themes which are relevant to the society in which we live. It is the broadcaster's dilemma to decide whether the showing of such films can be reconciled with his obligation to ensure that offence is not given to his audience and in particular to protect as far as possible young arid impressionable viewers.
Such an obligation is imposed on the broadcasting companies by the Television Act of 1954, which forbids the use of material which offends against good taste and decency. But how does one define good taste, or even decency, except by highly subjective standards? One man's good taste is another's insufferable vulgarity.
Our response (outrage, approval, indifference) varies according to our social background, education, cultural preferences, personal obsessions, and even the part of the country we come from. If the prejudices and preferences of every one of us were taken into account, programmes would be intolerably bland and savourless — a mess of Complan for sick viewers.
The Gilbertian tag that we are all either little liberals or little conservatives seems to hold good in this case.
The liberals among us abhor censorship and uphold the right (perhaps even the duty) of the creative artist to jolt and outrage his audience out of its torpor.
The conservatives, far more vulnerable emotionally, de mand restraints on the uninhibited expression of poten tially dangerous primitive emotions, and believe that the various media, and television RI particular, have the power to mis-shape and corrupt the nation's morals.
It is the unenviable task of the television companies (no less than of the Government) to steer a course between the Scylla of laissez-faire and the charybdis of control, and somehow reach the terra firma from which they may inform, educate and entertain. The BBC and IBA settle was banned by the BBC on the most questions of taste and grounds that it would outrage decency internally, exercising public morality. the strictest supervision over But is it the single play or film the material they use. Ocwhich leads an audience astray, casionally this internal control or is the whole business of cor leads to the banning of one parruption a much subtler process? ticular work, as when, for exA steady erosion may wear ample, Dennis Potter's recent down our prejudices eventually, play, "Brimstone and Treacle", whereas a full frontal assault may reinforce them.
This view is expressed by Stephen Murphy, former secretary of the British Board of Film Censors, writing in the autumn edition of the IRA's house journal, Independent Broadcasting: There is little evidence to suggest that a single book, a single play, a single film or radio or television programme will deprave and corrupt, or even grossly offend, more than a vocal minority. It is, of course, on the single piece that a jury is called on to deliver a J udgment. More important may be the general level, the continuing restatement of values such as: "Violence is an acceptable device for solving problems" . "All teenage girls arc actively seeking sexual experience" , "Everybody swears all the time".
We have only to think of our imported crime series like "Kojak" or "Starsky and Hutch" (and even a home-grown one like "The Sweeney"). Every programme seems to end with at least one corpse.
"Gee, I'm sorry, lootenant", said Stavros to Kojak as they surveyed the remains of the villain Stavros hadn't meant to kill in a recent episode. He wasn't all that sorry, nor was Kojak, and nor, probably, were we.
By calling guns "shooters" we're rendering them harmless. Week after month after year, are we coming to accept that shooting villains is respectable, that life is cheap and that ends justify means? Will we be brought to believe that to "have sex" with any attractive stranger is as unremarkable as shaking his hand?
There is no room for moralising, but there is plenty of room for questioning. To say "there is a great and worrying problem here" may spur us on to find some sort of answer: the: danger is that we may cease to notice that there is a problem at all.
If human values are being distorted we must be on our guard. A nightly diet of programmes which identify human happiness with material possessions, or suggest that the ideal human type is rich, powerful, tough and ruthless may, if we're not careful, stand our present value system on its head.
The cumulative effect of various species of broadcasting in building up public attitudes, values and heroes. is far more important than the shock elect of a single programme like "The Operation" and "Hell's Angels", or the David Bailey film about Andy Wharhol, which quickly vanish into "the dark backward
and abysm of time". (1).eport presented to the Social Morality Council, 1973')
It is the ongoing effect which concerns us, not the occasional embarrassment of full-frontal nudity or four-letter expletive.
We do need the occasional shock programme to jolt us out of our rut. We are a multiracial, multi-credal, millifaceted society, in which our ideas are often at variance but out of which emerges that mysterious synthesis called a consensus.
We each have a role in determining what that consensus will be, though we need to remind ourselves that our particular group is not the entire cast.
The consensus would probably uphold the 1BA's decision that the living-room is no place for films of unspeakable violence (such as, presumably, "Straw Dogs" or Polanski's "Macbeth"), or others which have gone into overdrive as regards sex. But it may be even more inportant to reach a consensus about what we're already being offered and already taking for granted.
Or are we, as Stephen Murphy suggests, the vast majority of us are, "agog with indifference"?
Mary Craig