Aussie Rules film classification

Date 20th Jul 2009
Submitted by Leo Murray on 20 July 2009 - 5:37pm

Team Stupid received a bit of a blow this week, when we got word from the Australian Board of Film Classification that they've given Stupid an M rating, which is the equivalent of a 15 certificate. This is especially bad news for potential school bookings, as it means bureaucratic bum-ache gaining parental consent for any trips to see the film.

Having already gone through this whole process with the UKBFC, we initially assumed that the problem must be something to do with insufficent bleeping of swear words, or perhaps the wrong version of the film being accidentally sent to the censors.

But it turns out that Aussie film censors take rather different approach to their British counterparts, for whom film classification is all about washing out potty-mouths and whether or not viewers get to see any nipples. So our offer to take out the bits of script we assumed might be causing offence was really barking up the wrong tree, as you can see from their response:

"We've spoken to several people at the classification board (including the censor who watched and classified the film), and there is no chance of it getting a PG rating even with the swear words beeped out unfortunately. They've said that the M rating is more to do with the themes in the film and several scenes rather than the language - i.e.: the fact that the main theme is the destruction of the earth and the human race"

Whilst this was of course not what we wanted to hear, we still have to concede that this approach to film classification seems a thoroughly sensible one when compared with the somewhat asburd criteria used by the UKBFC to rate films. "The fact that the main theme is the destruction of the earth and the human race" is considered a salient feature by the Aussie censors, which is an analysis we felt was rather difficult to contest. 

The theme of the film is definitely more traumatic than the fact that Piers says fuck once or twice in it. Unfortunately editing the theme out of the film was about as easy as editing that theme out of our collective future, so it looks like the under-15s of Australia will remain, for now, blissfuly unaware of what lies in store for them once today's grown-ups have finished fucking everything up.