Last month, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) published its new guidelines on how it classifies films. This was informed by the organisation’s largest ever public consultation, which involved gauging the opinions of 12,000 people across the UK to find out what matters most to audiences when it comes to age appropriateness.
Before going any further, it is worth explaining that the BBFC is an independent and not-for-profit body established in 1912 when local authorities started to impose their own censorship on films. Because this varied widely, the British Board of Film Censors came into being in order to provide some standardisation, and the name changed to its current form in the 1980s to reflect the fact that the organisation’s remit had extended to include films sold or hired for viewing at home.
The BBFC’s guidelines are regularly updated, in response to research and public consultations. Recommendations are then made in line with these guidelines by the BBFC’s compliance officers, which leads to a film being classified as an 18, 15 etc, as well as it having content advice to help people choose what is right for them (and their children) to view and avoid. This involves consideration of issues such as nudity, violence and bad language, plus context, tone, impact and release format (content watched at home, for example, has higher potential for underage viewing).
The recently published guidelines marked several shifts, with the one that grabbed the headlines regarding violence, and in particular sexual violence, but also suicide and self-harm, with the threshold for all of these altered as a result of concerns about exposure to these themes.
However, the issue that grabbed our attention was that of drug content, as the new guidelines describe how the BBFC will now be taking a less restrictive approach on cannabis use – as long as it is not detailed, glamorised or frequent – with this being deemed more acceptable at 12/12A. The same is true of solvent misuse, with the consultation revealing that people felt the previous policy was overly cautious.
Otherwise, there was widespread agreement for the BBFC’s approach towards classifying drug content across all age categories, which prohibits “detailed portrayal of illegal drug use which may cause harm to public health or morals” even at 18 level, with a solid line taken against any work which – when taken as a whole – may encourage drug misuse, and the BBFC reserving the right to cut content that may promote or glamourise it. Content that shows drug misuse while emphasising the dangers is subject to less restrictive age ratings.
Our concern is not at U and PG level where the lines as described above are very clear, but instead at 12A and above where it is much less black and white. The easing of restrictions around cannabis and solvent misuse at this threshold is worrying because of what it says about normalisation: those involved in the consultation seem to be relaxed about depictions of use of these drugs, which in turn has the potential to expose more young people to such content from the age of 12 and normalise it for them as well.
Given that a lot of young people access video content via their devices, the various protections in place – including age restrictions and content warnings – are already more arbitrary that used to be the case. So exposing them at a younger age to the use of substances such as cannabis and solvents, particularly when it is depicted as an integral part of socialising, or as a way to relax, runs the risk of normalising such behaviours. And the knock on effect is that it sidelines the fact that using any drug can have consequences – which may be significant and serious – and especially so during adolescence, when both brain and body are more vulnerable to harm. It is vital to not inadvertently lose sight of this simply because it is more likely to fall into the sightlines of people at a younger age due to the changes in the BBFC guidelines.
Read about the BBFC’s stance on depictions of drug use here, and about the recent changes to its guidelines here.
