Research into the BBFC
The BBFC is an organisation that provides movies with ratings depending on the nature of the movie. The different types of age rating are U, PG, 12A, 15 and 18. Ratings are put in place in order to protect young children from seeing content that they shouldn't be seeing at their age.
The BFFC is important to the film industry as it sets rules and regulations in order for movies to co-inside with a specific age rating. It also helps directors if they wish to make a movie for a specific age range as it allows the directors the information of what they need to have in their movies and what they can not have. The aims of the BBFC is to:
- Protect the public, and especially children from content which might raise harm risks
- empower the public, especially parents to make informed viewing choices
- recognise and respect adult freedom of choice within the law
- respond to and reflect changing social attitudes towards media content through proactive public consultation and research
- provide a cost-effective, efficient classification service within our statutory remit
- work in partnership with the industry to develop innovate service models to provide content advice which support emerging media delivery systems
- provide an effective service to enforcement agencies
A U rated movie (or G rated in America) is a movie that has nothing in theme, no nudity, no swearing, sex or violent behaviour. In summery U rated movies have nothing that could ether offend or upset young children as viewers in the audience. The U in U rated movies stands for Universal Viewing (G stands for General Audience). U movies are deemed by the BBFC viewable by anyone of any age. Titles that are included in the 'U' category are that of Cars, Ratatullie, Finding Nemo and many others. This segmentation of film is mainly created and controlled by Disney as their target audience for the neche market of their films are very young children normally aged between 1 and 8 but older generations have been known to see the movies as well.
PG stands for Parental Guidance. In PG movies low levels of bad language are allowed but only depending on the delivery of them e.g. "ahh shit not again" would be acceptable opposed to aiming to swear word at an individual in the movie.
The BBFC say that references to sexual acts are acceptable as well as sexual references that may go over children's heads such as sexual innuendoes and sexual puns.
Violence is not allowed in PG movies, injuries are allowed to be shown as long as the cause of the injury is not shown as this could upset the viewers. These measurments are put in place to protect the viewers as they are the ones at risk as the movie performs a secondary socalisation from the mass media and can influence the actions and behaviour of young children due to their vurenrability and perception of the movie. This evidence is backed up by sociologists that work along side the BBFC to help make their choices in labelling movies within categories.
A 12A is an age restriction made for children under that age of 12, however, the A stands for accompanied meaning that anyone under the age of 12 needs to be accompanied to the movie by someone over the age of 12. The difference between 12 and 12A is that the rating 12 is used for DVD's where as the rating 12A is used in the cinema. In these movies swearing is allowed but must be infrequent but in the cases of racism or strong derogatory terms the movie will then be raised to a 15.
12 movies are allowed to have light sexual content e.g. sexual references and sexual puns. The allowence of actions that happen in this category of movie is lighter as the viewers are older and already have an understanding of what is real and what isn't as well as being able to decide what is right and what is wrong. Due to this the movies are allowed to contain more violence and stronger language as well as more sexual footage but still with restrictions as the people in this age category are not phycologically ready to be able to handle full on blood and gore; doing so could result in them being uncomfortable, having nightmares or being scared outside of the movie.
15 rated movies mean that any child under the age of 15 is prohibited to being allowed to watch it in the cinema. 15 rated movies are allowed to contain strong violence, frequent strong language, portrayals of sexual activity, strong verbal references to sex, sexual nudity, brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence, discriminatory language or behaviour and drug taking. For strong language there is no limitation currently in place to say how much or little a person is allowed to swear in 15 movies.
18 rated movies are strictly for people of 18 years or above, this is done to protect younger views from being offended, upset or scared. 
18 rated movies are allowed to contain very strong violence, frequent strong language and/or very strong language. They can also contain strong portrayals of sexual activity, scenes of sexual violence, strong horror, strong blood and gore, real sex and discriminatory language and behaviour. There are no limitations on any of these things apart from sexual scenes; there can only be so many sexual scenes before the movie becomes R18. Even though 18 and R18 are the highest level of category a movie can be placed within due to the scenes and actions within a movie, some movies have still been known to have gone 'to far' to be shown in cinemars are to be allowed to be sold in specific countries. This breaks down into two categories within itself, there is one where movies are not allowed due to strong racism and one sided views which can upset a mass audience, an example of this was Borate. Borate was band in many countries due to the mass rasism, sexism and general feel of the movie but is still allowed to and and continues to be sold world wide in specific countries including the UK. The other side of movies being band for the realistic horror that is shown within scenes. An example of this is The Cannible Holocaust which was banned from viewing as the murders that took place on scene where so realistic that the director was actually giving a court hearing and nearly went to jail. At the court hearing the actors who where 'murdered' turned up and everyone began to understand that it was just very realistic footage that they took. Due to this misunderanding the movie being too realistic for viewing, it had to be cut dramatically and scenes even re-filmed so that people would not be scared to the point where there was the potential of phycological damged and fear.
All information obtained is from the BBFC offical website.
