A big black curtain with "NO PEEKING" upon it
As you may or may not be aware, Left 4 Dead 2 has recently been banned in Australia. I say "banned", but the technical term is "refused classification." So banned, but dressed up like a Moulin Rouge showgirl in a classic example of total bloody pointlessness. For some reason, Australian game ratings only go up to MA-15, so anything that doesn't qualify for that can't be legally released. An Adults Only or 18 classification, which they have here and in America, but Michael Atkinson, the Attorney General of South Australia (fun fact! I kept typing in "Genetal" instead of "General"), keeps stamping it out. Why? Search me, but I noticed that Dead Space, which focuses on "strategic dismemberment" to truly kill an enemy, didn't get banned. Again, search me, as it's probably more visceral than L4D2.
Which brings me to that Daily Mail article I mentioned last time: some film critic who describes himself as "open-minded" and "libertarian" and "twattish" was calling for the ban of the film Antichrist - basically, it's arthouse horror porn. It's a very pretentious film, but calling for a ban because it's shocking? That's like refusing to drink a perfectly good can of Foster's because it's too Australian. And to top it off, this guy admits he hasn't even seen the fucking thing. So how can he and Atkinson ban something they have no experience with? He can therefore go jump into a skip full of AIDS-infected syringes for both talking out of his arse and wasting the life of a tree for his shitty article.
(I'd like to point out that Legend of the Overfiend, regarded by critics as one of the most shocking anime ever, got classification so his point is moot.)
(Heh heh, moot. Funny word to say, that.)
Haven't we moved on from this? Banning whatever we don't like? This may sound a bit hysterical, but it's fascism on a small scale. I can understand it's fun to wave your willy about in people's faces, but unless you're making the world's first 3D porn film, it just interferes with our viewing pleasure.
One of the justifications that Atkinson, Jack Thompson (American righteous Crusader against EVIL video games like GTA) and the other foamy-mouthed White Knights roll out is "because of the children! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!" That's patronising on so many levels you need a high-speed elevator just to get an idea of how many there are. It never occurs to them that the parents will control what their children will watch or play, and probably in a kinder, gentler way as well. I heard in Liverpool they plan on slapping an 18 rating on any film that shows any form of smoking whatsoever. This includes stuff like 101 Dalmatians and Pinocchio. Apparently this is because we're all impressionable and innocent and pure and no harm must ever befall us.
This is why I hate the Daily Mail, which somehow manages to be both left-wing and right-wing at the same time. It attacks anyone who wears a hoodie regardless of whether they're cold while simultaneously laying into Facebook for leading angels astray. How demeaning is this? They make us sound like impressionable thickies who will happily jump off a tall building if the Jonas Brothers say it's cool. We aren't going to grab our dad's Black & Decker and re-enact The Driller Killer; we'd either wince, cover our eyes or be scared shitless depending on our age. Children have their own barometers; Tim Burton, for example, used to watch late-night horror movies. If they had been banned then, would we have gotten the likes of Edward Scissorhands or Sleepy Hollow? Britain even prided itself on Hammer horror way back when! As for the whole smoking thing, trust me, show your child the Pleasure Island scene from Pinocchio. It will put them off it.
Banning something doesn't even work anyway. All it's doing is draping a big black curtain over the subject matter with the words "NO PEEKING" emblazoned upon it in massive white letters. And what are you going to do in such a situation? You will at least try to look because your curiousity has been piqued. This is why A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist gathered such notoriety; because they were banned. As humans, we're naturally intrigued by what we can't see. This is why Alien worked so well as horror, because you scarcely saw the alien. Video nasties were frequently seen in the '80's anyway, and Australian gamers can always import L4D2 from the UK, thus undermining the ban, so what, really, is the point of it all?
Just so we're clear, I'm not completely against censorship - there are some things children don't need to see, plus it always means mre money can be made from Uncut/Director's Cut DVDs. But unnecessary censorship can only ever hinder art, especially video games. Silent Hill 2 is by far and away the scariest thing I've ever encountered - not because it catapulted me out of my seat with baddies jumping very suddenly out of cupboards, or because the entire depository of a vampire's wine cellar was splahed across the screen. Because of the atmosphere and immersion, because I could truly connect with my avatar, neither of which would have worked so well without interactivity. See also BioShock to a lesser degree. Yes, I was scared, occasionally seeing Pyramid Head standing motionless in my hallway like a big Freudian sentry. But I didn't regret it because if something can get into your head long after you've left it alone, then it's clearly doing something right.
And self-righteous censors want to stop that. It's like shoving a toddler down to the floor every time he stands up because he's not standing up in the socially correct way. Surely the way it goes is that, if something shows potential, you encourage it, not stamp it to the ground and purge it with fire and salt? The line between film and video game has become increasingly blurred as time has gone on, meaning the time they'll truly shine, when they're recognised as a legitimate artform - just as comics were after Watchmen - is nigh. Why let them deny it that opportunity?
Still, if these fuckmonkeys have to ban something before their brains start to eat themselves out of boredom induced by nothing to hate, I recommend Jeremy Kyle. I'm sure he's probably a nice guy in real life, but his show seems to act as a misery amplifier. I can't watch it for more than five minutes because I always feel a sudde urge to tear off my shirt and run to the side of the A2 bellowing about how the end is nigh. And I'm not the only one coming out of this marked like Cain: the audience look like gargoyles carved from raw meat by a madman. The "victims" all look the same, inbred bucktoothed lumps of skin and dead hair encased in a tracksuit. And Kyle acts like he's possessed by the demon Pazuzu, switching from caring to cruel in the time it takes electricity to travel across the brain. I'm convinced his face will appear in a mushroom cloud signalling the End of Days. Please, for the sake of decency, give this man a break. He's surely not far off from instigating a killing spree.
Or if he's too easy a target, psychic. They have no proof their "abilities" exist, so they make up guff like Venus being in the twelfth house (you figure that out) or leaves in the garden spelling out a message (presumably "Clear us up already, you lazy shit!"). This isn't so much out of the aether as it is out of their arses. Derek Ogilvy, the "Baby Mind Reader", shouts four-letter words at mothers and debates their sex lives, claiming he's voicing their child's thoughts. The man is clearly insane and would otherwise be unemployable. But the absolute nadir for the psychic community was Michael Jackson: A Seance last Friday, ironically committed by Derek Acorah, the supposed King of All Things Make-Believe. The producers were mining for gold, but by bringing up the corpse of Jackson they'll just hit a sewage pipe and end up with a fountain of liquid shit. I propose we jail them unless they can prove their psychic powers on the spot, be they clairvoyance or telekinesis. I don't care if the planets aren't right, I want to know how my granddad's doing or see you lift a bus with the power of thought NOW.
And we'll start with people called Derek.
Which brings me to that Daily Mail article I mentioned last time: some film critic who describes himself as "open-minded" and "libertarian" and "twattish" was calling for the ban of the film Antichrist - basically, it's arthouse horror porn. It's a very pretentious film, but calling for a ban because it's shocking? That's like refusing to drink a perfectly good can of Foster's because it's too Australian. And to top it off, this guy admits he hasn't even seen the fucking thing. So how can he and Atkinson ban something they have no experience with? He can therefore go jump into a skip full of AIDS-infected syringes for both talking out of his arse and wasting the life of a tree for his shitty article.
(I'd like to point out that Legend of the Overfiend, regarded by critics as one of the most shocking anime ever, got classification so his point is moot.)
(Heh heh, moot. Funny word to say, that.)
Haven't we moved on from this? Banning whatever we don't like? This may sound a bit hysterical, but it's fascism on a small scale. I can understand it's fun to wave your willy about in people's faces, but unless you're making the world's first 3D porn film, it just interferes with our viewing pleasure.
One of the justifications that Atkinson, Jack Thompson (American righteous Crusader against EVIL video games like GTA) and the other foamy-mouthed White Knights roll out is "because of the children! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!" That's patronising on so many levels you need a high-speed elevator just to get an idea of how many there are. It never occurs to them that the parents will control what their children will watch or play, and probably in a kinder, gentler way as well. I heard in Liverpool they plan on slapping an 18 rating on any film that shows any form of smoking whatsoever. This includes stuff like 101 Dalmatians and Pinocchio. Apparently this is because we're all impressionable and innocent and pure and no harm must ever befall us.
This is why I hate the Daily Mail, which somehow manages to be both left-wing and right-wing at the same time. It attacks anyone who wears a hoodie regardless of whether they're cold while simultaneously laying into Facebook for leading angels astray. How demeaning is this? They make us sound like impressionable thickies who will happily jump off a tall building if the Jonas Brothers say it's cool. We aren't going to grab our dad's Black & Decker and re-enact The Driller Killer; we'd either wince, cover our eyes or be scared shitless depending on our age. Children have their own barometers; Tim Burton, for example, used to watch late-night horror movies. If they had been banned then, would we have gotten the likes of Edward Scissorhands or Sleepy Hollow? Britain even prided itself on Hammer horror way back when! As for the whole smoking thing, trust me, show your child the Pleasure Island scene from Pinocchio. It will put them off it.
Banning something doesn't even work anyway. All it's doing is draping a big black curtain over the subject matter with the words "NO PEEKING" emblazoned upon it in massive white letters. And what are you going to do in such a situation? You will at least try to look because your curiousity has been piqued. This is why A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist gathered such notoriety; because they were banned. As humans, we're naturally intrigued by what we can't see. This is why Alien worked so well as horror, because you scarcely saw the alien. Video nasties were frequently seen in the '80's anyway, and Australian gamers can always import L4D2 from the UK, thus undermining the ban, so what, really, is the point of it all?
Just so we're clear, I'm not completely against censorship - there are some things children don't need to see, plus it always means mre money can be made from Uncut/Director's Cut DVDs. But unnecessary censorship can only ever hinder art, especially video games. Silent Hill 2 is by far and away the scariest thing I've ever encountered - not because it catapulted me out of my seat with baddies jumping very suddenly out of cupboards, or because the entire depository of a vampire's wine cellar was splahed across the screen. Because of the atmosphere and immersion, because I could truly connect with my avatar, neither of which would have worked so well without interactivity. See also BioShock to a lesser degree. Yes, I was scared, occasionally seeing Pyramid Head standing motionless in my hallway like a big Freudian sentry. But I didn't regret it because if something can get into your head long after you've left it alone, then it's clearly doing something right.
And self-righteous censors want to stop that. It's like shoving a toddler down to the floor every time he stands up because he's not standing up in the socially correct way. Surely the way it goes is that, if something shows potential, you encourage it, not stamp it to the ground and purge it with fire and salt? The line between film and video game has become increasingly blurred as time has gone on, meaning the time they'll truly shine, when they're recognised as a legitimate artform - just as comics were after Watchmen - is nigh. Why let them deny it that opportunity?
Still, if these fuckmonkeys have to ban something before their brains start to eat themselves out of boredom induced by nothing to hate, I recommend Jeremy Kyle. I'm sure he's probably a nice guy in real life, but his show seems to act as a misery amplifier. I can't watch it for more than five minutes because I always feel a sudde urge to tear off my shirt and run to the side of the A2 bellowing about how the end is nigh. And I'm not the only one coming out of this marked like Cain: the audience look like gargoyles carved from raw meat by a madman. The "victims" all look the same, inbred bucktoothed lumps of skin and dead hair encased in a tracksuit. And Kyle acts like he's possessed by the demon Pazuzu, switching from caring to cruel in the time it takes electricity to travel across the brain. I'm convinced his face will appear in a mushroom cloud signalling the End of Days. Please, for the sake of decency, give this man a break. He's surely not far off from instigating a killing spree.
Or if he's too easy a target, psychic. They have no proof their "abilities" exist, so they make up guff like Venus being in the twelfth house (you figure that out) or leaves in the garden spelling out a message (presumably "Clear us up already, you lazy shit!"). This isn't so much out of the aether as it is out of their arses. Derek Ogilvy, the "Baby Mind Reader", shouts four-letter words at mothers and debates their sex lives, claiming he's voicing their child's thoughts. The man is clearly insane and would otherwise be unemployable. But the absolute nadir for the psychic community was Michael Jackson: A Seance last Friday, ironically committed by Derek Acorah, the supposed King of All Things Make-Believe. The producers were mining for gold, but by bringing up the corpse of Jackson they'll just hit a sewage pipe and end up with a fountain of liquid shit. I propose we jail them unless they can prove their psychic powers on the spot, be they clairvoyance or telekinesis. I don't care if the planets aren't right, I want to know how my granddad's doing or see you lift a bus with the power of thought NOW.
And we'll start with people called Derek.