Earlier this year The Motion Picture Association of America in their wisdom decided to rate movies on tobacco use. Now Liverpool Primary Care has got into the act, wanting to reclassify films on their smoking content. Have they gone nuts? Do they sit in boardrooms every day deciding what’s best for the public? Do they get a kick on telling what is supposedly good for the public? I am so tired of these so-called do-gooders who who have this insane urge to tell us what is bad for us. It seems Mary Whitehouse has been resurrected from the dead.
Let me consider the films of the past that would now have an 18 rating because of this absurd proposed censorship.
101 Dalmatians (remember Cruella DeVille?)
The Little Mermaid
Pinocchio
Peter Pan
Lauren Bacall would have never been seen by anyone under the age of 18. Nor Humphrey Bogart. Young people would have been denied access to see To Kill A Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck. No teenage boy would have been allowed to see James Bond introducing himself in a casino. Young girls would have been banned from seeing Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio do their Top Of The World thing in Titanic. Under 18 fans of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and other Hollywood mega stars would have had to sneak in via a side door in the cinema to see them (something I did to watch Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon) When I was 15 I stole in to watch a film starring some porn actress named Chesty Morgan (I think) Hand on my heart, I can swear that the film never made me think I would have sex in an alpine ski lift.
Do these people who want to tell us what to do really believe that kids will refrain from smoking if they cannot see it in a cinema? It won’t work. They will smoke anyway, just like they will have underage sex, drink booze, have sulky moods, wear their jeans below their knees and play their music loud.
What next for the know what’s best for us do good squad? Maybe they will reclassify films like Toy Story because it has cartoon characters crossing a busy road without looking both ways along the street? The Wizard of Oz could be reclassified because Dorothy and Scarecrow have too close a relationship? Star Wars might be a candidate for re-censorship because asthma sufferers might feel all evil-like after watching Darth Vader?
So members of The Motion Picture Association of America and Liverpool Primary Care please find something else to do in the evenings. Get out a bit and socialise. Perhaps make a new friend. Watch Dot Cotton in Eastenders. Give a job to one out of the five young people who are now unemployed. Do anything. I don’t care. But please stop lecturing us and patronising us on what we can and cannot watch.
