To coincide with the publication of Kevin Rockett’s book Irish Film Censorship: A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography (Four Courts Press), the IFI is screening nine films to illustrate something of the extent of film censorship in this country over the years. While some films were being censored in Ireland as early as 1916, national film censorship proper only began with the Censorship of Films Act, 1923. This law, which provides for a single Film Censor and a nine-person Appeal Board to adjudicate on all films exhibited in the State, has led to about 2,500 films being banned and another 11,000 cut. According to the Act, still in operation, films may be banned or cut if deemed to be “indecent, obscene or blasphemous”, or are otherwise “subversive of public morality”. Armed with such all-embracing subjective terms, censors judged cinematic representations according to what was acceptable under Irish law and Catholic morality. Consequently, few films were immune from the repressive process and, unsurprisingly, references to divorce, abortion and homosexuality were invariably cut, as were any other deviations from the nuclear family, including displays of the body or any form of sexuality or intimacy, such as ‘excessive’ kissing, even if between married couples. Similarly treated were representations of the sacraments and negative depictions of the Catholic church. Thus, films which showed women in non-traditional roles—for example, in night-clubs or in chorus lines; engaged in activities such as drinking or smoking, or dressed in what the censors called “semi-nude” clothes—were excised to ensure that they conformed to a traditional notion of the woman’s place in the home. This was underpinned by a policy of only issuing, with rare exceptions, general or universal certificates during censorship’s first forty years. While such an approach to cinema went relatively unchallenged in the early decades of censorship, this was no longer the case in the post-war years, which saw the emergence of a more risqué cinema both from America and Europe. This pushing of the boundaries in cinema—in the adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays, in the horror genre, in British New Wave movies—led to severe anomalies in the administration of Irish film censorship which were largely resolved through a shift in policy towards the issuing of limited certificates from 1965 onwards. Since then, there has been a gradual liberalisation of film censorship, most notably under the stewardship of Seamus Smith. With the exception of adult pornography, Irish ratings are now little different to those of other western jurisdictions, while the current Censor, John Kelleher, has tried to make the process more transparent with the introduction of the IFCO website. Since the 1980s, the debate has shifted from film to video, and more recently to internet pornography, where the challenges are generally not ones affecting state censors so much as the need for the surveillance of child and teenage viewing in the home and their protection from adult as well as child pornography.-Kevin Rockett |
