Political Correctness, Gone Mad, Again

Political Correctness, Gone Mad, Again

The British Board of Film Classification – the people charged with protecting us, a British public quivering with fear, from the very worst the Hollywood dream factory is prepared to inflict on us, has, I am sorry to report let this terrible responsibility go to its head.

Despite adopting a system in which virtually no film ever receives an 18 certificate these days unless it shows fallopian tubes and/or violent death on a scale Attila the Hun could only dream of, they seem to think theirs is the duty to send us careering in abject fear the cinema or video shop.

Hence, films now come with disclaimers such as “PG Certificate: Contains extended scenes of gore, violent death and Jimmy Carr” and “12 Certificate: Flee! Flee! Naked tits!”

I would question, however, whether they’re taking this rather too far, and are wrapping the viewer in layer upon layer of cotton wool. Take for example a couple of recent releases:

Pride and Prejudice: “Contains very mild innuendo” – that’s it, I’m not going now.

Dad’s Army DVD: “One racism reference” – that’ll be those fuzzy-wuzzies. They don’t like it up ‘em, you know.

Wallace and Gromit: “Mild scary action and language”

I’ve also seen some Winnie the Pooh animated epic scaring small children away from cinemas the length of the country with the stern warning “contains very mild peril”, although they appear to have missed the obvious “and the word ‘pooh’”. More of this low comedy at their website - "Contains very mild comic violence and word play".

Pity the BBFC, really. They watch all that filth so we don’t have to. Where do I sign up?


Things I never knew until I made a flippant remark on my weblog

- There really is a Nationalist Socialist White People’s Party who are genuine redneck Nazis, and not some excellent plot device made up for The Blues Brothers

- The one schoolyard gag guaranteed to reduce hundreds of my contemporise into a mass of giggling idiots (Two prostitutes standing on a street corner. One says to the other, "Have you ever been picked up by the fuzz?" The other replies, "No, but I've been swung around by the tits!") was – according to the internets – first told by Tommy Cooper.

- Isaac Newton invented the cat flap. What did you invent Stephen Hawking? What? WHAT?