The Artistic Revolution of New Media (R18+ debate)
Jesse
Nov 10, 2009
Although this website is American, I’d like to talk about the issues surrounding censorship in Australia, specifically in relation to video games. The types of discussions this topic generates are universal and should be thought about even if you do not live in the country it is directly affecting.
As with all new forms of media, or new artistic mediums, controversy surrounds the content that should and shouldn’t be displayed. For society to come to grips with new media a period of scrutiny must ensue. During this period society enforces its accepted moral standards upon the new media to control and restrict its access. This has been occurring for hundreds of years in all cultures, but more recently and in Australia the moving image was once thought of as a crude and distasteful medium. Such classics as King Kong, Frankenstein and Dracula were banned in Australia in 1941 for high impact scary violence and cruelty. Society of the times had heavily scrutinized a new media they did not fully understand. Today we have such movies as Hostel and its sequels, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Cannibal, all of which have incredibly high amounts of blood and gore and are freely available from any video store. Gradually society has accepted film as an art form that should not be easily restricted for it can be used as a form of expression and meaning.
Today interactive media is under the watchful eye of society. Video games are a new media not yet fully fleshed out as an art form much like film was in its infancy. On top of the crude and violent image video games have received they are also unfortunately seen as the domain of children. Hence society has scrutinized and shunned games for a very long time. However this has been shown not to be the case as Dr. Mark Finn discusses in his insightful reading Political Interface: The Banning of GTA 3 in Australia (2006);
The criticizing of a new form of media is an entirely natural process, yet with games it has lingered for further than usual. In Australia, one person; Attorney-General Michael Atkinson is responsible for the banning of many potential games in Australia over the years. As it still stands today, “In Australia, a game that cannot be rated by the Classification Board into the top MA15+ category is essentially unclassified (UC). Anything that is UC cannot be legally sold in the country.” For example, the banning of an American parody game known as GTA 4 was banned in Australia (then modified and released) for containing the ability to perform what would be an indecent act in real life. A potentially positive addition to the education and culture of Australia was restricted by a man that does not accept that games can have an artistic message much the same way film and literature can.
What do you think?
Thanks for stepping in and clarifying that one. I was under the impression the board rejected (banned) it, then later Rockstar submitted an edited copy, much like the recent Left for Dead 2.
.-= Patrick Brosnan´s last blog ..Interview: DOZYCOW at eGames 09 =-.
GTA4 was never actuallly banned in Australia. The console version was modified by Take2/Rockstar before they even submitted to the OFLC for classification. Take2/Rockstar probably edited it because they were worried that GTA4 might get refused classification. They later submitted an unedited PC version of GTA4 to OFLC which got through with MA15+ rating. After that, take2/Rockstar gave an uncensor patch for the 360 and PS3 versions.
SA Attorney-General Michael Atkinson is solely responsible for the lack of an R18+ rating(which we have for films) for computer games. This due to the fact that our censorship laws don’t change unless all the Attorney-Generals unanimously vote for it. Michael Atkinson has used his veto powers everytime.