Mary Poppins film age rating raised

Jaycee

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68402362

Hottentot ........... I had to look it up,

mrkb

Jaycee said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68402362

Hottentot ........... I had to look it up,

Wash your mouth out dude!!

Offset

Frankly ludicrous.  Not sure what the BBFC is trying to achieve here.

Cols

My understanding of a PG rating is ‘best check it out before letting smaller kids see this one’.  Examples would be Ghostbusters (librarian, terror dogs, Dan Aykroyd getting noshed off by a ghost) and the Jurassic Park series (graphically bitey dinosaurs).

I worry about the mentality of parents who would, on the basis of one obscure word, fold their arms and forbid their precious moppet from watching Mary Poppins.

ICBM

Offset said:

Frankly ludicrous.  Not sure what the BBFC is trying to achieve here.

It’s really a trigger warning rather than a revised age rating. I actually think they’re right, although it’s stretching a point a little - who (especially a child) would even know what it means now? - but there’s probably an element of backside-covering too.

There are probably quite a lot of classic films which contain historic language now thought to be at least mildly offensive which the same may apply to - and I’d far rather they did this than edit the film.

Kittyfrisk

Well there goes the re-runs of Dad's Army with Corporal Jones & his 'fuzzy wuzzies'. Possibly not a bad thing...

Timcito

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

Hootsmon

The arts are full of it and I say leave it where it is. Consider the Blue Mink song Melting Pot, a homage to racial union, and check out the obvious Chinese slur.....everything dates folks

Take a pinch of white man
  Wrap him up in black skin
  Add a touch of blue blood
 And a little bitty bit of red Indian boy
 Oh like a Curly Latin kinkies
 Oh Lordy, Lordy, mixed with yellow Chinkees, yeah

ICBM

Timcito said:

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

I think it’s far better to put the mildest of parental warnings on it than to alter the film.

It goes the other way too, there’s plenty of stuff which would have got an X or 18 rating in the past - usually for nudity - which is now a 15. Times change.

strtdv

ICBM said:

Offset said:

Frankly ludicrous.  Not sure what the BBFC is trying to achieve here.

It’s really a trigger warning rather than a revised age rating. I actually think they’re right, although it’s stretching a point a little - who (especially a child) would even know what it means now? - but there’s probably an element of backside-covering too.

There are probably quite a lot of classic films which contain historic language now thought to be at least mildly offensive which the same may apply to - and I’d far rather they did this than edit the film.

Exactly, better leave it as is with a label than edit it.

Mary Poppins is arguably a mild case (in part due to the fact that the term isn't in wide use over here, though that may be different to a South African audience), but other Disney films (Songs of the South and the crow scene in Dumbo) are now generally not broadcast at all due to "outdated views"/inherent racism.

There's far more to be gained in having a conversation about why something might be problematic than there is in rewriting history to remove anything problematic (I take similar issue with removal of statues of slave traders for example). Instead of confronting issues the preferred route seems to be to pretend it didn't happen.

darthed1981

There are some things covered in the film that actually might justify some parental guidance anyhow, for example...

The Suffragettes.
Poverty.
The film really being about fatherhood and the difficulties of being a loving father vs a gentleman in the early 20th century.

It was both a very different time the film is set in, and a very different time when it was made.  It is considered, rightly, a masterpiece of film-making and deserves to be seen for generations, but as society changes more, then more guidance will be needed to understand it.

I'm not in favour of censorship - I think it sucks the funniest episode of the IT Crowd isn't on All 4 for example - but I also recognise that not everyone feels how I do.

Mary Poppins as a PG?  As long as they don't cut it - fair play.

Now if only we can sort that Dambusters remake...

fretmeister

Timcito said:

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

They've upped it to a PG. Everybody is still able to watch it at any age. A child can still watch it or even buy it.

They have not edited the film in any way.

Please explain how and what has been cancelled here?



EDIT: You can still rent "Birth of a Nation" - a contender for the most racist film ever, for £3.50 

Watch The Birth of a Nation online - BFI Player

Nothing is being cancelled.

fretmeister

Hootsmon said:

The arts are full of it and I say leave it where it is. Consider the Blue Mink song Melting Pot, a homage to racial union, and check out the obvious Chinese slur.....everything dates folks

Take a pinch of white man
  Wrap him up in black skin
  Add a touch of blue blood
 And a little bitty bit of red Indian boy
 Oh like a Curly Latin kinkies
 Oh Lordy, Lordy, mixed with yellow Chinkees, yeah

Absolutely.

Put an advisory on it by all means but do not edit. 99% of Mark Twain would have to go from a library if edits were done.

But despite the quite deranged ranting of those claiming "wokeness gone mad" you can still go into any library and get an unedited copy of Huckleberry Finn.

Leaving them be is important. It's history as well as art and is shows the development of society. Editing it would be criminal.

UnclePsychosis

Timcito said:

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

Whats far more absurd is the laughable assertion that classifying a film as a *checks notes* PG is "cancelling" it. 

monquixote

A warning is useful.

I've abandoned 2 books (Swallows and Amazons and Great Glass Elevator) because my kids (who were 7 and 9 at the time ) found them racist and didn't want to read them anymore.

Zero prompting from me.

Cols

fretmeister said:

Timcito said:

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

They've upped it to a PG. Everybody is still able to watch it at any age. A child can still watch it or even buy it.

They have not edited the film in any way.

Please explain how and what has been cancelled here?
.

I can give you an example.

Before half term, my youngest child (8 years old) went off on his very residential trip with school.  Each child was allowed to bring a DVD with them for the class to watch in the evening (I believe there was a class vote on which movies actually got chosen).

Nothing above a U rating was permitted to be brought. The school can show PG films, but only after seeking permission from the parents of every child in the class.

merlin

When I was a kid, maybe 10 we had an album of settings of poems to William Walton's music. It was called "Facade" and (as far as I remember) one of the poems by Edith Sitwell had the word "Hottentot" in it. 

Did I know what it meant? Did I care what it meant? This was all well post-colonialism and I didn't find out what it meant until at least a decade later. 

I am unscathed.



Relatively. 

DefaultM

Cols said:

fretmeister said:

Timcito said:

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

They've upped it to a PG. Everybody is still able to watch it at any age. A child can still watch it or even buy it.

They have not edited the film in any way.

Please explain how and what has been cancelled here?
.

I can give you an example.

Before half term, my youngest child (8 years old) went off on his very residential trip with school.  Each child was allowed to bring a DVD with them for the class to watch in the evening (I believe there was a class vote on which movies actually got chosen).

Nothing above a U rating was permitted to be brought. The school can show PG films, but only after seeking permission from the parents of every child in the class.

Last week I remembered that when I was in year 5 of primary school the VHS tape for Titanic had just come out and the teacher brought it in. It was a 12 and she said she was going to put it on anyway because she thought we were ok to watch it. Then she skipped it to where it's about to hit the iceberg and said we'll watch from here because this is where everyone starts dying or something along those lines haha. I'm surprised no one's parents complained and she didn't get fined.

Philly_Q

I blame those biased pro-Tory right wing woke lefties at the BBC.

What?  BBFC you say?  Isn't it the same thing?  Wouldn't have happened in my day.

Cols

DefaultM said:

Cols said:

fretmeister said:

Timcito said:

Utterly absurd. By the the time they've finished cleaning up and canceling the films from the past that fail to meet exacting present-day wokeist standards, there'll be bugger all left. 

They've upped it to a PG. Everybody is still able to watch it at any age. A child can still watch it or even buy it.

They have not edited the film in any way.

Please explain how and what has been cancelled here?
.

I can give you an example.

Before half term, my youngest child (8 years old) went off on his very residential trip with school.  Each child was allowed to bring a DVD with them for the class to watch in the evening (I believe there was a class vote on which movies actually got chosen).

Nothing above a U rating was permitted to be brought. The school can show PG films, but only after seeking permission from the parents of every child in the class.

Last week I remembered that when I was in year 5 of primary school the VHS tape for Titanic had just come out and the teacher brought it in. It was a 12 and she said she was going to put it on anyway because she thought we were ok to watch it. Then she skipped it to where it's about to hit the iceberg and said we'll watch from here because this is where everyone starts dying or something along those lines haha. I'm surprised no one's parents complained and she didn't get fined.

I can only imagine that just as she was about to press play she thought “Oh shit, Kate Winslet gets her tits out in this doesn’t she?”  And skipped ahead to a reliably boob-free scene.

DefaultM

Haha yeah maybe. I'll have to rewatch it to check if I would have found it shocking at the time...