Wuxia – Asian martial arts film survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=U8tU9uIzqOQbjssWs_2bQmAA_3d_3d

How well does the current system of film classification and censorship serve the British public?

• BBFC
• http://www.sbbfc.co.uk – Students
• http://www.bbfc.co.uk
• Complaints http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/Site%20Articles/whatareyoucomplainingabout.asp
• How well the system works
• Who does it, how, does it work
• How films are classified http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/student_guide_classification1.asp
• Examiners normally view video and DVD submissions on their own – called solo viewing.A large proportion of works suitable are for solo viewing are episodes from TV series or works aimed at young children that have already been broadcast on television. Films for cinema release, video games and pornography submissions are classified in teams of two. Controversial works, such as extreme reality material, will also be programmed for team work.
• Difficult or controversial material can also be referred to the weekly Examiners’ Meeting, where they can be debated further to obtain a wide range of valuable opinions. Ultimately, the work will be referred to Senior Management.
• If a work contains material which is illegal or unacceptable under the Board’s Guidelines, Examiners will draw up a list of cuts which will be sent to the distributor. If a work as a whole is unacceptable, it can be rejected, but this happens only on rare occasions. The Presidential Team will be consulted on difficult works, especially those which may be refused a certificate altogether or which raise serious policy issues.

The process for cuts, briefly, is as follows:

• Cuts specified by Board in writing, by examiners in the first instance.
• Checked by Senior Examiners.
• Choice of category offered to reduce needs for cuts.
• Company free to find own editing solutions, for artistic or technical reasons.
• Resubmitted work is viewed by a second team to check that the cuts have been made.
• Copy of cuts deposited with the Board.
• In-house trial cuts may be made to check technical feasibility of proposed cuts.

• http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/student_guide_legislation3.asp VRA
• More recently, the Board’s decision to award The Dark Knight the ‘12A’ category resulted in much press coverage and complaints from members of the public, who thought the violence was too strong to be contained at that category.
• Obscene publications act http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/student_guide_legislation2.asp
• 9 songs, ACWO, hot fuzz, Cannibal holocaust,
• Video Nasties – http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/student_guide_videonasties.asp

Discuss some of the problems that might arise in the scheduling of news and/or current affairs programmes

There are a few ways that problems could arise from news scheduling, which I will be exploring.

Scheduled news broadcasting has become a cornerstone of peoples every day lives. Many people rely on programmes such as ITV’s News at 10 and the BBC’s BBC News at 6. People rely on these scheduled programmes to give them day to day updates of things that have been happening. Of course, this has its drawbacks because something newsworthy does not happen every single day, so this means that they have to pad out their shows with old news and interviews, rather than actually reporting news.

Another drawback is that they only occur at that single time. For example, if a news programme is scheduled to run every few hours, then all of the things that have happened in that time period won’t be reported till the news starts. So if something important happens, you will not know about it until the news broadcasts again, which could be hours.

On the other hand though, if something majorly important happens, they normally have breaking news interruptions, therefore putting the news on immediately. This kind of breaking news only occurs for large scale events, such as 9/11, when Princess Diana died etc.

Another problem with scheduling programmes would be that if it is at a certain time of the day that you cannot see it, then it will be on at the same time every single day, so you will always miss that certain channels news broadcast. Which an inconvenience, although the same news is most probably being broadcast on other channels.

This is also an advantage to some people though, because people would rather get the whole day’s news in one go, rather than having to keep switching back onto the news now and again to see if something new has happened.

Another disadvantage to it could be that, because it is live, there are quite often a lot of ‘human errors’. A lot of mistakes can be easily made on a live broadcast, which probably would not occur on a normal show. Although this is the only way to broadcast this type of programme, because if it was pre-recorded all of the news would be old, and no-one would want to hear it by the time it is shown.

Another reason that scheduling could be at a disadvantage is that the content has to be changed depending on the time of day. For obvious reasons, during the day you cannot have graphic content, as the audience could consist of children. This sort of content can only be put after the watershed, which restricts the viewing audience to adults.

Either by reference to contemporary cinema or an earlier period, discuss how regulation and censorship have been challenged by social, cultural or technological change.

Censorship laws have been challenged by almost every technological change in the medium. There are always new films ready to come out on new or existing formats, ready to challenge the regulations of the industry.

For example, the video nasties. When these films first came about, there were a minimal amount of regulation and censorship laws. The only films that would be looked at were the ones that would be released in cinemas. This meant that the new technology of the VCR, which was becoming more and more readily available, was a prime target for the video nasties.

They were released solely on VCR to bypass regulation, and were often very low budget, horror films. These films would contain some brutal and gruesome images, on a format that anyone could get their hands on, even children. And as there were no regulations, the content just continued to get worse and worse.

This forced the BBFC to have police go out and seize videos, then take the publishers to court for creating the films. The films, whose publishers were successfully prosecuted, were put onto the list of Video nasties.

Then the Video Recording Act was bought in to stop these films bypassing the cinema and being released straight onto video. With this act, all films had to be submitted for review before they were released onto any medium, and films that had already been released had to be resubmitted.

There was also a second case of video nasties. This was for the sudden outbreak of ‘copycat crimes’. This was where people would say that they watched the film so much, they then went out and copied the films content, be it murder, robbery etc.

One of the main cases was the Jamie Bulger case, where two young boys brutally killed the 2 year old boy. The defence of the two boys was that they had been watching the Quentin Tarantino film, ‘Natural Born Killers’, and then went out to copy it. There were many different controversies surrounding the film, and then more and more ‘copycat criminals’ were blaming the film for what they did.

Another film that was blamed for copycat crimes was Stanley Kurbrick’s a Clockwork Orange. There was widespread controversy because of the common depiction of rape, sex, violence and murder in the film. This was an unusual case as it was pulled by the director himself, after he started to receive death threats from people and threatening messages. It was then re-released after his death.

One way that they were challenged culturally is by the film ‘the exorcist’. This was challenged by various cultural groups and religions because of its content. Because of the way that it seemed to be ‘anti-religious’ it was damned by religious groups, and they called for it to be banned. This made it become one of the first films banned, but not actually becoming an official video nasty.

The BBFC decided to ban the film outright, because of the controversy surrounding it. However, the film was re-submitted to the BBFC and was approved and released with an 18 rating in 1999. This signifies a relaxation of the censorship laws, and could also mean that the viewing public is becoming more and more de-sensitised to shocking films.

Critical Research Mock – Question 2

With detailed reference to your research findings, analyse and discuss the portrayal of Protagonists and Antagonists in Asian Martial Arts films.

I set myself the task of researching how Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in Asian Martial Arts films. At first, I thought that this question would be quite difficult to answer, but it didn’t turn out to be too challenging.

Within the online interview that I conducted, many topics were discussed, including the question I am answering. I asked the question:

How do you think Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in Asian Martial Arts films?

To which I received the reply:

In the above films (my 3 focus films), art house martial arts tend to offer shades of gray in both the Heroes and the Villains. For example in Hero, the ruler of Qin was in reality a ruthless dictator who practiced genocide and book burning, similar to Nazi Germany’s Hitler. It was actually shocking to see him portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic character in the film to Chinese audiences. Generally Asian cinema is pretty black and white when it comes to heroes and villains. A lot of this is due to heavy censorship of anything critical of the Chinese government.

This answer intrigued me a lot, generally because of the fact that he thought it was because of the government that they were portrayed in the way that they are. This made me go on to research some information about the Chinese censorship laws, and I found out that in China, you cannot have anything ‘anti-government’ in any form of Media. This made it clear why the Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in a certain way in most films.

Also, the way that he noted that the ruler of Qin was comparable to Adolf Hitler in some ways, the audience was made to feel sympathy for him in the film, even though he commonly committed mass murder. This would be another example of not attacking the government, and another way of showing the censorship laws.

Critical Research mock – Question 1

Give an account of, and evaluate the research methods you used to investigate your chosen area of study.

My chosen topic for this investigation was World Cinema. Within the topic, I decided to focus on how Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in Asian martial arts films.

For my investigation, I would have to combine Primary and Secondary research, so I can get a broader picture of the topic. Primary research allowed me to go and gain my own findings, while the secondary research allowed me to compare my studies to previously undertaken ones.

One example of primary research that I conducted was an interview with a man through e-mail. I stumbled across his blog by chance, and saw in his ‘about’ section that he said he was a very avid fan of the Asian martial arts genre. I sent him an email asking him if I could ask him a few questions on the subject, to which he agreed. The interview can be found in its entirety at http://dougkerr.wordpress.com. As a result of this interview, I found out why this person was so drawn to Asian martial arts and who his favourite actors/actresses were. He also gave me a mini review on all of the 3 films I will be looking at, and he also gave me his point of view of how Protagonists and Antagonists were portrayed in the genre. He said that he thought that the Asian martial arts genre is quite ‘black and white’ in their portrayal of ‘good and evil’. He also recommended me some films to watch on the genre. This interview helped a lot, as I gained a lot of first hand knowledge on the genre.

An example of secondary research was using a search engine on the internet. I decided to use http://www.google.com as my main search engine. At first I searched “How protagonists and antagonists are portrayed in asian martial arts films”, but the search was much too defined and only got irrelevant results. Then I changed my search to “how good and evil is portrayed in asian martial arts”. This allowed me to find the website http://www.shaolintiger.com. The site had small but concise movie reviews about many different martial arts films, including some of the ones I was looking at, which proved to be very helpful with my research.

News Articles

Shearer denies Owen quit rumours

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/8051628.stm

This is a story about some rumours that have surfaced about Michael Owen wanting to retire at the end of this season. This is a new development, as they are rumours that have just surfaced. This story was added on the 15^th of May. I think that this article is news worthy, as football is a very large sport, and Michael Owen is a widely known player. The agenda behind reporting this story is so that people that follow the football club are updated with the latest information about their team’s players. There is no noticeable bias in the article. The information presented in the article was gathered through an interview with Newcastle manager, Alan Shearer. There is a video of the interview on the article, which allows readers of the article to see exactly what Alan Shearer said, so they know it hasn’t been changed. The social group of footballers are represented as really important people, because the way the article talks about them, it makes them sound more important than they really are. There is some interaction with the readership, as there is a message board where you can post your views on the subject and article. There are links in the bottom corner of the page showing some other sites that also show the same report.

F1 teams to meet Mosley for talks

http://uk.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idUKTRE54E0CF20090515?sp=true

This story is about a meeting that has been called with Formula 1 boss Max Mosley because of threats to leave. This is a long running story, continuing the previous stories about teams threatening to leave. This story broke on the 15^th of May. I think that this event is news worthy, because it will affect the whole future of the sport if a few of the main teams pull out. I believe the agenda behind this article is to just deliver the information, because it is such a big event in the sport. I don’t think there is any bias in this article, its just a portrayal of the information. I believe the information was gathered from a variety of places, such as news reports, interviews and press releases. The images with this report are just images of F1 cars, so that is the only connection they have with the article. There are no specific pictures that directly relate to what the article is about. The social groups represented are portrayed as quite compassionate; this could be because they are trying to reach a compromise, so they seem really generous. There are no social options attached to this article, apart from being able to blog it, post it to face book etc. This story is widely reported by many different agencies, because it is really a really important even for the sport.

Script Evaluation

As I worked alone on this project and not in a group, all of this work is entirely my own, and all of the research and drafts were my own personal work, with no contribution from others whatsoever.

I feel that my project went very well. I was very pleased with the end product of my script, and all of the other aspects of my work.

I researched my script by looking at scripts for the Crime/Gangster Genre on the internet, this allowed me to see how the scripts are written and they they compared and differed to scripts of other Genres. I also watched films such as ‘Pulp Fiction’, so I had a good idea of how the scenes should look, and the kind of dialogue that is used in these sorts of films. Doing this was also beneficial in a roundabout way, as my script was influenced by ‘Pulp Fiction’.

I did not run into many problems while creating my script, as it was all made of my own accord. The only problem that I may have been challenged by was coming up with an actual premise in the first place, which I had some difficulty with. But after I had decided on a Genre, I was inspired to write ‘Black Cash’ through the research that I conducted.

I have gained many skills while completing this script, for example I have learnt how Screen Writers write scripts properly, and how they are supposed to be set out and styled. I also learnt how to incorporate camera movements and directions into the script in the correct way. I also learnt how to make the characters have their own distinct personalities, and how some characters are created to have a largely different role to some others.

A Clockwork Orange – Controversy

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0012.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)

http://www.moria.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=826Itemid=1

http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/yvo961.htm

Censorship Documentary Notes

• Movie Censorship
• ITC – Independent Television Commission – OFCOM
• OFCOM – Television regulators
• Natural Born Killers
• Copycat Murders
• MTV style
• Straw Dogs
• Rape Scenes
• Exorcist
• Religion Blasphemy
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Killings
• Pulp Fiction
• Drugs – Glamorising
• Trainspotting
• More human
• Censorship Following Technology
• Desensitised