Censorship
14:50
The recently released film ‘The Interview’ has grabbed a lot of attention from the media and North Korea with its offence towards North Korea. Directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, The Interview is a controversial film about the assassination of Kim Jong-un as he threatens to destroy the U.S. What’s bad about the film is that they used the actual leader in the film, whereas they could've made up a new dictator. As they used real facts and real people in the film. The Interview was going to do a Christmas Day release until there was a terror threat towards Sony Pictures, the production company, if they were to release the film. Sony Pictures backed down and didn’t go with the Christmas Day release but still tried to get their film out there, but other big chaining cinema’s backed down in showing the film to the public due to Terror Threats from ‘The Peace Keepers’. The film-makers were also pressured into removing certain jokes and a homosexual scene within the film. While also tinkering the death scene of Kim Jong-un as it was disturbing towards some audiences. The film was known as an ‘act of war’ from North Korea as they found the film highly offensive towards their supreme leader and towards their dictatorship. The film reaches out of freedom of free speech which was the argument for the film to not be censored or antagonised by terror and cyber threats.
The Film-makers were already concerned that they would’ve been pressured into having the film having some blocked content, as the original title for The Interview was going to be called ‘Kill Kim Jong-un, which this title would’ve been a definite censor. So they changed the name to The Interview to keep it clean and open. Sony Pictures were the ones who had the censor the film as it contained extremely inappropriate content, also they were threatened for the film not to be released on Christmas day due to the terrorist threats towards the chains of big cinema company doors. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) classified the film as a fifteen, as it is now appropriate towards fifteen’s and over due to the reason that the film had already been censored by hiding away offensive content. The BBFC classify films whether they are suitable towards an age group by the content shown within the production. They also have the power to censor content within the film or ban the film completely. They didn’t take any part in censoring the Interview as Sony Pictures already censored content within the production.
I believe that the film was censored because of the content that was taken place within the film because of how inappropriate the content is within the film. By how they jump to assumptions on how North Korea treat their citizens and how God like Kim Jong-un is. No one truly understands how North Korea’s government leads their country and how it all works. This was censored to protect the general public from thinking the the film was 100% factual whereas the film was just one big comedic joke. This shows examples of the Effects models of audience theory as this would influence the audience of the film to be racist towards North Korea and use the offensive language used within the film. This would be disrespectful and would become misrepresentation, from the film and towards the audience. The audience could take the film as a documentary and think everything in the film would be facts about North Korea, as in reality, they most likely wouldn’t be. Effects models of audience theory is giving influences towards the audience which would mainly be negative. As the message of the text would be so strong some audience would be incapable in order to prevent the influence. This is also connected with the Bobo doll experiment where children are placed in a room with an adult and a Bobo doll, the adult would attack the Bobo doll and make the child watch, shortly after, they place the child into the room alone with the Bobo doll and see how the child interacts with the doll. Most children will aggressively attack the doll under the influence of the adult from watching them to begin with. This comprehensively connotes with the effect model of audience theory. Censoring the film was a good thing so the audience wouldn’t be influenced under the text with all the racist comments and remarks.
There’s a big argument from people being against censorship and people being with censorship. Censorship is blocking content so audiences would be protected from the inappropriate content shown within text. Censorship is also used as keeping information away from another individual so censorship covers all areas from information to media. This can be seen as a good thing as it would protect audiences under the influence of the film and also protecting children from explicit content from the text. This also protects audiences so they’re not influenced into committing any crimes, speaking too inappropriately or causing actions are are in itself inappropriate. Keeping personal information away from another individual would also be classed as censorship and people have a right of privacy as this is persona information and you’d have a choice whether for someone to be exposed to the information. Whereas if the government were to keep information away to the public, that’s a bad thing because public shouldn’t feel so controlled and they should be able to choose what they feel is appropriate to see. Whereas keeping personal information censored is chosen to be exposed from the host.
Censorship can also be a bad thing within media as it doesn’t let the screenwriter or the director to tell the full story and most of the content would be blocked or tinkered. It wouldn’t let their creativity flow as this would give them restrictions.
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