This week’s focus was censorship, effects, and moral
panics. According to Oxford Dictionary moral panic is defined as an instance of
public anxiety or alarm in response to a problem regarded as threatening the
moral standards of society. The key readings for this week were Long and Wall’s
chapter on ‘producing audiences: what do media do to people?’ Bignell’s ‘An Introduction to Television
Studies’ and Nelmes’ ‘An Introduction to Film Studies, 2nd Edition’.
Bignell explores Television Studies and does so through
applying it to broadcasting in Britain and explaining the two ways in which the
two government bodies monitor what we watch. ‘The most important of these
bodies are the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and the Broadcasting
Standards Commission (BSC)’ (Bignell, 2004), further explaining how these
bodies put the ‘watershed’ in place. This means ‘programmes that could be
offensive or disturbing to children will not be broadcasted’ (Bignell, 2004), a
great idea one which may not work as it isn’t guaranteed that children won’t be
part of the audience members after that time. Furthermore, he also touches up
on the impact political economy has on censorship by saying ‘ television
companies are reluctant to bring themselves into confrontation with the
government’ (Bignell, 2004), suggesting that even if they wanted to broadcast
something which in their eyes doesn’t harm a viewer, they wouldn’t go against
the governments regulations for many reasons, such as power.
Similarly, Nelmes looks at the main approaches to film
studies and does this through looking at the relationship between text and
context and further links this to issues of the representation of gender and
sexuality within television. He furthermore, explores the ‘legality of
censorship in the UK’ and ‘that a charge of obscenity, or any of the following
(sex, drugs, violence), will likely result in cuts’. (Nelmes, 1999). This shows
similarly to Bignell’s points how important it is to the government to protect
the innocence of children, at least through the consumption of television. He further compares the censorship then and
now; his points are also supported in Long and Wall’s chapter. ‘We need to
think about the nature of audiences as audiences, the literalness and quality
of being ‘in the act’ of consuming media products’. (Long, and Wall, 2012) This
suggests that even if there is censorship, this might not be effective as now;
especially with the advent of the digital age audience members have access of
media and other content through other means.
It would be interesting to explore how other countries
operate in terms of censorship and viewing with the aim of seeing how these are
put in place for children’s well being.
References:
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