F**k The Watershed: Brass Eye Special to be reshown

[Santa's Boyfriend]

Does anyone remember "Empire of the Censors", a fantastic 2-part documentary on the complete history of British film censorship?  It was presented by Richard E Grant, and covered everything from the invention of cinema right through to the bulger killing and Natural Born Killers (which was then up to date) - and even went as far as predicting the problems of censorship and classification we have now regarding broadband internet access. (although it didn't predict P2P or Rotten.com by name...)

I used to have a dodgy VHS copy of it, until the tape snapped one day.  I'd love to get those again, they were endlessly fascinating, and brilliantly presented arguments both for and against film censorship.

[phes]

what concerns me most is that so many people seem to have nothing better to do on a saturday night. Go out, you will see all this controvisy and more. The fact that they were screened on the television is neither here nor there........ so fucking what.

[weekender]

what concerns me most is that so many people seem to have nothing better to do on a saturday night. Go out, you will see all this controvisy and more. The fact that they were screened on the television is neither here nor there........ so fucking what.

Thanks for your valuable insight there, phes.

Personally, I think the issue of censorship - and the fact that it affects what people are and aren't allowed - to watch, is very interesting.  For me personally, I'd rather watch such a programme than go out and watch a load of blokes have a fight on the streets of Birmingham.

As for being neither here nor there, I think it's fascinating to watch how the attitudes of society change over time.  It seems that swearing is now commonly acceptable, however as someone mentioned earlier when someone uttered the word 'fuck' on the BBC, there were calls for a hanging.

How would you like it if you weren't allowed to post what you just did because it wasn't allowed by someone?  The fact that you can means you live in a rather free society, something which wasn't always the case.  Television is just one area in which society can be seen to have progressed.

[phes]

Bravo Weekender. I do however understand the importance of a democracy and was simply expressing my wish to view it in action from outside the confines of my sitting room. I can understand your wish not to be involved in the mess that i imagine Birmingham on a saturday night to be.

[weekender]

I do however understand the importance of a democracy and was simply expressing my wish to view it in action from outside the confines of my sitting room.

Nice response - however a point I wish to make is that I assume that you watch television at some point, even if it's not necessarily on a Saturday night?  Well, I suggest that maybe the quality and content of what you can watch is in some way affected by the acts of the censors.  It's a slightly tenuous link I know, and I'm probably not expressing it very well, but I think that the fact that there have been people out there pushing the boundaries has made - and makes - for very good television.  I would be very surprised if something like Ant and Dec's SM:TV - which I thought was great on occasion - would have been allowed to be shown on Saturday mornings in the 1960s.  It's the development of society in those sort of terms that I find interesting, and I therefore think that this development has a knock-on effect to all television programmes to some extent, hence I shall watch the programme with interest.

The fact that you don't necessarily want to watch programmes about the limits of television on a Saturday night is fine, as you say - we're in a democracy.  However, I think that some of the best television programmes have come about of people challenging the accepted norms.  I also think that the fact that some people - and I'm not aiming this at you personally, it's more of a trend that I see happening - aren't bothering to discuss and complain about the standards of what's on TV generally at the moment is a shame.

I can understand your wish not to be involved in the mess that i imagine Birmingham on a saturday night to be.

Quite.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I think it was Sam Kinnison that Lamarr championed on Politically Correct Night. You know, the way comedians do. Donna MacPhail (sarcastically) championed Margaret Thatcher while dressed as a yuppy.

And Roland Rivron narrated it.

[phes]

I do understand your point, and yes you are expressing yourself jus fine. Rather eloquently even. jus letting off steam at the wrong point and in the wrong direction. Good to get some decent conversation though. I'm new to this computer lark and this this seems like a pretty decent place to be. Cheers, phes.

[weekender]

jus letting off steam at the wrong point and in the wrong direction. Good to get some decent conversation though. I'm new to this computer lark and this this seems like a pretty decent place to be. Cheers, phes.

May I politely suggest that the Comedy forum is the place for nice discussion about comedy, and if you want to let off steam then try the General Discussion forum (where you can also get good discussion about things in general on occasion)?

Yeah, it is a nice place to be really, welcome.

[TJ]

I would be very surprised if something like Ant and Dec's SM:TV - which I thought was great on occasion - would have been allowed to be shown on Saturday mornings in the 1960s.

Perhaps not, but on the other hand they did have "Zokko!", which frankly is as close to drip-feeding hallucinogens to viewers as television has ever got. The programme really does defy description - it's a manic patchwork of psychedelic imagery with pop music over the top. And on BBC1 too.

[weekender]

"Zokko!"

Sounds great.  Edit: You've seen it then?  Is it knocking about anywhere?

On a similar vein, didn't another mr. lizard mention a BBC drama from the 1970s which basically involved a ghost going around and raping young women?  I can't remember the details.

[theantileague]

Anyone any idea when this is to be shown?

[23 Daves]

I seem to remember (possibly wrongly) that "Minipops" had a couple of minor Top 40 hits back in their day (which probably would have been minor top ten hits in the present climate) and also pulled in fairly respectable audiences.

I was too young at the time to remember if there was any uproar or not, but I'd be interested to have transcripts of the discussions at Channel 4 that lead to it being cancelled.

[Mob Bunkhouse]

I can only recall the legend of Minipops really getting legs after the (posthumous) publication of Philip Larkin's letters. He recommends the show to Kingsley Amis and questions whether the makers are aware of the use made of the show by drunken  old misanthropes like him.

I can't remember there being any public fuss at the time. Not even of the 'media-studies  post-grad. spouting jargon on Right to Reply'  kind.

I suspect  this is all projected retrospectively onto an era when paediatricians' windows were safe.

[phes]

I suspect  this is all projected retrospectively onto an era when paediatricians' windows were safe.

I come from Southsea (nr Leigh Park,Paulsgrove etc).
If there were such an era, it was doubtlessly a dangerous time for homeopaths, niggards and Witchettys.

[thatmuch]

I can only recall the legend of Minipops really getting legs after the (posthumous) publication of Philip Larkin's letters. He recommends the show to Kingsley Amis and questions whether the makers are aware of the use made of the show by drunken  old misanthropes like him.

I can't remember there being any public fuss at the time. Not even of the 'media-studies  post-grad. spouting jargon on Right to Reply'  kind.

I suspect  this is all projected retrospectively onto an era when paediatricians' windows were safe.

I am old, and can therefore attest that the programme did create a medium scale controversy at the time, a sort of letters to the paper type level. I saw it and can can honestly say that I was disturbed by it. Back then there were plenty of people to say 'it's harmless, just kids having fun', which you wouldn't hear now.

[kaprisky]

There's a pretty good archived thread from 1997 on Google Groups about all this. Do a search for 'red triangle' - it should be the first one on the list (I won't post the link because it'll make this page go ridiculously wide).

Must be this then...

THAT LIST OF DODGY CHANNEL 4 "RED TRIANGLE" FILMS IN FULL (MAYBE):

19/09/86 Themroc (1972 - "Invented Language")
03/10/86 Pastoral Hide-and-See (1974 - Japanese)
10/10/86 Throw Away Your Books; Let's Go Into the Streets (1971 -
Japanese, TV Version)
17/10/86 Identification of a Woman (1982 - Italian/French)
24/10/86 Pixote (1981 - Brazilian)
31/10/86 The Clinic (1982 - Australian)
14/11/86 Montenegro, or: Pigs and Pearls (1981 - Swedeish/British, with a
Yugoslavian director!)
28/11/86 No Mercy, No Future (1981 -  West German)
10/01/87 Out of the Blue (1980 - American)
17/01/87 The Wall (1983 - Turkish)

I didn't watch any of the Red Triangle stuff at the time, too young you see, but reading all these recollections of it makes me feel that I was missing out on something special, or daring at least, for the time. This was further enhanced by watching the 1980s segment of Sex on TV, the 3-part series shown on C4 in 2002, and due to be repeated again on Thursday 29th May at 10pm.
The Red Triangle was mentioned, and featured the poster from Themroc and a rather memorable clip from Montenegro...
As far as Sebastiane is concerned, I found a book about Channel 4's early years in the college library a few years ago and a segment in it claimed that the film was shown as part of a Jarman season along with The Tempest and Jubilee, introduced by some highbrow critic or other to give the whole thing some credibility. Anyway, as everyone knows, one particular scene was censored, only for it to appear uncensored in the documentary 'Sex and the Censors' from the Banned season in 1991 (this also features in Sex on TV, ep 2).
Well apparently the DVD release is the same as the C4 version but the FilmFour version, shown in 2001, is complete, in all its fleshy glory.

[TJ]

I'm sure they've missed some out there. I suppose, though, that it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some films may not have been billed as 'Red Triangle' efforts, but went out with the angular adnornment added at the last minute. Maybe as a handy way of staving off (or at least partly allaying) developing tabloid outrages?

[alan strang]

Anyway, as everyone knows, one particular scene was censored, only for it to appear uncensored in the documentary 'Sex and the Censors' from the Banned season in 1991

The half-erect centurian's cock? Wasn't this a case of accidental censorship - i.e. the cropping of the picture for TV ended up emasculating it?

I seem to recall a short documentary before Jubilee went out which mentioned that one of the actors had gone on to deny ever having appeared in it.

I originally watched Jubilee with my mother. It remains one of her favourite films of all time.

[Bert Thung]

It was Ian Charleson that denied being in Jubilee.  He later appeared as the god-fearing Eric Liddel in Chariots of Fire, and died of Aids in 1990.

[TJ]

I seem to recall a short documentary before Jubilee went out which mentioned that one of the actors had gone on to deny ever having appeared in it.

Off at a bit of a tangent, as it's never been shown on TV, but the actor (Ray Edwards?) who played the postman in Wes Craven's "Last House On The Left" apparently mumbled "I don't care to talk about it" and put the phone down when a Craven biographer attempted to interview him...

[Rats]

I remember a derek jarman season on about 10 year ago, I watched most of the films, that one with adam ant in and the tempest.

[kaprisky]

The half-erect centurian's cock? Wasn't this a case of accidental censorship - i.e. the cropping of the picture for TV ended up emasculating it?

Half-erect? Well let's just say that it wasn't in the Mull of Kintyre position!
Derek Jarman appeared on Sex and The Censors apparently to talk about the scene when it was transmitted originally. Now the irony is that while Jarman is talking in this screening room, the scene in question is projected in the background, in its original form. This sequence is repeated in the 1980s episode of Sex on TV (should be on Thursday 6th May), which covers Dennis Potter dramas all the way through to the Lover's Guide videos.

The 'uncropped' version of Sebastiane was broadcast on FilmFour. I gather that one of the few taboos left on terrestrial TV is probably erections. When the Sex and the Censors extract was screened, it was accidental. When it was screened on Sex on TV, the narrator explained that they couldn't show it and promptly blurred it.

Note also the version of WR: Mysteries of the Organism from the Banned season, the Ai No Corrida 'oral' from a documentary on the 'Censored' Weekend (Channel 4, 1999), The Idiots, and last year's broadcasts of A ma soeur and The Piano Teacher, which were both blurred. The only half-erection I can think of being shown is from the film 'Angels and Insects', where Douglas Henshall gets a little 'excited'.

[Barney Sloane]

The 'uncropped' version of Sebastiane was broadcast on FilmFour. I gather that one of the few taboos left on terrestrial TV is probably erections. When the Sex and the Censors extract was screened, it was accidental. When it was screened on Sex on TV, the narrator explained that they couldn't show it and promptly blurred it.

Note also the version of WR: Mysteries of the Organism from the Banned season, the Ai No Corrida 'oral' from a documentary on the 'Censored' Weekend (Channel 4, 1999), The Idiots, and last year's broadcasts of A ma soeur and The Piano Teacher, which were both blurred. The only half-erection I can think of being shown is from the film 'Angels and Insects', where Douglas Henshall gets a little 'excited'.

They definitely showed the uncut version of The Idiots by mistake on Film Four once, I still have the tape somewhere.  I'm pretty sure they showed "Intimacy" uncut as well.

[benthalo]

I seem to remember the Jarman clip turning up on a mid-evening Right To Reply during the season. Those were genuinely strange programmes - Rory McGrath quizzing John Willis on why he showed the wrong versions of films on what seemed a weekly basis. R2R was remarkably liberated, such as the occasion where they discussed the Gibraltar assassination film which had been banned for years and then screened privately in an edited form. C4 naturally showed the cut version in error, ignorant of the longer version, and so made up for this by showing footage of someone being shot in the face followed by a minute of absolute panic. All this at 6pm on a Saturday night, because they cocked it up post-midnight. You don't get that with C4 anymore.

Alternatively, there was the studio discussion about Life Of Brian where a vicar railed against the channel's Head Of Religious Programming about how it clearly depicted Christ and was making a mockery of the faith. His response: "Nah", and a withering shrug.

[kaprisky]

I think that 'The Idiots' was shown by FilmFour in its 'pixellated' form for the first few broadcasts until they consulted one of the broadcasting regulators. They must have got the all-clear because they claim to show it completely uncut now and haven't encountered any problems, hence your uncut copy. Channel 4 still censor it though.

By the way did it have a Kermode intro with it?

Although I view Channel 4 nowadays as more of a lifestyle channel than a cutting-edge alternative, they are scheduling 'Cruising' this Monday, a film which had a lot of censorship problems.

[alan strang]

By the way did it have a Kermode intro with it?

"I'm standing in front of an erect penis. A pretty ordinary phallus, with a glans, two testicles, some pubic hair and a few prominent veins.

But in 1998 this one hard-on served as the centrepiece to one of the most controversial and breathtaking movies ever made..."

[elderford]

I have a really dim memory of C4's Red Triangle films being a self contained season as opposed to just a technique of warning channel hoppers what was one.

A small red triangle was displayed in the top corner of the screen throughout transmission.

[Barney Sloane]

I think that 'The Idiots' was shown by FilmFour in its 'pixellated' form for the first few broadcasts until they consulted one of the broadcasting regulators. They must have got the all-clear because they claim to show it completely uncut now and haven't encountered any problems, hence your uncut copy. Channel 4 still censor it though.

By the way did it have a Kermode intro with it?

Curses, I thought I had something unique, like my copy of the Abyss which Channel 4 mistakenly broadcast with the rat-drowning scene intact!  I *think* Kermode is on the beginning, I'll check.

[Jonny Jonny Butter Fiend]

Anyone have any idea when this is meant to be on???? My friend missed the Brass Eye special first time round(and I've had my copy half inched), seeing as though I don't tend to check the TV listings, any date for this one???

[benthalo]

I think the original poster might be barking up the wrong tree, as I suspect BES will only appear in clip forms. I'd expect to see it on a Bank Holiday over the Summer, possibly late August.