Censors and sensibility

'Well, how did the Marquis de Sade get sadistic in the first place? He lived when there was no TV or radio or film, only pictures in books'

The great debate has raged for years now. Do screen images promote violence? Does television and film cruelty desensitise people and make them not only tolerate pornography and violence but degrade their own personal life? In other words, when the film censor goes home after a hard day at the office, does he beat his wife, shoot the cat and then go out for an evening's raping and pillaging?

"Not on the whole," says Professor Ivor Ketcham, lecturer in media misbehaviour at Milton Keynes University. "I have made a long-term study of film censors in a dozen developed countries, and none of them has shown signs of undue tendencies towards violence, though they tend to drink quite a lot, and also to smoke like Humphrey Bogart.

"But then you are making the common mistake that people make about film censors – ie, that all they ever see is sex and violence. They are just as likely to see films with car chases in. Or American teenage films with teenage sex jokes. Or light romantic comedies with Hugh Grant. Or serious Spanish explorations of mother-fixation.

"The filmed behaviour of drivers in American crime films is just as bad as any other kind of violence, so you might just as well ask whether film censors are influenced by car chases and whether film censors therefore tend to drive more recklessly and dangerously than other adults!"

All right. I will ask that. Do film censors tend to drive more dangerously than other people? Do car chase films tend to deprave?

"No," says Professor Ivor Ketcham, who is lecturer in media misbehaviour at Milton Keynes, has always wanted his own television series and has got it at last. "Our studies show that, if anything, film censors tend to drive more carefully than the average, going to work and back."

Why does he think that is?

"Wouldn't you drive carefully if you had a couple of raunchy Italian films to look forward to at work the next day?" winks Professor Ketcham.

Was that a joke?

"That's another thing we've discovered," says Professor Ketcham. "The sense of humour of film censors tends to get lowered after a while, so that you might get a film censor laughing at an Adam Sandler film, after he had failed to laugh at the previous five or six of them, just as in the old days a film censor might find himself laughing at Norman Wisdom after 20 years' straight-faced exposure.

"On the other hand, I have discovered one or two film censors who had developed a secret desire to attack Adam Sandler and commit extreme forms of violence on him. So there you have an example of brutal behaviour wish-patterns being caused by lightweight comedy! The odd thing is that we always ask if television and films will promote violent behaviour. But there are many films that are soppy and soft-centred. Yet we never ask if films promote sentimental and saccharine behaviour!"

Maybe that's because we don't think that would do any damage.

"And maybe we are wrong to think so! Maybe a film that encourages a mother to mollycoddle her child or sentimentalise her partner is just as culpable as one that encourages violence!"

Hmmm...

"And another thing. Has anyone yet investigated the effect of pre-screen violence on people?"

I'm sorry, pre-screen violence?

"There is nobody now alive who can remember a time without television and films, yet there were such times. As recently as the 1920s and 1930s, radio was more powerful than any visual media. Radio was powerful enough to cause widespread panic with Orson Welles's War of the Worlds. Yet no one has ever asked, 'In a pre-television world, did radio violence promote real-life violence?'"

It doesn't seem likely, does it?

"We're not sure," says Ivor Ketcham. "At the moment we are doing studies on families who have never had television, only radio, to find out if their behaviour patterns are significantly different."

But how could radio listening make anyone sadistic?

"Well, then, how did the Marquis de Sade get sadistic in the first place? He lived at a time when there was no television or radio or films, only pictures in books. What were the factors that made him a danger to society?"

Well? What were they?

"Ah!" smiles Ivor Ketcham. "To find out, you must wait for my series!"

'Depraved and Corrupted? Susceptible Censors' comes to our screens in May