William Young Media Studies

This Is England

Certificate: 18

The work was passed with no cuts made.

When first released back in 2007, the film was given an 18 rating, due to the fact that it contained very strong racist violence, as well as aggressive uses of very strong language. The use of the word 'c***’ was exacerbated by its combination with the highly offensive racist terms ‘w*g’, 'P**i', 'n****r' and 'c**n'.

The question of whether the work could be contained at the 15 category was carefully considered, given the potential appeal and relevance to a younger audience. A number of scenes and elements placed the work on the 15/18 borderline:

• The scene in which Combo verbally and physically threatens an Asian shop keeper whose shop he and his gang have just robbed and defiled. He calls the shop keeper a 'Paki cunt' and violently swings a machete into the shop keeper’s face deliberately scaring him. The threat is palpable and realistic, even though no blood is shed.

• The representation of racist ideology as attractive to the child character Sean, and the artful ambiguous presentation of his developing world view and the impact of racist views upon this.

• Sight of Combo threatening some children, racially abusing them and stroking a serrated knife along their cheeks.

The strongest scene however, which took the work to 18, was towards the end of the film when a vulnerable character, Milky, is subjected to a brutal and realistic racist attack. The attack shows Sean’s idol, Combo, start to punch and pummel his mixed race friend Milky’s face, kicking and stamping on it. Some of this is shown from Milky's perspective and has a particularly visceral edge, despite the lack of blood or gory detail. It is realistic, intense and shocking with sudden tension as the scene changes from a drinking and smoking session to a verbal diatribe and possibly lethal beating.

A Clockwork Orange

Certificate: X (1971), 18 (1999)

This work was passed with no cuts made.

When originally released in 1971, the film was given an ‘X’ rating, the equivalent of an ‘18’ nowadays. It was released as an 18 so that it could be released without any cuts made to the film. At the time, the BBFC's Secretary, Stephen Murphy, defended the film by stating that "Disturbed though we were by the first half of the film, which is basically a statement of some of the problems of violence, we were, nonetheless, satisfied by the end of the film that it could not be accused of exploitation: quite the contrary, it is a valuable contribution to the whole debate about violence".

William Young Media Studies

In 1973 the film was banned from circulation within the United Kingdom due to rumours of copycat violence from the film, even though it was given an 18 rating. That ban was lifted after the death of the director, Stanley Kubrick, in 1999, still without any cuts made.