Page 3430 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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The commission's report, which was tabled last week, still does not recommend that the ACT have its own classification but recommends that we should still come under the Commonwealth, and I think that is very sad. I hope the Commonwealth Government will take up what Mr Duffy says and give us that jurisdiction. I am also glad to say that it is recommended in the report that clothing should be classifiable and should be included in the definition of "publications and advertisements" - something that I believe this ACT Government put up.
Mr Collaery: Not this Government, the former Government.
MS MAHER: Yes, the Alliance Government; and Mr Collaery did a lot of work on it. I for one would like to see the culling of slasher films, found in the R-rated classification. These films invariably portray women as victims. The classification guidelines currently state:
Depictions of sexual violence are acceptable only to the extent that they are necessary to the narrative and not exploitative.
I take the view that no depiction of sexual violence is acceptable. I do not see the need for the highly realistic and explicit violence that is shown in R classification films. Surely continuity of the narrative can be achieved if such matters are alluded to, although personally I dislike the thought of the subject matter, even in a modified form.
I submit that there is too much violence in films and videos. In my opinion, it is about time the Commonwealth either addressed the issue or allowed individual jurisdictions to modify the publications themselves. A casual glance at the weekend press back in August reveals that others share the views that artistic freedom must be weighed against the growing revulsion and concern of ordinary citizens at the excesses portrayed in various forms of publications.
I would like to mention some of the articles published that weekend. In the Weekend Australian Phillip Adams, in an article headed "Make 'Em Puke: It's a Sick World", struggles to find the artistic merit in a reported R-rated film that "involved a line about shoving a pistol in a woman's vagina so as to blow her brains out ...". He quotes from an account given by the producer of the film that suggests that the fantasy perpetrator is "out there, created by American culture", which is sad, if that is where we are going.
Nancy Shulins, in the Canberra Times of Saturday, 11 August, in an article "Writers Take Revenge on Violent Men", notes the emergence of books and films where the main characters are women inflicting revenge on men as a response to female victimisation. The author quotes a commentator as saying that the male-dominated slasher movies are "a crude
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