{"id":2280,"date":"2008-08-07T04:57:01","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T03:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2014-11-21T13:29:51","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T13:29:51","slug":"why-the-dark-knight-should-not-be-a-15-certificate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2008\/08\/07\/why-the-dark-knight-should-not-be-a-15-certificate\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Dark Knight should not be a 15 certificate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week in The Daily Mail<\/a> columnist Alison Pearson<\/a> helped kick off a silly bout of hysteria with a column about The Dark Knight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nothing in this new Batman is in jest. Not even the Joker. This film is doing serious business\u00a0 –\u00a0 and, make no mistake, its business is violence.<\/p>\n

I saw The Dark Knight on Monday; or at least I saw the bits that I could bear to watch from behind my giant Diet Coke.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fair enough. If you find the film hard to watch, then that is entirely how you experienced it.<\/p>\n

It is dark, oppressive and filmed in a realistic style, especially for a comic book movie. Plus points as far as I’m concerned, and maybe that’s also true for the record-breaking audiences<\/a> and large selection of critics<\/a> who also loved it.<\/p>\n

However, the picture she painted was not exactly accurate.<\/p>\n

Let’s examine the bits she found so repellent:<\/p>\n

Within the first five minutes, the body count was in double figures\u00a0 –\u00a0 and that was before a detonator was shoved down the throat of a dying bank manager.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, that’s true but she neglects to mention that it doesn’t actually go off<\/em>,\u00a0 which is handy if you want to portray the opening sequence as some kind of exploding head filled monstrosity.<\/p>\n

But not good if you want to be precise about what actually happens on-screen.<\/p>\n

She goes on:<\/p>\n

Soon afterwards, the Joker, played with diabolical brilliance by the late Heath Ledger, explained how he got that permanent blood-red clown’s grin.<\/p>\n

His father had been attacking his mother’s face with a knife when he caught his young son watching with a serious expression.<\/p>\n

Dad slashed the boy’s cheeks to make sure that the kid would never look down-in-the-mouth again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as I could see and hear this wasn’t on-screen violence – it was a character talking.<\/p>\n

Plus, if you pay attention you will notice that throughout the film the Joker gives different stories about how he got the scars, suggesting he is lying or screwing with people’s heads.\u00a0 Creepy? Yes. Violent? No.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then she brings up the scene in which the Joker kills a gangster with a pencil:<\/p>\n

Consider this. If Batman had climbed out of bed and walked across the room to find his rubber boxers, thus showing his Batbum, the film would have been rated a 15\u00a0 –\u00a0 nudity being deemed far more shocking than cutting people’s throats, obviously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Personally, I would be far happier for my children to glimpse Batman’s buttocks than to see a pencil skewered into a man’s eye, but what do I know?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whilst I agree that sex is seen by censors as more taboo than violence (especially in the US) the problem with her point is that at no point do we see a pencil going in to an eye.<\/p>\n

In fact, we don’t see any contact between face and pencil. Not only does it happen so quickly, but the camera cuts away so that even if you slowed it down I don’t think you would even see any actual gore in the frame.<\/p>\n

The violence is implied, not shown. It certainly gives the audience a jolt but it is nothing like the grisly scene being painted here.<\/p>\n

All of this might sound like standard Fleet Street outrage but the really troubling bit comes when a connection is made to the recent death of a teenager in London:<\/p>\n

The day I went to see the film, I happened to drive past the spot where 16-year-old Ben Kinsella was stabbed 11 times. He was the 21st teenager to die of knife wounds in London this year.<\/p>\n

His killers may have thought they were some kind of cartoon masters of the universe, meting out a perverse justice, but the scruffy street corner with its altar of rotting bouquets tells a different story.<\/p>\n

No stirring music bestowed a thrilling poetic grandeur on Ben’s last seconds. No giant shadow of a cape flitted across the sky. Nobody could save him. Especially not this Batman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What exactly is the point here? That the Joker’s taste for knives will lead to more deaths? The new Batman (a fictional <\/em>character let’s remember) can’t save vulnerable children?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What on earth is she actually saying with this ill-advised detour into a much more serious issue?<\/p>\n

That seemed to be the end of that, but it now appears that a snowball of indignation from a Daily Mail columnist is threatening to become an avalanche of idiocy.<\/p>\n

Now, a cluster of clueless MPs and right wing commentators have all recently turned their sights on the film<\/a> and the BBFC<\/a> for awarding it a 12A certificate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They seem to be rather upset that the film didn’t get than a 15 certificate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar with the film ratings system in the UK<\/a>, each film is given one the following ratings before it can be shown in UK cinemas or sold\/rented as a DVD:<\/p>\n