Why do magazines need to be classified by the OFLC and books don't? I'm puzzled by how people can eat shit in De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom (available in all "good" bookstores) but Penthouse can't go on sale with an explanation of how to give good head to a woman. I don't think this is a question for me, it's one for the government. I wonder about it myself. It doesn't make sense. Ever since the notorious "dog collar" cover of People magazine in 1992, sex-related magazines have had to be submitted to the OFLC before they've been allowed to go on sale. Books don't have to be submitted. This means it's been easy for the government to tighten restrictions on the content of sex-related magazines over the past decade. It would be much harder for them to do the same for books. I think, also, there would be much more of an outcry if the government started banning books. There was a huge fuss in South Australia in 2001 when the police seized Robert Mapplethorpe's Pictures from a bookstore. How does the OFLC define offensive and what reasonable community standards are - how often do these terms and guidelines get reviewed? I'll give you the definition from Guidelines for the Classification of Publications, September 1999. "Offensive: Material which causes outrage or extreme disgust. The Guidelines distinguish between material which may offend some sections of the adult community, and material which offends against generally accepted standards, and is therefore likely to offend most people." I'm not sure how they decide what "generally accepted standards" or even "reasonable community standards" are. I would imagine that's a very difficult thing to judge. I wouldn't like to have to guess at it. My friends tend to be fairly open-minded, so I probably have a distorted view of what "generally accepted standards" are. The guidelines get reviewed every few years (before the 1999 guidelines, the previous set of guidelines was drawn up in 1992). When they're reviewed, there's a call for submissions from the public. Last time there were 147 submissions, a lot of them from religious groups or from people who blamed porn for all of society's problems. This was used as justification for bringing in tighter restrictions. Obviously this system is flawed. The average person isn't going to make a submission to the government - even if they do enjoy reading Penthouse. The internet is something that has reshaped our ability to access information and porn, despite the government's efforts. Is it necessary then to change publication laws or can it be expected that kids today will go first to the internet for real images of real cunts rather than airbrushed ones in magazines (Helen's efforts to publish photos of healthy, as opposed to doctored or 'healed', cunts were censored by the OFLC)? Even though today's teenagers will probably get most of their sexual knowledge from the internet, the government has a responsibility for the sexual content it can control - in magazines and X-rated videos. There's no excuse for banning realistic images of vaginas. In your opinion does the OFLC act as a political tool for the government of the day rather than a reflection of the contemporary population's views? How could this be improved? A lot of people want to blame John Howard for the OFLC's decisions, but I don't know whether things would be very different under a Labor government. There are very strong conservative forces in both major parties at the moment, as well as some vocal conservative independents, and that's why a lot of censorship rulings don't reflect the contemporary population's views. To me, the solution is to get an independent organisation to do some proper community consultation and come up with a new set of guidelines that would, I would hope, be less restrictive than the current ones. If we could get rid of the ban on fetishes in X-rated videos, the ban on genital detail (ie, inner labia) in sex magazines and a few other things like that, then no matter how conservative the people appointed to the OFLC board are (and John Howard does get a say on that), they couldn't do too much harm.
Yes. I probably will offend some readers/supporters. But my aim in writing the book was to stir up some informed debate on the issue, not to make friends. I also hope some people who read The Picture might able to get through my book. and b) considering porn mags and flicks have such an active support base in Australia (much more, I would argue, than art house cinema and Mapplethorpe fans) why aren't the supporters more active and vocal? Why not target them for their apathy (p226) instead of the civil libertarians for their selective activism (p220)? Can art and porn work together rather than be played off against each other? I don't think they're being played off against each other. My point was that the people who write to papers, voicing the principle that "adults should be able to read and see what they like", should support that principle a little more broadly than just arthouse films. But yes, I'd like to see people who read porn mags and watch porn films write to papers more often too. (Who knows? Maybe there's a crossover.) You convincingly call at the end of your book for a more sex-positive look at education materials, women-written/focussed erotica etc - is it possible under the current regime - both OFLC and government? I think it is, but there needs to be more discussion of censorship in the mainstream media. At the moment, the decisions made by the OFLC from week to week on magazines and X-rated videos get no publicity. Publishers and X-rated video distributors just accept these decisions and make the changes they're told to. The only time the public gets to have a say is when there's a call for submissions for new guidelines every few years. We need more vocal people in the community who will write to their local politician pointing out how ridiculous the censorship situation is, and we need more politicians who aren't afraid to stand up and say something on the issue. The situation in terms of censorship and porn restriction especially "fetishes" is so obviously ridiculous - what's the best thing each of us can do to change this? We should be following the example of moral conservative groups. They know they can set "current community standards" by writing a few letters to politicians, because politicians regard one letter as representing up to 1500 people. They try to make politicians feel bad about supporting porn - we need to make politicians feel equally bad about restricting people's sexual freedom. Snatched is published by Vintage/Random House
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While the media created a hoopla over the recent banning
of Kent Park and the seizing of Robert Mapplethorpe's
Pictures, the coalition government and the Office of Film
and Literature Classification (OFLC) have been stealthily
encroaching on our rights to view material we choose in the
privacy of our own home. As her book Snatched: Sex and
Censorship in Australia hit the shelves, former Australian
Women's Forum editor Helen Vnuk talked to Geoff Parkes
about the hypocrisy and absurdity of Australia's censorious
regime.
One of the most startling chapters for me was
your look at the difference between how porn and
art-house film and literature are treated and you
call to task supporters of the latter who don't
come out in support of the former. My two part
question is a) don't you think these
people/censorship activists will be the main
readers/supporters of your book as opposed to
people who read magazines like The Picture,
therefore you may well offend those already on
the side of progressive change?
