Hate Crime Banned: A Response From The BBFC (Of Sorts)

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Here at Haddonfield we are nothing if not fair and felt that the BBFC deserved a opportunity to respond to my article. I emailed the press liason, including the link, and also telephoned to make sure they knew it was there…

Here is the body of the email and the response I received:

I would love you to read my response to the BBFC decision to ban Hate Crime in the UK
Can I invite you to respond to the points raised in my article as I would love to publish you response.

http://www.haddonfieldhorror.com/2015/03/censoring-censors-why-hate-crime-must.html

Thank you for your email and the link to your article. As you state in your article, the BBFC reasoning for refusing a classification to the VoD submission of HATE CRIME is available on our website: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/hate-crime-vod. To classify the work would be inconsistent with BBFC Guidelines and the BBFC’s sexual and sadistic violence policy(http://www.bbfc.co.uk/about-bbfc/media-centre/bbfc-adjust-sexual-and-sadistic-violence-policy-take-account-key-areas)

Rather dissatisfied with this response I sent the following:

Thank you (name withheld) and I have fully read the reasoning. However, I prove in my article the BBFC ruling does not make any sense. Please confirm that you really want me to place in an article that having read my comments you are just falling back on your original (unoriginal?) Statement without further comment

I have to confess I am a little disappointed but not entirely surprised.

I await your response with much interest


To be fair to the poor and possibly beleaguered employee who had the job of responding to my email they may have been rather limited as to their ability to respond. Anyone who has complained to any of the large media companies about output will appreciate the typically bipartisan response you receive. But will also appreciate how damned annoying and dismissive this response always comes over as. The points I’ve raised have not even been acknowledged and given that I have challenged the BBFC over their incorrect application of their own guidelines, their response is even more unsatisfactory. The BBFC have incorrectly applied guidelines and have totally and spectacularly missed the point and ignored the contextualisation contained within Hate Crime.
Once again the BBFC show how breath takingly out of touch they are with public opinion and continue lay down the law from their ivory towers. Are we really heading back to the days of James “dinosaur” Ferman because if we are I’m emigrating, now!
I will,of course, update this article if I do get a further response but I feel a stony silence falling on this issue. Me? oh I’ve only just started!

You can read my original article about the ban here , news release of the Ban and full statement from the BBFC here and Lisa Fremont’s review of Hate Crime here

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