Sexually Explicit Materials & the X18+ Category

Timelines: All, Australia Categories: 1980s, Australia, Classification, Classification event, Committee and report, Country, Decade, Event, Film, Government, Media, National (of national significance), New category

Date: 1983

Australia

When the Minister for Customs Donald Chipp introduced the film classification system to Australia in 1971, this facilitated a more liberal approach to media censorship and regulation. The system required amendment when VHS video technology became available in the late 1970s, as the new medium offered an easy and cheap way to make, copy and distribute hard-core sexually explicit material, sexploitation, and other content the Film Censorship Board had previously censored. A new category was required to regulate the emerging bootleg VHS industry for content deemed above R, whilst keeping out more problematic content (Stockbridge, 1996, p128). The X18+ category was introduced by federal Attorney-General Gareth Evans from the Australian Labor Party under the Classification of Publications Ordinance, first in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) (hereafter the Ordinance). Whereas censorship previously regulated film through importation, classification was updated to regulate films at the point of sale, and content determined X18+ would only to be available in authorised areas of video shops to adults over eighteen (JSCVM Vol. 1, 1988, p73). This category placed restrictions on “child porn, bestiality, detailed and gratuitous depictions of acts of considerable violence or cruelty” (Stockbridge, 1996, p128).

The Ordinance was first intended as model legislation for other Australian states, however, soon after its introduction this legislation proved highly controversial and received several amendments in Parliament while under consideration (Stockbridge, 1997, p130). Although technically such acts were already refused registration, a new ER (extra restricted) category was considered in order to exclude sexually violent content. Instead, the X18+ category was updated in definition to bar acts deemed violent, coercive or non-consensual. It was also changed from a voluntary to compulsory category (JSCVM Vol. 1, 1988, pp.75-77). Despite initial agreement by all jurisdictions to enforce a uniform classification system to address VHS video, the states of Queensland and Tasmania did not partake in discussions regarding the X18+ category, and by the end of 1984 all other states had dropped out of the scheme, leaving only the ACT in accordance, and later the Northern Territory (Stockbridge, 1996, p130).

A Committee was established to investigate the capacity of the X18+ category to regulate VHS videos. The Committee lasted five years but bore mixed and sometimes contradictory results; one of their recommendations was the use of another category to exclude violence, although the X18+ category already did just that (JSCVM Vol. 1, 1988, pp.295-296). Submissions received by the Committee also demonstrated a wide variety of views on what was acceptable viewing for adults, many submissions endorsed a ban on all “pornography” to preserve “community values” (JSCVM Vol. 1, 1988, pp49-50). The Committee also found “widespread misconceptions” about the X18+ category, with many believing video material involving child pornography and other types of violence were circulating within Australia under this classification (JSCVM Vol. 2, 1988, p365). Adequate pressure had been put on state governments to ban the category in all states, however Sally Stockbridge (1996, p130) also attributes the non-uniform implementation of X18+ to an Australian tour by Mary Whitehouse in 1984. As a vocal member of the “moral majority” with links to the British Home Office, Whitehouse had successfully campaigned for the Video Recordings Act off the back of a moral panic regarding “video nasties” (Petley, 2011). Like the Australian X18+ category, the Video Recordings Act brought VHS video under the remit of the British Board of Film Censors in the U.K. and stipulated no video material could circulate without classification.

Other legislative changes in the 1980s replaced the NRC category (Not Recommended for Children under 12) with PG (Parental Guidance for those under 15), as this category was deemed easier for parents to understand (Wright, 1987, p4). The guidelines were also tightened regarding violence at the level of M (for mature audiences) and R (legally restricted to adults over 18). In 1988, Federal classification was undertaken by the Film Censorship Board, an independent statutory body supported by the Office of Literature & Film Classification. – Rachel Cole

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