Holly Brabbins

Regulation – Debates and Perspectives:

Cinematograph Act was enforced in 1909 to help regulate media products Harder to regulate the internet nowadays due it’s global nature etc., for example,

impartiality – differences between the UK and US, and in Sweden its not an offence to possess what in the UK would be deemed unlawful

Has led to a move towards self – censorship/regulation BBC guidelines for online writers: “Swearing is not big and its not clever, so avoid

it as much as possible. If it’s in a quote, always star the following, c***, f***, w***, f******* and w*****”

Broadcasting Standards Commission (later replaced by Ofcom) even rated swear words in 2002 – however, they rated normal swear words more offensive than racists ones

Films and increasingly video games, are still being blamed for violence in society today...

Virginia Tech Shootings:The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, before committing suicide (another 6 people were injured escaping from classroom windows). The massacre is the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history. It was also the worst act of mass murder of college students since Syracuse University lost 35 students in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.It is also the second-deadliest act of mass murder at a school campus in the United States, behind the Bath School bombing of 1927.Cho, a senior English major at Virginia Tech, had previously been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder. During much of his middle school and high school years, he received therapy and special education support. After graduating from high school, Cho enrolled at Virginia Tech. Because of federal privacy laws, Virginia Tech was unaware of Cho's previous diagnosis or the accommodations he had been granted at school. In 2005, Cho was accused of stalking two female students. After an investigation, a Virginia special justice declared Cho mentally ill and ordered him to attend treatment. Lucinda Roy, a professor and former chairwoman of the English department, had also asked Cho to seek counselling.

Cho's mother also turned to her church for help.

The attacks received international media coverage and drew widespread criticism of U.S. laws and culture. It sparked intense debate about gun violence, gun laws, gaps in the U.S. system for treating mental health issues, the perpetrator's state of mind, the responsibility of college administrations, privacy laws, journalism ethics, and other issues. Television news organizations that aired portions of the killer's multimedia manifesto were criticized by victims' families, Virginia law enforcement officials, and the American Psychiatric Association.

The massacre prompted the state of Virginia to close legal loopholes that had previously allowed Cho, an individual adjudicated as mentally unsound, to purchase handguns without detection by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). It also led to passage of the first major federal gun control measure in more than 13 years. The law strengthening the NICS was signed by President George W. Bush on January 5, 2008. In August 2007, the Virginia Tech Review Panel Report recommended that the state's General Assembly adopt legislation "establishing the right of every institution of higher education to regulate the possession of firearms on campus if it so desires" and went on to recommend campus gun bans, "unless mandated by law." The report also recommended gun control measures unrelated to the circumstances of the massacre, such as requiring background checks for all private firearms sales, including those at gun shows. Governor Kaine made it a priority to enact a private sale background check law in the 2008 Virginia General Assembly, but the bill was defeated in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. Pro gun rights parties viewed this larger move as an unwarranted expansion and as a possible prelude waypoint akin to full gun registration for all gun sales.

The incident and its aftermath energized student activist efforts seeking to overturn bans that prevent gun holders (both 'open carry' and 'concealed carry permit' holders) from carrying their weapons on college campuses. Thirty-eight states throughout the U.S. ban weapons at schools; sixteen of those specifically ban guns on college campuses. A new group, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, formed after the massacre; as of March 2008, it claimed to have 16,000 members at 500 campuses nationwide. Several states are weighing legislation to allow gun permit holders to carry concealed firearms on university campuses. They cite cases of actual successful neutralization of active campus shooters by armed students to advance their cause. Another attempt by Delegate Gilbert to pass a law to allow concealed weapons on college campuses in Virginia was defeated in March 2008. This law was for the sake of students and faculty members only since the AG ruled that it did not apply to non-students and non-faculty on campus who could conceal carry without restriction on campus. This law would have only mostly affected students at or above the age of 21 (seniors and some juniors) since younger persons are not allowed to purchase handguns.

VTS – issue around regulation:They claimed that Seung-Hui Cho was mentally unstable and ‘hooked’ on violent video games, which led to the debate of why such video games were not regulated in the first place if it was going to influence gamers to mimic actions.

“The game he's talking about is "Counter-Strike," a massively popular team-based tactical shooting game that puts players in the heavily armed boots of either a counter-terrorist or terrorist. But

whether Seung-Hui Cho, the student who opened fire Monday, was an avid player of video games and whether he was a fan of "Counter-Strike" in particular remains, even now, uncertain at best. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the school shootings and the finger-pointing that followed, game

players and industry advocates say they're outraged that the brutal acts of a deeply disturbed and depressed loner with a history of mental illness would be blamed so quickly on video and computer games. They say this is perhaps the most flagrant case of anti-game crusaders using a tragedy to

promote their own personal causes...While Thompson concedes that there are many elements that must have driven Cho to commit such a brutal act, he insists that without video games Cho

wouldn't have had the skills to do what he did. He might have killed somebody but he wouldn't have killed 32 if he hadn't rehearsed it and trained himself like a warrior on virtual reality. It can't

be done. It just doesn't happen.“ (Jack Thompson, Florida Attorney)

After the accusations of Cho’s motives for the attack, video games were closely analysed and soon regulated due to the possible influences and un-moral messages they gave out to younger children and adults. This was in aid of hoping that nothing like the VT shootings would be repeated ever again.

Other related articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/12/games

Censorship today – the case of 9/11:The Falling Man – 9/11 censorship:The photograph, shown on the right gives the impression that the man is falling straight down. However, this is one in a series of photographs of his fall, and viewed with the others it is evident that he is tumbling through the air.

The photographer has noted that, in at least two cases, newspaper stories commenting on the image have attracted a barrage of criticism from readers who found the image "disturbing”. Regarding the social and cultural significance of The Falling Man, theologian Mark D. Thompson of Moore Theological College says that "perhaps the most powerful image of despair at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not found in art, or literature, or even popular music. It is found in a single photograph.“

“was bright and totalizing and some of us said it was unreal. When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our

perceptions.”

The images of 9/11 (including the photo of the Falling Man) were seen as so disturbing and upsetting that they were promptly banned from American television almost as soon as they were broadcast, and viewers in the U.S. only had access to them via the internet and media circulations on other continents. There are two things, however, that made the image different: On the one hand, it started an intensive (and partly excruciatingly frustrating) search for the identity of the victim which got many people involved in the individual story.On the other, the image seemed to possess an almost ‘aesthetic’ quality and certainly was received by many viewers as an ‘abstraction of real terror’ and thus, as a aestheticization of the attacks and their tragic effects.

Despite this censorship, “the falling man” rapidly gained a velocity of its own as a charged image, an icon The image, its story and its cultural resonance have been turned into a film that adds a very powerful dimension to the documentation of 9/11 since it not only follows the factual events but shows how immediately after the attacks, the sheer violence of the experience and its resistance to representation necessitated and even enforced the creation of narratives, of icons and of [yes!] artworks that would endow the event with meaning. Not just any meaning, to be sure, and certainly not the meaning intended ostensibly by the terrorists.

http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/dondelillo/the-fiction/falling-man/

Advertising Standards Authority:ASA is a UK independent regulator of advertising across all media. They apply the Advertising Codes, which

are written by the Committees of Advertising Practice.

Call of Duty (Modern Warfare) Trailer – the debate:After COD was released, there were many complaints to ASA about the controversy behind the trailer. People thought that the ad reinforced negative stereotypes of the soldiers that were being portrayed as ‘senseless killers’ and it trivialised the true responsibility of soldiers today. It was believed that the game was giving a mixed real life/game image – almost too realistic and that there is a blurred line between reality and fantasy. After the complaints, ASA regulated and censored the trailer, stating “that the campaign contained scenes of extensive gunfire, explosions and destruction that were accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack”. However, the BBFC saw no issue with the video game ad and rated it a PG, saying that “some scenes may be unsuitable for younger children”. On the other hand, due to it being an advert, ASA had the final say and decided to make dramatic cuts in hoping that it would be more acceptable for universal viewing. This also leads to the question of self-regulation, believing that it is under our own control to decide what we watch and how we interpret what is being shown. We have to decide what is real and what is virtual.