Age of consent
From Mr Alexander Walker Sir: Roger Alton in his Diary (25 Novem- ber) regrets that the film Billy Elliot wasn't classified with a more lenient certificate, so that his ten-year-old child could have seen it without the cinema breaking the condi- tions of its licence — not a 'modest' offence — by admitting her to a certificate 15 cate- gory film. I share his regret, but not his argument.
The makers of Billy Elliot could easily have deleted the 'fucks'. Few would have missed them, nor would an excellent film have suffered. If Mr Alton's 'sensible poli- cy' on swearing were to be adopted — one, presumably, permitting four-letter words in the certificate 12 category — it wouldn't be 'films like Billy Elliot' that would swiftly incorporate them, but films that would greedily exploit their transgressive value among child filmgoers, almost certainly to the detriment of the film, if not the child.
The movie industry knows no social con- science, only a profit motive; and, now that films are so well protected by Human Rights legislation that censoring them is well-nigh impractical, the constraints implicit in classification remain the one way of restricting audiences by age groups and thus encouraging exploitative producers to think of their box-office.
Mr Alton did what anecdotal evidence suggests quite a few parents and children do — lie about their age. An ID card would curb that, and shall have to come eventually for this and other sound social reasons.
Alexander Walker
London W9
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