Public are more accepting of sex on screen, says film industry regulator

‘What we’re doing is reflecting back the attitudes of society’

THE British public has become less prudish about consensual sex on screen, the film industry regulator has accepted, with less than 6 per cent of films now rated 18.

Viewers have become more relaxed about adult relationships, gore and violence in films but want stricter policies about sexual violence, David Austin, the chief executive of the British Board of

Film Classification (BBFC), said. Mr Austin said “expectations have changed” about what should class as adult content, with an increase in 15-rated films but a drastic decrease in 18s in the last 15 years.

Mr Austin, interviewed in the Sunday Times Culture magazine, said “people wanted us to classify sexual violence even more strictly”, particularly in the post-me Too era.

“What we’re doing is reflecting back the attitudes of society,” he added. A study showed that while nearly half of the films rated by the BBFC in 1974 were labelled as 18, by 2022 that had dropped to just 6 per cent.

Filmmakers increasingly consult the regulator to see how they can cut films to ensure a lower rating, with bigger potential audiences for 15 films than 18s.

The change in classification is down to public attitudes, which are now surveyed by the BBFC every five years to ensure compliance officers are accurately reflecting the audiences.

A single use of an extreme swear word is no longer enough to earn an 18 rating automatically.

Poor Things, starring Emma Stone and classified for its “strong sex, nudity, very strong language”, is in the running to become the first 18-certificate film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards since 2006. It has 11 nominations.

In 2018, after one public survey, the BBFC noted: “A trend we found was that people find the fact the scenes occurred within recognisable ‘real-world’ settings an aggravating factor, because it made them feel as if this was something that could happen to them.”

In 2022, the regulator noted that parents had become more relaxed about 15-year-olds hearing the worst swear words in films, with focus groups suggesting they would be lenient about hearing the C-word in a film with a 15 rating. Viewers were also more accepting of same-sex relationships depicted on screen than in decades gone by.

Mr Austin said viewers were more tolerant of “quick kills with a blood spurt” compared with violence that is sadistic and extended.

The 18 rating is now “for adults only and can contain strong issues such as very strong violence, very strong language, strong portrayals of sexual activity, scenes of sexual violence, strong horror, strong bloody violence and gore, real sex (in some circumstances) and strong discriminatory language and behaviour”.

‘Viewers are more tolerant of quick kills with a blood spurt’