Abstract
The regulation of film exhibition in Iceland has closely shadowed the history of cinema exhibition itself. Although regulation practices have undergone various shifts and realignments throughout the twentieth century, they retained certain core concerns and a basic ideological imperative having to do with child protection and child welfare. Movies were thought to have a disproportionate impact on children, with „impressionable minds“ often being invoked. Their interior lives and successful journey towards maturity were put at risk each and every time they encountered unsuitable filmic materials. Thus, while assuming that adults could fend for them-selves among the limited number of theaters in Reykjavík, children were a whole another matter and required protection. Civic bodies were consequently formed and empowered to evaluate and regulate films. But even in the context of fairly rigorous surveillance and codification, the turn taken by regulatory authorities in the 1980s strikes one as exceptional and unprecedented. The Film Certification Board (TFCB) was, for the first time, authorized to prohibit and suppress from distribution films deemed especially malignant and harmful. Motivating this vast expansion of the powers of the regulatory body were concerns about a variety of exploitation and horror films that were being distributed on video, films that were thought to transgress so erroneously in terms of on-screen violence that their mere existence posed a grave threat to children. Two years after finding its role so radical-ly enlarged, TFCB put together a list of 67 „video-nasties“, to borrow a term from the very similar but later moral panic that occurred in Britain. Police raids were conducted and every video store in the country was visited in a nation-wide effort to remove the now illegal films from rental stores. This article posits that the icelandic nasties list can be viewed as something of a unique testament to the extent to which the meaning, aesthetic coherence and the affect of cultural objects is constructed in the process of reception, while also main-taining that the process of reception is thoroughly shaped by historical discourses, social class, embedded moral codes and a social system of values, as well as techno-logical progress. in what amounts to a perfect storm of moralizing, political games-manship and the sheer panic of a certain segment of the population, the governing institutions in iceland managed in the span of months to overturn constitutionally protected rights to free speech and privacy, as well as undermine central principles of the republic. Two decades would pass before these setbacks were recuperated, and then only on a legal and institutional level. While analyzing the history of the icelandic video nasties, the article also attempts to grapple with and articulate the symbolic register of the ban, how it speaks to the status of cinema in Iceland at the close of the twentieth century, and what ideological strains, morals and/or values were being put into play and funneled into this particular debate. Then, to close, the role of the most notorious of the nasties, Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980), is examined in the context of media coverage and parliamentary debates at the time.
Highlights
Íslenski bannlistinn og Kvikmyndaeftirlit ríkisinsEftirlit með kvikmyndasýningum á Íslandi á sér næstum því jafn langa sögu og sýningarnar sjálfar
Enda þótt að eftirlitinu hafi verið staðið með ólíkum hætti hafa áþekkar hugmyndir og áherslur legið því til grundvallar nær alla tíð, og voru þær jafnframt forsenda þess að í upphafi þótti nauðsynlegt að sýna kvikmyndahúsunum aðhald
Um þetta hefur Skarphéðinn Guðmundsson fjallað í greininni „„Hvar er lögreglan?“ Spilling æskunnar og upphaf kvikmyndaeftirlits“ þar sem hann rekur hvernig sívaxandi gagnrýni á myndaúrval kvikmyndahúsanna í Reykjavík leiddi að lokum til aðgerða af hálfu hins opinbera
Summary
Eftirlit með kvikmyndasýningum á Íslandi á sér næstum því jafn langa sögu og sýningarnar sjálfar. Enda þótt að eftirlitinu hafi verið staðið með ólíkum hætti hafa áþekkar hugmyndir og áherslur legið því til grundvallar nær alla tíð, og voru þær jafnframt forsenda þess að í upphafi þótti nauðsynlegt að sýna kvikmyndahúsunum aðhald. Þótt ætla mætti að fullorðnir væru öllu jafnan í stakk búnir til að leggja mat á efnið sem til sýnis var þótti víst að börn væru þar mun berskjaldaðri og skoða þyrfti sérstaklega hvað væri við þeirra hæfi. Þegar hugað er að sögu eftirlits með kvikmyndum á Íslandi er engu að síður hætt við að röð atburða á níunda áratug síðustu aldar veki sérstaka athygli. Nokkru síðar var birtur listi yfir kvikmyndir sem bannaðar voru á Íslandi, og birtingunni var svo fylgt eftir með víðtækum lögregluaðgerðum. Í því sem hér fer á eftir verða rök færð fyrir því að „bannlistann“ megi
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.