Kent Blechynden

Chief censor Andrew Jack (right) and deputy chief censor Nic McCully argue the volume of entertainment online makes censorship more important than ever.

With the arrival of video-on-demand service Netflix and the replacement of adult DVDs with online porn, Nikki Macdonald asks whether the censor's office is more important than ever, or an expensive anachronism.

On a locked floor in central Wellington, staff are paid to watch porn and play video games.

When a vacancy comes up, the office is deluged with eager applicants. But the numbers rapidly dwindle when they're set a work test. Few can stomach the censor's daily diet of sex, horror, crime, cruelty and violence.

David White

New Zealand film producer and festival director Ant Timpson says the cost of censorship is killing small films.

Behind the first examination door, Juliet* is classifying photos of pre-teen girls with pretty pink hair bows and exposed vaginas; next door Lucy is watching Japanese-style anime clips of explicit rape scenes with twisted messages; Henry is playing shoot-em-up video game Battlefield Hardline and in the adjoining office three senior censors are "having kittens" mulling whether to rate a German film featuring a graphic suicide scene as R16 or R18.

For 21 years the Office of Film and Literature Classification has been setting due north on New Zealand's moral compass, wading though society's filth and frighteners so you don't have to. But with the avalanche of unclassified material now emerging online, the censor's power is being progressively eroded.

The arrival of Netflix's television and movie streaming service in March will further fragment Kiwis' viewing habits, prompting calls to abolish an institution as outmoded as the longhand logbooks in which the classifiers write their observations.

Maarten Holl

Aro St Video owner Andrew Armitage believes censorship is important but says New Zealand could use overseas classifications to cut costs for filmmakers.

Juliet has been classifying child abuse images since 1996. Police or Internal Affairs will send a representative sample of seized images. Today, they are young girls in sexualised poses, such as a girl aged about 5 posing with an erect penis. And that's not the worst of them.

There is nothing to debate here - they are all deemed objectionable.

The images haven't changed much in 20 years, Juliet says. There are just more of them.

"They were bad back then and they're bad now."

A feminist from way back, she sticks at the job in the hope she is helping to rid society of the sick individuals exploiting children.

"It's quite strong, " Lucy warns, of the anime rape clip she is viewing next door. The 23-year-old law graduate has been a classification officer for two years. While today she is deciphering the messages conveyed by a cartoonish depiction of rape - essentially that when women say no they really mean yes - tomorrow she could be watching splatter horror or a television box set.

Few would dispute the need to protect children by outlawing exploitative images and videos. But that work makes up only 22 per cent of the censors' total workload. The remainder is much more contentious.

In the far left examination room, three senior censors are reviewing a graphic suicide scene in Die Unsichtbare, a German movie intended for a film festival. It's a compelling watch which moved the original classifier to tears. But it's not just the razor-blade wrist-slashing that is problematic - it's the messages that lie behind the drama, senior censor Mark* explains.

"In addition to the visceral depiction of suicide and how emotionally upsetting it would be to audiences of different ages, there's the slightly romantic storyline of suicide leading to catharsis and resolution."

In the end the peer review team rates it R16 and adds a note warning those for whom suicide could be a painful trigger.

While attitudes towards sex, violence and especially swearing have slackened over time, technology has amped up the realism.

"There's no doubt that producers are putting increasingly strong material in front of younger audiences, " says Mark, who has been a censor since the office's first day, 21 years ago. "It's wickedly real and now the ante is being upped the whole time."

Technology is also revolutionising the way Kiwis access their entertainment. When movies were things you watched at the cinema or picked up from the local DVD store, age restrictions were enforced by staff. If that movie later screened on television, its classification would dictate when it could screen.

But a 2013 survey of young people found 55 per cent watched online, or downloaded, films at least once a week. And 65 per cent played computer games at least weekly. According to Impact PR research, 59 per cent of Kiwis watched television online or on a smartphone or tablet last year.

Some web-based video-on-demand services do use the censor's ratings - Spark's new Lightbox service paid $250,000 to have its offerings classified. However, thousands of Kiwis are thought to be accessing unrated movies and television programmes through the likes of the US-based version of Netflix, which also offers films banned in New Zealand, such as Maniac and I Spit on Your Grave 2.

And porn has gone online. New Zealand's biggest distributor of adult DVDs pulled out last year. The vacuum has been filled by six to seven-minute clips hosted on an internet underworld so huge and murky it is impossible to police. If the clips include child exploitation, they might be picked up by the Internal Affairs department's blocking filter. If not, they're likely to pass unnoticed and unrated.

Film producer and film festival organiser Ant Timpson doubts censorship will be able to keep up with the fragmentation of media viewing without using highly controversial devices to block particular websites. "As a new generation grows up entirely online, the Office of Film and Literature Classification's dominion becomes diminished as each year passes."

Chief censor Andrew Jack argues censorship has never been more important, precisely because entertainment now comes in so many forms via so many different devices.

And there's a growing recognition that, to some extent, you are what you watch.

"If I'm watching pornography that's R18, there's nothing wrong with that. Except that if I watch large quantities of it it may be influencing the way I interact with real-life women. I think people perhaps are beginning to become more aware that you are the totality of your experience."

Take the classification officers themselves. They're a resilient bunch who stick around for an average of 10 years but every now and then one sets out to change the world and gives up in disillusionment after six months of drowning in the depths of depravity.

"This kind of proves the point that what you watch does influence your world view, " Jack says.

Like the child abuse images, there is simply more of everything out there. And the more there is, the more important it becomes that people are given good information so they can make smart choices about what they watch, he says.

"If you access stuff that hasn't been classified in New Zealand you are taking a risk around you and your communities and your families. You ought to be just as careful about that as if someone came up to you at a party and said 'Here, take this pill'. You'd want to know what was in it. You are not just going to say 'Oh, great, well I'll take it'."

Andrew Armitage, owner of Wellington's Aro Video store and long-time censorship campaigner, does not disagree. With kids of his own, he wants to know whether movies are suitable for them. But he argues New Zealand could simply use overseas ratings instead of wasting time and money duplicating the process.

New Zealand classifications sometimes differ - they're generally more strict that those of Australia and the United States but more liberal than the British ratings. That might reflect our society. In the case of the German suicide movie, for example, censors might be more conservative because of New Zealand's high youth suicide rate.

However, Armitage argues those differing decisions represent a tiny minority and the system is equivalent to imposing a 70kmh speed limit on our highways. "When the chief censor talks of potential harm if things were loosened, to me we have a 100kmh speed limit and sure, there's always going to be accidents, but it's a tiny proportion of the traffic."

The censor's office, he believes, is an anachronism with over-inflated classification fees that fail to differentiate between blockbusters and niche films with tiny audiences. The result is that the system shuts out legitimate film-makers. For example, mainstream sequel Two Days in New York, starring Julie Delpy, never made it to New Zealand because it was rated R15 in Australia and the distributor decided not to pay to have it reclassified here.

In 2011, Armitage called for censorship reform, including introducing a standard R18 rating for non-classified films, similar to the United States' X rating. When that failed to gain traction, he started calling for the office's abolition.

Banning a "garbage" movie such as Maniac that Kiwis can still access via the US-based version of Netflix only fuels demand, Armitage argues. And what is the point of Sony paying to get an R16 rating on its movie Bad Santa, only to have Armitage's children later watch it on TV2 at 9.30pm?

"I just think they have built a fortress around themselves and will do anything to protect it. Most of what they do is completely superfluous.

"If there was some watertight logic to it I would support it. But it is as leaky as a sieve."

Timpson agrees the cost of classification is killing small films.

"Theatrical is dead for small pics. DVD is slowly dying. And unfortunately VOD [video on demand] just isn't there yet.

"We have laws in place that cover all truly objectionable material. So one has to ask: if the OFLC disappeared overnight, what would actually happen in New Zealand?"

Jack acknowledges that the funding system is broken. In his briefing to incoming minister Peter Dunne, he labelled it "unfair, unprincipled, sanctions anti-competitive behaviour and encourages non-compliance'.'

If the office is set up to prevent injury to the public good, the risk of that is obviously far greater for a blockbuster with an audience of 500,000 than for a niche film viewed by 80 people. The cost of classification should reflect that, Jack says.

Given the office is in financial strife, having returned a deficit for the past five years, they will presumably look to increase fees for the big players.

It is also unfair that the first person to import a movie carries the entire cost of classification, while subsequent importers piggyback off their investment, he says.

Jack also hopes to restrict access to the likes of US Netflix, threatening legal action against internet service provider Slingshot for providing a global mode, which enables Kiwis to view location-restricted services.

Another issue is the confusion created by the fact the same film can have different classifications depending if it screens on DVD, at the movies or on television.

At present, free-to-air television is classified by broadcasters. Programmes can be rated as Adults Only and restricted by the time they screen. However, with television channels increasingly offering programmes online and on demand and the proliferation of cable channels and video-on-demand services screening films and programmes at any time of the day, it would make sense to have a one-stop shop, Jack argues.

Victoria University media studies associate professor Trisha Dunleavy can't see that happening in her lifetime as the different classifications for cinema movies, DVDs and television movies reflect the size and nature of the different audiences.

The German suicide movie's R16 rating, for example, took into account limited access to German language films and the likely small audience. Had it been rated for free-to-air television it might have been more heavily restricted.

Kiwis are far less prudish now about sex, nudity, language and violence, Dunleavy says. She remembers Ian Mune telling her that the censor axed a scene from his 1970s film Derek because it featured a drunken Mune making out with a workmate against a wall.

Dunleavy believes there might be an argument for removing censorship from subscription content services, such as Netflix, because "people are making an individual choice in a democratic society and they are paying for it". But that does not mean we should ditch censorship altogether.

"An open slather with something like broadcast television I don't think is ever going to happen. I don't think we are ever going to see nudity and violence at 6 o'clock on TV One."

If nothing else, advertisers might revolt. The Warehouse's decision last year to ditch R18 games and movies shows businesses are careful about what they want to be associated with.

Meanwhile, in that locked Wellington office, the censors are finishing for the day. If it's been a particularly grim one, they'll debrief among themselves. "You don't go home and go 'Guess what I looked at today', " deputy chief censor Nic McCully says.

Even after 20 years, she still gets shocked most weeks.

"I watched a scene the other day of a throat being cut. It was so graphic and the blood spurted everywhere. I had to turn away the first time I viewed it. I am always shocked at what men will do to children for their sexual gratification."

The need for censors to provide New Zealand-specific ratings for entertainment might be debatable. The need for censors to outlaw child pornography is not.

*Censors' names have been changed to protect their safety.

BY THE NUMBERS

In 2013/14 the censor's office classified 2054 publications, including 1538 films, DVDs and related advertisements; 67 digital games; 7 magazines or books referred by Internal Affairs.

320 publications were banned - more than double the previous year's total.

Banned material included 308 computer images and videos, 2 computer text file printouts, 7 DVDs (including I Spit On Your Grave 2), 1 magazine, 1 film (House on the Edge of the Park) and 1 book (The Everything Marijuana Book).

Of outlawed material, 88 per cent was banned for child sex abuse portrayals and 4 per cent for sexual violence.

HOW WE COMPARE

Ratings in New Zealand are mostly more liberal than the United Kingdom but more conservative than the United States and Australia.

Recent examples:

Maniac (movie)

New Zealand - banned except for film festival screenings

Australia - R18+

UK - 18

US - X (unclassified, 18+ only)

Game of Thrones Season 3 (DVD)

NZ - R18

Aus - MA 15+

US - no rating

UK - 15

Grand Theft Auto V (video game)

NZ - R18

Aus - R18+

US - M 17+ (industry self-regulated rating)

UK - 18

Fifty Shades of Grey (book)

NZ - M

Aus, UK and US - no rating

 - Stuff