Innocence Unprotected? Permissiveness and the AA Certificate 1970–82

Abstract

This article focuses on the British Board of Film Censors' (BBFC) relatively short-lived AA certificate, launched in 1970 in a revamp of the classification system amidst increasingly heated arguments around ‘permissiveness’ and the cinema. The AA was introduced by BBFC Secretary John Trevelyan in order to reduce the ubiquity of X-certificated films and to acknowledge a liberalisation of attitudes in the classification of material for teenage audiences. Although it arguably failed overall to meet its broader, progressive objectives, the AA did represent a degree of censorial relaxation and had the potential to help to bring British film classification further in line with the more relaxed systems in western Europe and the US. However, the rating met with trouble from the outset, with hostility from exhibitors, confusion from audiences and apathy from film distributors. Furthermore, its application would be restrained by excessive caution, indecisiveness and ‘quality’ concerns on the part of the BBFC, and ultimately would fall foul of a renewed vigilance around film censorship that took hold in Britain in the early 1980s.

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