There’s a new Halloween film coming out next month, but Australians and New Zealanders hoping to cosplay as Michael Myers may be disappointed.
It’s because Halloween: The Game has been “refused classification” by the Australian Classification Board, not because of the presence of a violent killer, but because in the game the consumption of cannabis can alert players to Myers’s location.
In a statement, the Australian Classification Board gave its reasons: “Games containing illicit drug use related to incentives or rewards cannot be accommodated within the R18+ classification category and must be Refused Classification under the Guidelines.”
This means the game cannot legally be sold in Australia, and it’s not the first piece of media to be caught in Australia’s classification net.
Existing in some form for more than 100 years, the Australian Classification Board (ACB) consists of a director, deputy and a revolving set of board members who assess every film, video game and publication submitted for public distribution against legally enshrined classification guidelines.
The ACB does not directly censor media, but its decisions can lead studios and production companies to alter their product.
When a piece of media receives a restrictive classification or is refused classification in Australia, studios and distributors have two basic options: Accept it’s been restricted, or alter the content and reapply to the ACB in the hopes of receiving a new rating.
That’s what happened with Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-winning drama Ladybird back in 2018 when the ACB gave it a MA15+ rating for “brief strong nudity”, restricting it to those over 15 — not exactly ideal for a coming-of-age movie.
So, distributor Universal cut the offending scene — a fleeting shot of a penis on the back of the magazine — and the ACB agreed to a lowered M rating.
The altered scene sees Ladybird buy the Playgirl magazine to celebrate turning 18. (Supplied: IMDB)
“Neurotic” is how professor and author of The Money Shot: Cinema, Sin and Censorship Jane Mills describes Australia’s relationship with media classification.
“There’s all these euphemisms and mealy-mouthed sort of words used to describe what is very paternalistic at its least bad,” she tells ABC Arts.
“But at its worst, I think it’s denying people the right to know and make informed judgement, which is the basis of democracy.”
Innocence and ignorance
Halloween: The Game is far from the first piece of media cast out into Australia’s refused-classification wasteland.
In 2003, a dozen police officers raided Sydney’s Balmain Town Hall and arrested five people, including movie critic Margaret Pomeranz, over an illegal screening of Larry Clark’s Ken Park.
Refused Classification tackles cinema, censorship and Margaret Pomeranz’s 2003 arrest
The psychological thriller had been refused classification over “actual sex, sexualised violence and what appeared to be child sex abuse”. It remains illegal to stream, rent, buy or screen Ken Park in Australia.
“I think there’s often a confusion between innocence and ignorance. We keep people ignorant in the interest of keeping them innocent,” Mills says.
“People should be allowed to see, hear, read what they want when we consider that they’re of an age to make that decision. One might not necessarily like what one hears or reads, but the right of someone to write it or speak it, I think, is a crucial thing to protect.
“It makes us different from fascist countries.”
Jane Mills is an honorary associate professor in film studies at UNSW Sydney. (Supplied: Festival of Dangerous Ideas)
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, has one of the most storied censorship journeys in Australian film history. Banned shortly after its Australian release in 1976, the controversial political art horror was submitted for appeal in 1993 and rated R for theatrical release, turning the film into a political football as it bounced around Australian cinemas.
A campaign to have the film re-banned, led by Christian figureheads like then-National Party senator Julian McGauran, succeeded in 1998, and the movie was once again refused classification. After another failed distributor application in 2008, a 2010 DVD release was submitted again, this time with 176 minutes of ‘contextual material’. The application was successful, drawing the ire of McGauran and the Australian Christian Lobby.
Forty years after it was banished from Australia, Salò is set to be screened as a centrepiece of Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas’ inaugural Dangerous Films slate.
“Being the first year, we had to do Salò because it’s the one that, if people go, dangerous ideas, banned films, films that are really hard to watch — that’s the one,” festival director Danielle Harvey tells the ABC.
“It’s been quite the journey for me even to be able to watch it, to know exactly what I’m going to be subjecting people to.
“Subjecting, I think, is the right word because it is unwatchable and everyone should watch it.”
Revered Italian filmmaker and playwright Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered shortly after the release of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. (Getty: Will/ullstein bild)
Shock and awe
Salò’s infamous scenes of rape, abuse, coprophilia, violence and murder, along with the furious debate around its legality, have seen it detached from the deep political analysis lurking beneath its cruelty.
Set in 1944 in fascist-controlled Italy, the film centres on four wealthy, powerful men — the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President — as they collect lower-class victims upon which to unleash their reckless depravity.
Festival director Danielle Harvey programmed Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom alongside films such as Shortbus and The Piano. (Supplied: Festival of Dangerous Ideas)
“It’s not just shocking for its own sake. That’s the first thing. It’s a very serious argument about power, about fascism, about consumerism, and it puts the audience in a really uncomfortable position to get them to think about these things,” Harvey says.
“There is no titillation to this. It is absolute horror, but horror because it is talking about what humans let happen to other humans, and that is fascism, that is consumerism.”
Mills, who edited a 2023 retrospective of Pasolini’s work, has seen Salò three times — first closer to release in a “dirty” London cinema (“it must have been illegal”), once for the retrospective and a third time to prepare to introduce it for The Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
The Duke (Paolo Bonacelli), The Bishop (Giorgio Cataldi), The Magistrate (Uberto P Quintavalle) and The President (Aldo Valletti) inflict pain and suffering on dozens of victims, including their own daughters. (Supplied: IMDB)
Every viewing brought a new appreciation for Pasolini’s intent.
“I was actually surprised by how well made it is. Pasolini only took 37 days to film it. It’s supremely intellectual and cleverly thought out. I was very, more impressed by it than shocked,” she says.
“The set designers and the set decorators need Oscars. It’s got this incredibly beautiful, elegant 1930s art deco decor, that elegance in the context of the barbarity of some of the sex and violence and you can’t really distinguish where it begins and ends.”
Who can hack it?
Harvey says it wasn’t easy to track down a copy of Salò — the film isn’t streaming, and physical copies are hard to come by — but the effort was worth it.
“It’s been this hilarious journey of finding the last Blu-ray player in Sydney for me to watch it ahead of time and to make sure that I’m not doing something stupid in showing this film,” she says.
“It stands up as incredibly audacious filmmaking. Inviting people to come and experience this in a communal setting and watch these really young people be absolutely brutalised incessantly — it is a big statement, but at the same time, where else are you going to see this?
“It’s the idea of how do we talk about power and what power is, and as humans, how do we allow bad things to happen to other humans? Of course that’s in my mind right now. It’s in everybody’s mind.”
Mills says that beyond Salò, the banning of film, books, video games, and even social media often boils down to moral panic.
“The masses can’t get hold of something very dangerous because we don’t want the masses to have access to ideas about individual freedom and choice,” she says.
Salo censors: covering our eyes from the truth of art
“I think the only way one can counteract this is by saying, well, people must be allowed to see, read, hear what they like to judge for themselves.”
Ultimately, Harvey is excited about the opportunity to screen Salò, not just to share an important piece of art with a wide audience, but for what it represents for other pieces of media that have been refused classification and can’t make it into an arts festival.
“Banning a film just makes it less available. It doesn’t mean that it ceases to exist. What you’re doing is you’re encouraging a form of elitism in who can and can’t access art, and that is really problematic,” she says.
Harvey says there is a difference between banning a film because the content breaks laws, like in the extremely rare case of snuff films, and prohibiting a film because of what it represents.
“A film that is using artistic trickery and storytelling gets banned because it’s trying to say something, then by banning it, you’re also making a statement about who can cope with these kinds of ideas,” she continues.
“That to me is much more interesting. Why do we think that audiences are so feeble that they can’t cope with the hard facts about things or be pushed into uncomfortable territory? What are you saying about people?”
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, will screen as part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on August 29.