I was shocked when I learned about the law that South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson passed a few days ago. This law bans all advertising of R18+ films in South Australia, including the requirement for DVD retailers to cover up the covers (banning the display of the cover), displaying only the title of the film.

This is a terrible blow to the Australian Film Industry. Film makers will have no motivation to push the limits of portraying the issues of society, like the South Australian film, Bad Boy Bubby. This is a multiple award winning film, which won four 1994 Australian Film Institute awards; Best Director (Rolf de Heer), Best Actor in a Leading Role (Nicholas Hope), Best Original Screenplay (Rolf de Heer) and Best Editing (Suresh Ayyar); also nominated for Best Film (Rolf de Heer) and Best Cinematography (Ian Jones), and not to mention the international awards it has listed on it’s cover.

If the VHS/DVD/Bluray cover of Bad Boy Bubby is completely censored, then people might skim past the film in the isle, and will not know about the success of this South Australian film. On the other hand, I haven’t read the details of this law, for example if the censoring outer covering of the movie case has to be a certain colour. If it is the same colour for all R films (grey, red, etc), these movies will actually stand out in the movie isles.

In my opinion, Atkinson has put this absurd law into effect such that if/when we get an R18+ games classification, the game covers will be covered (advertising ban), while the content not. What will be next? Magazine covers? Book covers?

What do the people have to say? Search for Michael Atkinson on twitter.

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