Was the BBFC Right to Ban Manhunt 2?

Theories are lovely, but application can be the dumps. Free speech sounds so wonderfully noble in principle, but test the theory by running naked through Times Square and see how far you get. If you "deny" the holocaust in Europe you go to prison. Swastikas have been banned in Germany since 1945. Freedom of expression is never free, in other words -- someone's always paying, thus your inability to "express yourself" by lacing someone's drink with anthrax or putting razor blades in apples (a flagrant urban legend, incidentally).

So I'm torn over the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) banning Rockstar's Manhunt 2 from release in the UK. As a writer, my impulse is of course to side with Rockstar and condemn what amounts to an act of national censorship. Never mind that the Manhunt games involve graphic decapitations, wire chokes, pulping faces with crowbars, and butchering other humans with machetes. After all, just look at the average horror flick. I haven't seen the Saw films, but I hear they make Wes Craven look comparatively flowery, not to mention the tomfoolery people get up to in Eli Roth's Hostel series. Just think about what's been allowed in books, films, and cable TV around the world. Manhunt almost sounds trite by comparison.

Or does it? Despite our tendency to lump different forms of entertainment into a single bucket, video games are radically different from movies (which in turn are radically different from books). Social scientists are still working out the differences and attempting to determine the psychological effects aggression-inducing games have on us away from the game machines. Common sense dictates that whatever the results, they won't be applicable universally -- we all ingest differently, with occasional throws of the bell curve acting out their pathologies (related? unrelated?) with devastating consequences.

While part of me is loathe to give the BBFC any credit or endorse the ban (which I don't), they're probably not wrong to at least raise a few flags. While Manhunt 2 may or may not pass my personal threshold, games don't enjoy some sort of blanket immunity from cultural scrutiny.

It doesn't help that our entertainment standards for sex and violence seem wildly out of kilter. Murder's illegal, as is child pornography. Murderers in the U.S. can actually be executed for crimes they commit, but you'll never see a child pornographer (that's not also a murderer) get the chair or die by lethal injection. But in video games, murder gets a blanket pass, while child pornography would kill a game quicker than you can say "felony offense." Heck, even simulated grown-up "sex" (certainly not illegal) can land a publisher in boiling hot water. Does that strike anyone other than me as weird?

It looks like Rockstar's going to appeal, and in any case, I'm wondering why the BBFC didn't just go with an AO (Adults Only) ratings equivalent. In the U.S., the ESRB's AO rating stipulates:

Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

Sure, that would ban the game (in the U.S.) from Walmart and other retailers who've appropriately exercised their right to sell or not sell products that inhabit a specific ratings range, but then again, that's the price you pay when you create "art" that might "offend" a substantially larger segment of your culture.

UPDATE: Not much of a surprise after the BBFC decision, but the ESRB has officially categorized Manhunt 2 as AO or "Adults Only," which means it'll be sold stateside, but only to consumers 18 and older.

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