Scapegoating, scaremongering and bare faced lies!!!
I'm
sure your all familiar with the moral storms this movie caused in
the UK when the tabloid media tried to blame this film for
influencing two of the most infamous murders of 1993.
However, upon viewing this movie it's hard to believe how such a thoroughly innocent horror sequel, which by all accounts is fairly tame when compared to most other horror films standards, could have caused such an uproar and resulted in the government introducing further restrictive legislation on the classification of home video's.
Basically it was all thanks to a lot of sensational media scaremongering. The first incident in question concerned the trial of two 10 year old schoolboys, who abducted, and later killed, a young 2 year old named James Bulger, from a shopping centre in Liverpool whilst he was out with his mother.
The incident that triggered the media witch hunt started when the judge at the trial made an off-the-cuff remark after passing sentence, saying "Whilst there has been no actual evidence of this, I suspect that exposure to violent movies had something to do with your actions". Eager to cash in on the publics shock and disgust at this case, the press had a field day and quickly began hunting round the local video shops to see what films had been rented out by the two boys parents.
For some reason, the tabloid press started publishing articles about horror films, in particular the film "Child's Play 3" claiming that the stepfather of one of the two boys had rented it just prior to the murder, and began scapegoating this film as being the reason behind the killing.
However, it was revealed soonafter on the BBC news that neither child had actually seen the film, the police even went public and confirmed this. Merseyside Police Inspector Ray Simpson was even quoted in "The Guardian" newspaper that they had "looked at all the videos in their houses and checked their lists of rentals from the shop. We did not find Child's Play 3, nor did we find anything in the list that could have encouraged them to do what they did. If you are going to link this murder to a film, you might as well link it to The Railway Children".
Never-the-less, it did not stop the scaremongering press from continuing to publish outragous, and somewhat unbelieveable stories about the film saying how "sick" and "evil" it was. Even going to great lengths to try and draw parralels between some of the killings in the film and how young Jamie was murdered, which of course there where none!
Several months later and another court case caught the attention of the media. 4 young adults had been jailed for the murder of 16 year old Suzanne Kapper, who they had abducted then spent several days torturing to death in a house in Manchester. Apparently one of the things they had done to her was to play deafening rave/techno music to her through a set of earphones, one of the tracks apparently containing lyrics sampled from the Child's Play films.
Whilst anybody with an ounce of intelligence could realise that their choice of music had nothing to do with their actions in the murder, the fact that one of the songs they choose to deafen her with contained words sampled from Child's Play gave the press all the fuel they needed to get their teeth into the film for a second time round.
The "Sun" newspaper, who it is worth
noting has given us such sensational stories in the past as
"Freddy star ate my hamster", went to organise a
"Burn your video nasty, for the sake of our children"
campaign, calling on people to destroy their horror video's. The
likes of this media hysteria hadn't been seen since "Video
Nasties" furore of the early 80's and the usual role call of
vocal pro-censorship do-gooders where quick to jump on the
bandwaggon now that they had a whole stack of tabloid newspapers
willing to aire their views for them again.
The police who investigated the case again found no evidence that this, or any other video film, had any part in influencing these individuals. But of course, that didn't cut any ice with the tabloid media or the pro-censorship lot. Video shops around the country stopped stocking the film and the distributers, CIC video, decided to have it pulled from the shelves as well as scrapping it's proposed sell-through release, along with "Child's Play 2" which they also withdrew.
In amongst all this scapegoating and bandwaggon jumping, one Liberal-Democrat MP named David Alton, a jumped up little bible-basher who clearly has no idea of the meaning of the words Liberal or Democratic, seized his opportunity and announced his intention to bring in a bill that would effectively outlaw home videos that had a classification of "15" or "18", saying that such films where "Not suitable for viewing in the home". The prime minister at the time, John Major, was even quoted on saying "We must condemn a little more, and understand a little less." about the matter.
The then director of the BBFC, James Ferman, spoke out against this however, arguing that films like Child's Play 3 SHOULD be available in what was supposedly a free country. Fortunately, Alton's proposed bill finally bit the dust when it was pointed out to him that implementing it would also mean that classic films like "Schindlers List" wouldn't be available either.
However, the compromise of this was that the 1984 "Video Recordings Act" was ammended, resulting in even stricter censorship for home video use, requiring the BBFC to pay special attention to "Video representations of violence, horror, criminal behaviour, sex and drugs". Of course, whether or not this has had any real impact on the already stringent censorship regulations we have in this country has yet to be seen.
As was the case with the "Video Nasty" furore of the 80's, the scaremongering tabloid press had succesfully managed to create moral panic amongst societies more prudish and gullible elements in order to sell newspapers, the end result being the government drawing up further restrictive legislation on the availability of home videos.
Of course, horror films continued to line our video
shop shelves, as they do today. But thanks to the press, Child's
Play 3 was the film firmly ascosiated in the public mind with the
killing of Jamie Bulger (irrespective of the truth) and so it,
along with it's predecessor "Childs Play 2", remained
unavailable from the period of 1993, right up till 2002 when the
distributors finally decided that enough water had passed under
the bridge to re-issue it.
But consider this, was the so-called "shocked" and "outraged" public that the press said where calling for a ban on horror movies back then, not the same "shocked" and "outraged" public that flocked to the cinema in their droves to see the re-issues of "The Exorcist" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in 1999, or (slightly) more recently the likes of "Scream 3"? The scaremongering tabloids that where organising burnings of horror video's back in 1993, are they now not the same tabloids who have been writing up rave reviews over these exact same films?
This proves 3 things. Firstly, what the more prudish types say isn't necessarily the same view that everybody else has. Secondly, the media blows whichever way the wind does, and thirdly, DON'T BELEIVE EVERYTHING YOU READ!!!!!
The information on this page was compiled from the following sources, Dark Side Magazine, The BBC news website, CinemaXS, Melon Farmers Video Hits website and the Book "See No Evil" by David Kerekes and David Slater.
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