Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot

This book is a study of the British Board of Film Censors in the 1970s. In permitting and refusing specific material to be shown on cinema screens the BBFC were dictating patterns of taste and helping shape and determine notions of acceptability. Contentious and controversial texts like A Clockwork Orange (1971), Straw Dogs (1971) The Devils (1971) and Life of Brian (1979) have been used to draw attention to the way in which the BBFC operated in the 1970s. While it is true to say that these films encountered major censorship problems, what of the hundreds of other films which were being classified at the same time? Did all films struggle with the British censors in this period, and can these famous examples be fitted into broader patterns of censorship policy and practice?

In studying over 250 film files from the BBFC archive, this work reveals how 1970s films such as Vampire Circus (1971), Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and Carry on Emmannuelle (1978) also ran in to trouble with the film censor. This work explores the complex process of negotiation and compromise which affected all film submissions in the 1970s and the way in which the BBFC actively, and often sympathetically, negotiated with film directors, producers and distributors to assign the correct category to each film. The lack of any defined formal censorship policy in this period allowed the BBFC to work alongside the film industry and push cultural, social and artistic boundaries; however it also left the Board open to accusations of favouritism, subjectivity and personal bias.

This work is not simply a study of controversial films and contentious issues, but rather engages with wider issues of changing permission, legal struggles, the influence of the media and the legislative and governmental controls which both helped and hindered the BBFC in this important post-war decade. The approach used within this work focuses on historical and archival research, making it importantly inter-textual and offering a great deal to scholars from a number of associated disciplines, including history, social policy, media and communications and politics.

The Musical Body: Devising a choreo-musical interpretation for the work Tierkreis (1974-75) by Karlheinz Stockhausen

In this chapter the authors explore a practice-led approach to understanding the role of the body in music performance.

Many writers have discussed the body in music performance, in improvised music, as well as in electronic music. In this chapter the authors offer new modalities of reflection on the musical body in the interpretation of existing contemporary repertoire. Specifically, the authors discuss a re-interpretation of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's musical work 'Tierkreis'. Through the development of a specifically physical approach to the performance, the authors investigate the intrinsic relationship between the body and the music and point to an under-explored modality, which is not a musical choreography, but a choreography that is shaped through the musical body itself. It is a modality in which music itself propels forward choreographic ideas, the body becoming the driving force behind musical interpretation. The authors' thinking is influenced by Susan Kozel’s understanding of performance as an ecosystem (Kozel 2007) and framed within a subjective account of musical embodiment.

By merging theory with praxis the authors offer a deeper understanding of the role of the body in music performance and consider how such contributions might lead to new and exciting interpretive frameworks for existing musical repertoires.

Rent: Prostitution and the Irish apartment block

In 1974, pursuing his interest in the infra-ordinary – ‘the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the back-ground noise, the habitual’ – Georges Perec wrote about an idea for a novel:

‘I imagine a Parisian apartment building whose façade has been removed … so that all the rooms in the front, from the ground floor up to the attics, are instantly and simultaneously visible’.

In Life A User’s Manual (1978) the consummation of this precis, patterns of existence are measured within architectural space with an archaeological sensibility that sifts through narrative and décor, structure and history, services and emotion, the personal and the system, ascribing commensurate value to each. Borrowing methods from Perec, to move somewhere between conjecture, analysis and other documentation and tracing relationships between form, structure, materiality, technology, organisation, tenure and narrative use, this paper interrogates the late twentieth-century speculative apartment block in Britain and Ireland arguing that its speculative and commodified purpose often allows a series of lives that are less than ordinary to inhabit its spaces.

The Pinnacle of Popular Taste?: The Importance of Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974)

Loathed by critics, the British sexploitation comedy Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) was dismissed as tawdry and vulgar yet its massive popular appeal makes it an important indicator of popular taste in the much-maligned 1970s. Using new archival material, this article examines what the film offered and how it was deliberately crafted in order to appeal to a variety of audiences.

Rent: apartment blocks and their uses

In 1974, pursuing his interest in the infra-ordinary – ‘the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the back-ground noise, the habitual’ – Georges Perec wrote about an idea for a novel:
‘I imagine a Parisian apartment building whose façade has been removed … so that all the rooms in the front, from the ground floor up to the attics, are instantly and simultaneously visible’.
In Life A User’s Manual (1978) the consummation of this precis, patterns of existence are measured within architectural space with an archaeological sensibility that sifts through narrative and décor, structure and history, services and emotion, the personal and the system, ascribing commensurate value to each.
Apartment comes from the Italian appartare meaning ‘to separate’. The space of the boundary between activities is reduced to a series of intimately thin lines: the depth of a floor, a party wall, a window, the convex peep-hole in a door, or the façade that Perec seeks to render invisible. The apartness of the apartment is accelerated when aligned with short-term tenancies. Here Perec’s interweaving of personal histories over time using the structure of the block, gives way to convivialities of detachment: inhabitants are temporary, their personalities anonymous, their activities unknown or overlooked.
Borrowing methods from Perec, to move somewhere between conjecture, analysis and other documentation and tracing relationships between form, structure, materiality, technology, organisation, tenure and narrative use, this paper interrogates the late twentieth-century speculative apartment block in Britain and Ireland arguing that its speculative and commodified purpose allows a series of lives that are often less than ordinary to inhabit its spaces.
Henri Lefebvre described the emergence of an ‘abstract space’ under capitalism in terms which can be applied to the apartment building: the division of space into freely alienable privatised parcels which can be exchanged. Vertical distributions of class and other new, contiguous social and spatial relationships are couched within a paradox: the building which allows such proximities is also a conductor of division. Apartment comes from the Italian appartare meaning ‘to separate’. The space of the boundary between activities is reduced to a series of intimately thin lines: the depth of a floor, a party wall, a window, the convex peep-hole in a door, or the façade that Perec seeks to render invisible. The apartness of the apartment is accelerated when aligned with short-term tenancies. Here Perec’s interweaving of personal histories over time using the structure of the block, gives way to convivialities of detachment: inhabitants are temporary, their personalities anonymous, their activities unknown or overlooked.

Review of Pedro Ramos Brandão, A Igreja Católica e o “Estado Novo” em Moçambique, 1960/1974.

Book review of Pedro Ramos Brandão, A Igreja Católica e o “Estado Novo” em Moçambique, 1960/1974, Lisbonne, Editorial Notícias, 2004, 259p. ISBN: 972-46-1567-7, préface de José Capela, note scientifique de António Costa Pinto