2.7.4 Censorship in the Nordic countries
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
2.7.4 Censorship in the Nordic countries
[ Gunnar Medin writes: ]
Denmark is an easy case. There is no censorship at all. Not for adults
anyway. A film can be prohibited for viewing in a movie theater by
children below 12 or 16, but no censor decide what adult people can
see. (But some kind of pictures are unlawful to show, i.e. child
pornography.) This does not mean that charges cannot subsequently be
brought against publishers of the material for breaking of laws like
racist allegations, libel slander or perhaps copyright issues. But the
main thing is that there is never any preemptive censorship.
Another thing is what the audience like! American films seem sometimes
to get distributed in two versions. One cut for Northern Europe with
more sex and less violence, and one for US with less nakedness but
more violence. US films with relatively explicit sex scenes, e.g.
Basic Instinct, are often made in one version for Europe and one
shorter ("censored") version for the USA. The only reason I have heard
of for censoring films in Sweden in modern times is violence.
[ someone else: ]
In Sweden, the same laws apply to what you can and what you can not
show on movies and video. The difference is, that movies are checked
for violations before being shown, while videos are only checked if
there is a complaint.
This means that a movie distributor /theater can never be convicted
for what they show in movies since the censoring system absolves them
from responsibility. In contrast, video distributors can be convicted
for selling and renting videos with prohibited content.
The same rule also holds for printed matter in Sweden. Books which are
libelous, infringes copyrights, prints military secrets and so on, can
never be censored before publication.
The problem with doing this for movie theaters is that it takes so
long time to get a conviction, so that the movie would have stopped
showing anyway. In effect, it would "remove" the censoring, unless you
would get long jail sentence. That would in turn lead to the much
worse "self-censoring" system that exists in the US.
[ Otto-Ville Ronkainen: ]
In Finland, all films are subject to a preview by the State Film
Approval Office, which can approve the film for all audiences or for
audiences above a certain age. The highest age limit is K-18. If a
film can't be shown as K-18 as such, it must be cut or it can't be
shown. Nowadays the standards on sex are more lenient than in the US.
Movies that are R-rated in the US can be K-12 or K-10 here.
For video films, the Finnish system requires the limit to be K-16 or
less, so K-18 films have to be cut to be released on video. However,
such restrictions don't exist on import for own use, so the real
enthusiasts can get their films uncut from England or Denmark, for
instance.
[ Kari Yli-Kuha: ]
Currently, the Finnish censorship is about to be abolished, since with
the current information technology it's practically impossible to
prevent people from seeing whatever they want. It's not so important
what the adults see or do not see, but removing censorship, the main
purpose of which has been to guard children from the most hard-core
violence, emphasizes the role of parents.
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