9 Songs, 9 Sex Tapes

Last year, having correctly predicted that the BBFC would pass Michael Winterbottom's hardcore art-romp 9 Songs (which includes actual scenes of intercourse, oral sex and ejaculation) at 18 uncut for cinemas, I noted that "the real test of the BBFC's apparent open-mindedness... will come when the film is submitted for video classification, for it is here that the issue of precedent will really start to bite".

My contention was that, if passed uncut for home viewing, Winterbottom's film could lead to a claim of preferential treatment by pornographers whose works are regularly given a restrictive R-18 rating which allows sale only in licensed premises. As I said at the time, "Those distributors of R-18 sex tapes who are currently complaining about the confinement of their product to licensed sex shops may well be inclined to take their case back to the Video Appeals Committee (VAC) [who] may now be asked to overrule future R-18 ratings in favour of the more lenient 18 classification. After all, if it's alright for Winterbottom to peddle tapes which depict penetration and ejaculation, then why shouldn't they?"

Fast forward to the present, and guess what? Kermode turned out to be right again! Last month the distributors of nine hardcore tapes (Lubed, The Secrets Of The Kama Sutra, Ben Dover - Cumming Of Age Volume Two, Heart Of Darkness, Queensway Trailers, Dungeon Diva 2, Semi-Detached, Catering For All Tastes - Finger Buffet For Six and L'Elisir D'Amour) appealed to the VAC after the BBFC slapped R-18 ratings on material for which they had requested 18 ratings.

According to the BBFC, the content of these tapes clearly fell within the terms of the R-18 for-sale-in-sex-shops-only category. Yet in presenting their case to the VAC, the distributors' flamboyant lawyer argued that these tapes depicted only "straight down the wicket sex", which he insisted was very different to the kind of 'fetish' material which needed to be restricted to licensed premises. To bolster his case that such material should indeed be available for sale in high street stores, the lawyer displayed several pornographic magazines boasting similar content and also requested in passing that the VAC take a look at... 9 Songs! - which had been passed uncut on video.

Next page • It's impossible to predict which way the VAC's decision will fall"