Actually, I'd argue otherwise - although there are often a great many legal threats made in the course of such protests, they very very rarely have any substance behind them and can easily be ignored. Indeed, one of the reasons such protests get so vociferous (the Satanic Verses and Jerry Springer: The Opera demonstrations spring to mind) is because the protesters aren't backed up by the law, and would very much like to be.NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:It was my own precis of the speech that added the "political and economic" reasons but they rarely go without the back up of the "law of the land" as you put it anyway.
But here, it's about as clear-cut as it gets. A public screening of Cockfighter in a UK cinema would unarguably break the law, and a successful prosecution would equally unquestionably jeopardise that cinema's operating licence, with repercussions well beyond a one-off screening. I'm a former cinema manager, and it was drummed into me at a very early stage of my employment that you don't mess with the Animals Act or the 1978 Protection of Children Act, as they provide very little in the way of get-out clauses if you get caught! (By contrast, the 1959 Obscene Publications Act is riddled with escape routes, the "artistic merit" defence being one that's noticeably absent from the other two).
But wouldn't you agree that that's how such a plea would be characterised by animal rights campaigners, no matter how carefully it was worded?I don't expect anyone seriously envisaged a rampant post screening Edinburgh audience combing the streets whooping for chicken on chicken violence, but it also doesn't have to be a plea through parliament for ' real slaughter please.'
This is the problem with the Animals Act - it's drafted in such a way as to make it seem the epitome of reasonableness, not least by offering two clear exemptions. Which I imagine is why no-one's sought to modify it in nearly 70 years - it may even be the oldest piece of explicitly film-related legislation that's still on the statute book in its original form.
But this is where the Act was very cleverly worded. There's actually nothing to stop you making a hard-hitting documentary about the barbaric treatment of animals, with graphic examples - provided that you can prove that all this would have happened regardless of the presence of your cameras. And a cynic might argue that this is a good thing, as it compels such documentaries to be honest in their reporting!Isn't there more an insidious danger of the denial of barbarity??
(A good example here - this film is about as horrific as it gets, being entirely about animal cruelty, yet the BBFC not only passed it uncut but gave it a comparatively lenient classification)
