his article explores some of the findings from awork-in-progress project that Ibegan working on in to investigate the retrospective memories of s British audiences surrounding viewing films classified either or by the BBFC, while the participants were underage. Iquestion the so-called victims of censorship that have matured into their s and are no longer at the mercy of parents or the classifications of the BBFC in order to investigate the retrospective memories of these adults who were once participating in forbidden viewings as children in the s. This article explores Annette Kuhn’s idea that for audiences, the movie fades from memory to make way for more movies, but it is the life experiences that stay with the viewer. By focusing on underage viewers and films that had been deemed unsuitable for their age, Ihope to review Kuhn’s claim, by resituating the film itself as the prominent memory– amemory not replaced by many decades of movie watching since. This article outlines the methodology for the project, before turning to adiscussion of participants’ memories of interrupted film viewings. In exploring the dichotomy between memories of viewing conditions and memories of the film themselves, this article then considers memories of the horror genre (and terrifying scenes in other genres), and also the issues of watching sex in films, and the impact of parental restrictions, or watching while with parents.
Turner, Pete
School of Arts
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2023-11-02