Film Classification Activity 3.3

Have you watched films classified as 18 when you were below this age?
I have watched films that are classified 18 but only at home and round friends. I have never seen 18's at the cinema as one of the reasons is that I have never bothered trying to get in for an 18, as cinemas are usually very strict with age restrictions. Also, another reason is that a lot of 18's are violent, disturbing, upsetting, offensive and so on. For example, the film: This is England contains violence and racial offensive language which would upset people too young. Further more, many 18's are horrors which I am not keen on, just because how gruesome they are.

Does classification work for home viewing (DVD, TV broadcast, online, YouTube)?
It does depend on what you view the films on as certain ways have restrictions and limitations. One example is online sites, like YouTube have messages come up when a film is certificated as an 18. To watch the video, you have to sign up for an account but the problem with this is that people can easily fake their age so they can watch the video. This is very simple to do as you can put a different date depending on how old you need to be to view the video.
Another example is on TV, it is quite easy for viewers to watch a film that they shouldn't be allowed to see. Channels which broadcast films are Film Four and there are plenty of choice on Sky. There is an advantage however because, films that have higher certificates are commonly on at the 9 o'clock watershed and later, for instance on "Bad Lieutenant" is going to be on at 11.05 on 26th January as its an 18.

Can parents/guardians/supervising adults be trusted to monitor what children/youths are viewing? Should they have this responsibility?
Home viewing films is hard for parents to monitor as films are easily available to most home owners. If viewers do not have extra and digital channels then there are less films on, for instance, the normal channels are more along the lines of: BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
It is parents/guardians responsibility to monitor their child at a young age because the child is unlikely to know exactly what they are watching and probably wouldn't understand it. When i was younger, I remember wanting to watch things I couldn't because my parents didn't think the programmes were suitable. This is a restriction that can be useful when trying to stop children watching something they shouldn't. This does change as children grow up and become more mature, which thus makes their parents have more flexibility. My parents now let me watch films of my chose as it is usually for (education- English and Media studies) but then for entertainment too.
For this reason, it is difficult to say whether it is the parent's of a child's full responsibility but the question that has made me think is "Who else is going to take responsibility?". The Government?
We do have to trust parents monitoring what their children view because once they have access to films, there is nothing that we can really do. Locks on Sky and other restrictions may help rise the problem of under-age viewing but it more difficult once the viewer can access them to stop them. It is more about ones conscience- like whether a teenage can see whether or not that they shouldn't be watching a film that is an 18 when they are only 15. It may be the case, that they only watch their films with their parents or their parents insist on them watching the film with them so they can restrict them from seeing things. When I was about 14, I watched a film with my parents on TV and there was a murder taking place, my mother told me to look away, so I did. This is an example of how my parents helped me from seeing things that might have upset me.
Some parents are bound to think that their child will see upsetting and disturbing things in there life, but then as a child, they are more vulnerable and obviously too young to see these things happen. When is the age when they could possibly understand or take-in these things..?
Overall, parents do have to be trusted and do have a responsibility for what their child watches as there is none other restriction that children can have, to stop them from watching higher classified films.