The Problems on the Application of the Effective Provision on Censorship and Rating Under the Film and Video ACT B.E. 2551

Abstract

Movie is the influenced mass media which people can acquire message from producer both picture and sound. It provides people wide variety of information such as knowledge, people attitude, entertainment, fact and incidents. It is also a medium for promoting tourism, cultural and traditional activities of the country. Moreover, each movie can reflect particular social problems or even influence people’s behavior for both positive and negative aspects. Beside this it can be kept for a long time for future study.

Nowadays, Thai entertainment industry, in the context of trading, indicates that film business can generate large amount of revenue in Thailand. Therefore, film examining and supporting procedure are equally significant. The Film and Video Act of 2008 was enacted to control and examine movie in order to make it appropriates to the change of social and economic status. The effect from this act is the cancellation of Censorship in order to use the Rating system instead.

The study of the Film and Video Act of 2008, however, found out that there is a redundancy in the movie examining procedure, including an ineffective execution in several ways. For instance, problem of movie rating under section 26: universality, when the movie is classified by the audience age, it should not have “Banned” rate (Films that are not allowed to screen publicly in the Kingdom.) in classification. In the part of “Film and video classification committee”, there are 2 groups with the same name. But they have difference authority and were appointed from different department that is the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism and Sport. In addition, under section 29, the Committee has an authorization to command the applicant to edit or cut some parts of film before it will be released. In case that movie may be contrary to the peaceful and morality of public or it may affect to the prestige of Thailand. Such authority had broad definitions and it was difficult to identify its definition.

tions and it was difficult to identify its definition. Further more, The Film and Video Act of 2008 is lack of the provision concerning the promoting of Thai film industry by the professional organizations then we can notice that the proportions of the committee who are appointed from government sector are more than private sector. Also, it does not provide opportunity to public sector for participating in expressing their opinions to the grant or refusal of permission from the Movie Rating Committee.

From the study of the problems of The Film and Video Act of 2008, the author suggested that there should be no more banned rate (Films that are not allowed to screen publicly in the Kingdom) because the movie was already classified by age of the audience. There should determine in separate section to specify the prohibit movie such as movie with content related to monarchy or religious institutions. Besides, the movie rating committee who was appointed by the Ministry of Tourism and Sport should be named with new title for avoiding the confusion of service users. Thus, there should be equal proportion between committee from government sector and private sector which has been elected from movie operators. Lastly, the qualification of the experts should be clearly identify and should allow movie operators to protest the qualification of those experts. At the same time, it should provide some survey of public opinion for allowing or banning any movie by the committee before they appeal the command to subcommittee to be used in their discretion in considering the appeal.