Film and Publication Board holding dialogue on sexual violence in media

© FPB Facebook page

“South Africa is rated amongst the worst societies when it comes to violence against women and children. As part of commemorating women’s month, the FPB wants to focus on sexual violence in the media through assessing the prevalence of gender stereotypes and gender based violence in the media,” says Abongile Mashele, FPB’s acting chief operations officer.

“Violence against women does not end with physical violence; other forms of violence including emotional and psychological violence have no visible scars but have long effects on victims and survivors. These can be worsened through constant exposure to similar themes in the media through film and other forms of entertainment media. Furthermore, constant exposure can lead to children being desensitised and normalising such behavior.”

Long term changes in cultural norms and values

The FPB has partnered with Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) for the dialogue. The partnership stems from the previous classification guidelines review process which introduced the classifiable element of ‘Sexual Violence (SV).’ The SV classifiable element warns consumers in advance that the content has sexual violence scenes such as rape and physical violence.

The dialogue seeks to kick-start the process of reviewing the current Classification Guidelines. Previously, the classification guidelines were reviewed every two years and, where there were legal amendments, it was revised as deemed necessary. However, the Council of the FPB took the view that norms, values and tolerance levels do not change rapidly over two years. A five year review period was introduced to take into consideration long term changes in cultural norms and values. The current classification guidelines were last reviewed in 2012 and subsequently published in October 2014 and have been applied since.