The Notorious Bettie Page (2005, Mary Harron)

The Notorious Bettie Page is a smart, funny and engaging look at the life of one of the first pin-up sensations, the titular Ms Page.  Well acted and flawlessly directed (Harron creates a perfect 50′s ‘woman’s film’ feel and mixes black and white and colour without drawing attention to it), the film tells it’s story in a matter of fact way that mirrors Page’s own outlook and delivers an interesting study of a society on the brink of change.

Although revolutionary in her own way (more by personality than design) the Page presented here is a woman interestingly out of time – she is more homely and naive than those that condemn her work and breaks barriers without a sense of surging onwards, in fact one could go so far as to argue that her opponents hatred of sex (and her sexuality) is the curse of the future (hello Republican far-right, happy clappers, fundamentalists and The Daily Mail) after all, as she herself states, ‘Adam and Eve didn’t put on clothes till they sinned’…

…talking of which The Notorious Bettie Page has a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rating of ’18′.  Considering that the 1950′s pin ups (and the various ‘health’ magazines that they appeared in) do not even come close to the contents of the tamest ‘lads mag’ or even the average music video.  The use of  ‘notorious’ in the title is somewhat ironic as it is a label that is projected onto Page rather than a comment on who she is and, accordingly, the film is rather tame when it comes to sex.  Yes, there is nudity but Harron manages to normalise it by giving Betty control and keeping everything in context – this is the polar opposite of the way Megan Fox is filmed/leered at in Michael Bay’s ’12A’ rated Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).

So what’s the deal?  Looking across the sea at the Irish Film Classification Office (IFCO) (the owners of the blue, usually higher, certificate printed on some of your DVDs), we see that the film has a ’15′ rating (’15A’ in cinemas) due to ‘moderate’ violence, sex/nudity and language and the further information on their website notes just ‘one expletive’.  It should also be noted that the guidelines for the ’15A’ rating state that “mild/moderate sexual activity/nudity is acceptable, particularly when portrayed positively”.  So what is it that has the BBFC’s knickers in a twist?  The answer can be found on the website: ‘Contains sexual fetish theme‘.

That is it.

‘Contains sexual fetish theme‘

Not ‘graphic depictions’, not even the dreaded ‘imitable techniques’ but a ‘theme‘.

…it is,  of course, true.  The Notorious Bettie Page does contain a ‘sexual fetish theme’, dealing as it does with the career of Bettie Page but this is not an explicit or exploitative film – it is as if the BBFC have decided that the very notion of ‘fetish’ will corrupt the nation’s teenagers.  But then we shouldn’t really be surprised by this as, despite a general relaxing of the rules, Britain still has one of the most severe film classification bodies in the democratic world and, let us not forget, the Orwellian ‘Dangerous Pictures Act’ under which you could even be prosecuted for having some stills from this on your computer.

All film is of it’s time.  The Notorious Betty Page is based in the 1950′s but tells us plenty about our own time and, bless ‘em, the BBFC are once again on hand to remind us that fifty years later not much has changed when it comes to our fear of the bedroom.  Jason Bourne, James Bond and Batman can beat the living shit out of people in front of children under 12 but the fabulous Bettie Page strapping on a pair of high heels and pretending to spank another woman is clearly such a danger to society that they dare not allow you to see it until you are two years past the age of consent.

The Notorious Bettie Page is available on DVD.

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