Animation
Animation can be classified by this Office
Animated films and DVDs submitted to the Classification Office are generally aimed at an adult audience and often contain strong violence, offensive language or sexual content.
While the Classification Office doesn't classify television broadcasts, it does classify DVD box sets of television shows. Examples of animated television shows classified include South Park and Family Guy.
In New Zealand, aNimation is classified in the same way as other publications
In some countries, such as Australia and the USA, there are debates going on around whether cartoons can be thought of as being harmful to society as they do not feature 'real people'. In New Zealand, animated publications have the same classification criteria applied to them as other publications.
If the animation, for example, promotes extreme violence or cruelty, it is likely to receive a restricted or banned classification because even though the characters are drawn, the way the content is dealt with is an important part of the classification criteria:
- Is the way the violence is presented likely to cause injury to the public good?
- What might be the implications of young people seeing it?
a lot of people think that because it's a cartoon, it's ok for kids
In 2008 the Classification Office teamed up with the Broadcasting Standards Authority to do some research into what people think about violence in films and television. The research involved young people aged 14-17, and adults aged 18 and over. As part of this research, we showed participants a clip from an episode of the animated show Family Guy. Some of the participants in the research (mainly those who were not familiar with the show) thought that because what they were seeing was a 'cartoon', it was aimed at kids. They were concerned that parents might let their young children watch it, and that children might try to copy the violence depicted.
Read about the classification of graphic novels and other printed material.
