THE FACTS
The Correspondence
On November 14, 2019, the CBSC received a complaint from a viewer who identified numerous broadcasts on Super Channel Vault, Super Channel Fuse and GINX eSports TV Canada that concerned him. Super Channel is a Canadian pay television station offering the three channels as multiplexes. This means Super Channel has a single broadcast licence, but, from a viewer’s perspective, the three channels are at separate numbers on the dial and broadcast entirely different programs at any given time.
The complainant listed a total of 15 separate broadcasts; his concerns related to the presence of violence, coarse language and sexuality during the day. He also mentioned the viewer advisories and ratings for a few of the broadcasts. Due to some administrative issues, the CBSC was not able to obtain copies of all the broadcasts. One reason was that the CBSC had outdated contact information for the Super Channel employees responsible for dealing with CBSC complaints. In an email of December 2, however, Super Channel confirmed that it had eight of the broadcasts covering the period from October 31 through November 14. Later that month, when the CBSC asked the station to send it all of the relevant broadcasts, Super Channel was able to provide official and complete broadcast copies (known as “loggers” or “logger files”) of some, but not all, of the requested programming.
On December 19, Super Channel sent a letter to the complainant addressing his concerns about all three channels. Super Channel pointed out that it is a pay television service. It stated that it had put appropriate viewer advisories and classification disclaimers at the beginning of each broadcast, but acknowledged that “there seems to have been a few occasions where scheduling practices resulted in some mature content being aired prior to the prescribed late-night viewing hours.” It indicated that it was “taking steps to make sure this type of oversight does not happen again.”
On December 19, the complainant submitted his Ruling Request asking the CBSC to pursue its examination of his complaints. (The full text of all correspondence can be found in Appendix A to this decision.)
The Broadcasts
The following broadcasts were examined as part of this decision (more detailed descriptions of the broadcasts can be found in Appendix B):
Super Channel Vault
Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood
October 31, 2019 at 4:45 pm
Super Channel was unable to provide an official broadcast copy of this movie; the CBSC therefore has no information about the viewer advisory or classification that was provided. Super Channel did, however, provide a copy of the movie.
Friday the 13th is a series of horror movies about a psychotic killer named Jason Voorhees who wears a hockey mask on his killing rampages around Crystal Lake where he was believed to have died as a child. This instalment of the franchise was released in 1988. The story centres on Tina Shepard who has psychokinetic powers. As a young girl, Tina’s powers caused the death of her father at the lake. Her mother and her psychiatrist Dr. Crews bring her back to her family’s lakeside cabin when she is a teenager because Dr. Crews claims it will help Tina work through her guilt about her father’s death. Next door, a group of teenagers has gathered to hold a surprise birthday party for their friend.
As is typical of this series of horror films, the film is replete with scenes of Jason attacking the various characters with blades and other sharp objects. Blood splattering or dripping from wounds is common. The bodies of his victims are often discovered later, hanging from or pinned to trees in macabre fashion; he also leaves a severed head in the teenagers’ cabin. Throughout the movie Jason is wearing dark, tattered clothing and the bones in his back are visible. His attacks are preceded by eerie sound effects that are the signature of this series. Jason himself is electrocuted, strangled, burned, shot and pierced with nails, and at one point his hockey mask comes off to reveal a horribly decayed face with greyish skin, bloodshot eyes, nostril holes with no nose and sparse, yellow, crooked teeth.
There are scenes of nudity and sexuality: a teenaged couple is having sex in a van; an adolescent woman’s buttocks and side of her breast are visible when she skinny-dips in the lake, another young woman’s breasts are visible as a bedsheet falls off her after she and her boyfriend have been in bed together.
The movie also contains multiple instances of the word “fuck” and its variations, and one instance of “cunt”, which is used by a male character in reference to a female who has rejected him.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter
October 31, 2019 at 8:08 pm
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter is the seventh movie in the Saw horror film series, theatrically released in 2010. The movies centre on a serial killer nicknamed Jigsaw, whose real name is John Kramer. Jigsaw forces people to undergo various elaborate torture traps. He believes that if they survive these challenges, they will be rehabilitated from whatever problems they have. The backstory to Saw 3D is that Jigsaw has died, but his ex-wife Jill Tuck and a disturbed police officer named Mark Hoffman (who became Jigsaw’s assistant) are now competing to continue Jigsaw’s legacy. A man named Bobby Dagen has become a celebrity motivational speaker after writing a book about surviving Jigsaw’s torture, but the public is unaware that Bobby fabricated the whole story.
The broadcast was rated 18A and was preceded by a viewer advisory alerting viewers to the mature subject matter, coarse language and violence.
Nearly every scene of the movie involves graphic and explicit violence. Victims undergo elaborate torture challenges, which test them both physically and psychologically. For example, two men are bound to a worktable with a circular saw in the middle and the woman who has been romantically deceiving them both is suspended from the ceiling. The men must choose whether to try to kill each other or let the woman fall onto the saw. They ultimately choose the latter with the saw going through her midsection as she screams and blood splatters all over the three of them.
Other scenes show: a man cauterizing his own bloody leg stump on a steam pipe; a dream sequence in which Jill Tuck is sliced in two; a man glued to a car seat who must tear his own skin in order to reach a lever to save his friends; a man’s arms and tongue being yanked out because they are tied to a moving car; a woman’s face being reduced to blood and tissue after a revolving car tire falls on it; a woman affixed to a human-sized hamster-like wheel being punctured in the eyes and mouth with spikes; another woman trapped in a different contraption who has her neck and head penetrated by spikes; police officers being riddled with bullets from a turret gun; and a man being hung from a warehouse ceiling.
Bobby Dagen is forced to pry out two of his own teeth, puncture his pectoral muscles with hooks and hoist himself up on chains in order to connect two extension cords before a timer runs out; otherwise his wife will be killed. He fails his challenge and is forced to watch as his wife is burned alive inside a brazen bull torture device.
In the battle between Jill Tuck and Hoffman, the two engage in a lengthy, violent struggle at the police station, which culminates in Hoffman tying Tuck to a chair, placing a reverse bear trap over her head and the giant claw of the trap snapping her face off, with blood and tissue flying. There is a close-up of the hole where her face was, with blood dripping from it.
After that, Hoffman is captured by Lawrence Gordon, a character from the very first Saw movie who was forced to saw off his own foot to escape. It is revealed that Gordon had been helping Jigsaw all along. Gordon shackles Hoffman inside the warehouse bathroom where he had been trapped, throws the handsaw out of Hoffman’s reach, turns off the lights, locks the door and leaves so that Hoffman will presumably die in the room.
The film also contains numerous instances of the word “fuck” and its variations.
Pet Sematary
November 8, 2019 at 10:45 am
Pet Sematary is a 1989 horror feature film based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. The plot of the movie centres on the Creed family – father Louis, mother Rachel, 8-year-old daughter Ellen (“Ellie”) and toddler son Gage. The family has recently moved to a rural area in Maine. When Ellie’s cat Church dies, across-the-street neighbour Jud Crandall shows Louis a “Micmac” burial ground located deep in the woods behind their house, past the titular pet cemetery. Creatures buried at the site come back to life, but as malevolent, violent versions of their former selves.
The broadcast was rated 18A and was preceded by a viewer advisory in audio and video formats alerting viewers to the mature subject matter, coarse language, and violence.
The movie contains numerous scenes of violence and gore. There is a scene of a young man who has been hit by a truck being carried into a medical building with blood and tissue spilling out of a massive head wound. This character reappears throughout the movie as a ghost with his wounds still visible. There are also scenes of a suicide by hanging, a young woman with spinal meningitis who dies by prolonged choking (who also reappears as a ghost later in the film), and a young psychotic man gnawing on a bloody bone from a child’s leg and then gouging his own face with his fingers. In the lengthy climax, resurrected toddler Gage attacks and kills Jud with a scalpel, slicing his Achilles tendon and mouth, then gnawing on Jud’s neck. Gage then attacks his own mother, whose body is later seen hanging from the attic opening. Gage goes on to attack his father Louis and there is a lengthy struggle with Gage biting and slicing Louis with the scalpel. Louis eventually manages to inject Gage in the neck with a syringe, causing Gage to finally die. In the film’s final scene, a resurrected Rachel enters their home’s kitchen where Louis is waiting for her. She is covered in blood and mud, and one eye socket is missing an eye, but has yellowish fluid oozing from it. As she and Louis kiss passionately, she raises a large kitchen knife and the scene cuts to black as Louis screams.
The movie also contains one instance of the expression “fuck off”.
Zero Dark Thirty
November 11, 2019 at 2:56 pm
Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 feature film about the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) search for and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden, who was the Saudi Arabian man responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The main character is Maya, a CIA agent who is persistent in pursuing the search despite the challenges of the operation.
The broadcast was rated 14A and was preceded by a viewer advisory alerting viewers to the mature subject matter, coarse language, and violence. The advisory also mentioned sexuality and nudity, although there was no sexuality in the movie.
There are a few scenes of prisoners being tortured by having water poured on them or punched, and one man being tied up like a dog. Other scenes include a shooting at an office building and an explosion at a restaurant. Much of the movie, however, consists of CIA officers discussing their plans. At the end, a Special Operations Unit invades the compound where they believe Osama bin Laden is hiding. There are sounds of gunshots, explosions, crying and screaming, as well as comments from the operatives about killing people. The lighting, however, is very dark such that the results of the violence are not entirely discernible, though there are some bodies shown lying on the floor.
The word “fuck” and its variations, including “motherfucker”, are peppered throughout the dialogue of the movie, along with other coarse language.
Super Channel Fuse
A Cure for Wellness
November 13, 2019 at 6:50 pm
A Cure for Wellness is a 2017 horror movie about a young financial executive, Lockhart, who is sent by his company’s board of directors to retrieve the company’s CEO from a “wellness centre” in the Swiss Alps after that executive sent an unusual letter declaring that he would not return. After a suspicious car accident on the way to the centre, Lockhart himself ends up having to stay there. Over the course of the movie, Lockhart gradually learns of the centre’s grisly history and realizes that the centre’s director, Dr. Vollmer, is conducting experiments on the patients in order to produce a life-extending elixir from the water in the centre’s aquifer.
The broadcast was rated 18A and was preceded by a viewer advisory alerting viewers to the mature subject matter, coarse language, nudity, sexuality and violence.
There are a number of scenes of disturbing “treatments”, such as Lockhart placed in a giant submersion tank and then unexpectedly surrounded by eels; rows of people suspended in isolation tanks; Lockhart having a tooth forcibly removed; and having live eels forced down his throat through a large plastic tube.
There is nudity and sexuality in a scene in which a female nurse removes her blouse and a male assistant masturbates while staring at her bare breasts.
There is also a scene of an incestuous attempted rape as Vollmer binds the wrists of his teenaged daughter to a bed, tears her dress away to reveal her bare breasts, puts his hand up her dress and unbuttons his clothing, explaining to her that she is “something pure” that resulted from his union with his own sister and that now they will begin again to extend their bloodline. The assault is interrupted by Lockhart who then has a protracted physical fight with Vollmer. At one point, Vollmer peels off his facial skin to reveal a greenish disfigured face with no nose. Lockhart manages to set Vollmer ablaze, but it is eventually the daughter who kills Vollmer by shoving a shovel into his forehead and causing him to fall into the aquifer where the eels surround him.
The film contains numerous instances of the word “fuck” and variations thereof, along with other coarse language.
GINX eSports TV Canada
GINX eSports TV Canada is a channel devoted to e-sports and video gaming.
The First Hour
November 1, 2019 at 5:00 pm
The First Hour is a video game information program hosted by Adam Savage and Anthony Richardson. The two men play and discuss video games. During this episode, they play a game called Gears 5 which is part of the Gears of War series of games. It is a third-person shooter game. The game itself is shown on screen while Savage and Richardson play it, including the sometimes gory and bloody images when a character is killed, such as a dramatic decapitation.
Super Channel was unable to provide the first part of this broadcast; the CBSC therefore has no information about the advisory and classification for this episode.
At one point, a character in the game is heard shouting “one by fucking one!” Savage and Richardson comment, “There’s swearing” and “Very sweary”.
Also during this episode, there is a commercial break featuring a promotional spot for the dramatic program Berlin Station. It contains a scene of a man hitting another man over the back of the head and someone saying “We’re up to our fucking eyeballs in some serious shit”.
Squad
November 14, 2019 at 1:10 pm
Squad is a magazine-style talk show about e-sports and video gaming hosted by Lisa Doan, Brody Moore and Ajay Fry. They review games, and discuss e-sports events, gaming culture and other topics of interest to their audience.
The episode was rated 18A and was preceded by the following viewer advisory:
This program may contain strong language, flashing images, and scenes of threat and violence that may not be suitable for younger viewers.
The advisory was not repeated coming out of program breaks.
During a segment in which the hosts present user-generated videos, there was one video showing a man unsuccessfully performing a card trick in which the word “fuck” was uttered twice, and another user-generated video in which a commentator says “That’s fucked up”.
GINX Plays
November 14, 2019 at 3:00 pm
GINX Plays is a program on which gamers play a video game. The game itself usually takes up most of the screen with smaller boxes at the top showing the individual players’ faces. Many games periodically feature words on the screen to explain what is happening or caption the dialogue of the game characters. The players and usually one other person are heard giving commentary while they play.
Super Channel was unable to provide the first part of this broadcast; the CBSC therefore has no information about the advisory and classification for this episode.
In this episode, two young men are playing a game involving shooting zombies. There is considerable blood and gore when zombies are killed.
To express frustration about the game, the players utter “Fuckin’ hell” and “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” At one point, there are also words on the screen that read “If I die in a fucking hallucination because I ran out of bullets [...]”.
THE DECISION
The English-Language Panel examined the complaints under the following provisions of the Industry Code of Programming Standards and Practices governing Pay, Pay-Per-View and Video-on-Demand Services, The Pay Television and Pay-Per-View Programming Code regarding Violence, and the CBSC Broadcaster Associates Manual:
Industry Code of Programming Standards and Practices governing Pay, Pay-Per-View and Video-on-Demand Services
A. Introduction
2. Programming Provided by Licensees of Pay Television Programming Undertakings
Licensed pay television, pay-per-view ("PPV") and video-on-demand ("VOD") services in Canada are committed to the presentation of programming that is well balanced, of high quality, and of interest to a wide number of Canadians. The programming so presented is intended to appeal to a variety of interests and tastes.
A major appeal of premium pay, PPV and VOD television services is the ability to see feature films and other programming material in their original theatrical form, uninterrupted by commercials.
Discretionary services including pay television, PPV and VOD services are distinguished from conventional television, as they require an affirmative decision by a subscriber to purchase and receive them on an unencrypted basis in the home. As discretionary services, pay television, PPV and VOD services have more latitude to program material that is intended for mature audiences than is the case with conventional television services.
[...]
Pay television and PPV/VOD licensees have a responsibility to ensure that the programming they provide is of high quality and meets general community standards within the context of a discretionary service.
Pay TV and PPV/VOD services are typically distributed in digital format, which requires digital set-top boxes at each subscriber's television set. Each set-top box has the capability of locking out programming by rating and by channel. This gives each Canadian home equipped with digital service the capability of precluding reception of unwanted programming.
B. Selection of programs
4. Basis of Discretion
The discretion of programming personnel will be exercised responsibly and in good taste. In particular, no material shall be selected that is:
"Community standards" will necessarily change over time and therefore will be subject to continuing review and evaluation.
C. Classification and Viewer Advisories
1. Classifications
All full-length programs aired by pay and PPV/VOD licensees will be rated. Recognizing the differing jurisdictions of provincial classification/review boards across Canada, each pay television and PPV/VOD licensee will utilize the current classification system used by the classification/review board (the "Review Board") in the province in which the licensee's primary broadcast operations are based.
Programs that have been classified by the applicable provincial Review Board will attract the same classification by the pay or PPV/VOD licensee.
The licensee will classify any program that has previously not been classified by the Review Board, with a view to reflecting current community standards, using one or more of the following criteria:
These classifications will designate the intended audience (i.e. age group) for programming or a warning that the programming is not intended for a specific age group.
Moreover, if the date of a Board classification exceeds five years from the proposed air date of the program, the licensee will have the discretion to re-classify the program with a view to reflecting current community standards, using one or more of the criteria set out in (i-ii), above.
2. Viewer Advisories
While a classification is given to a program based on its overall impact, descriptive viewer advisories will be provided to alert subscribers to the fact that the titles contain scenes with specific content, such as "violence" or "horror" which may cause concern for subscribers. Classifications and Advisories will appear in written and spoken form at the beginning of every aired title that is not suitable for viewing by children. Advisories will also appear as part of the written descriptions given for all titles exhibited on the service, as published in the subscribers’ monthly guide. All media are provided with any viewer advisories assigned to a program along with the program’s classification.
D. Programming Matters
1. Violence
All pay and PPV/VOD services shall be governed by the Pay Television and Pay-per-view Programming Code Regarding Violence (the "Violence Code").
E. Scheduling of Programming
1. Pay Television Services
a) Programming Content intended for a general audience
Pay television services generally schedule fewer programs per month than conventional television services, but such programs are repeated more frequently to suit the convenience of the schedules of pay television subscribers.
At the same time, licensees of pay television services, as distinguished from PPV or VOD services, are sensitive to the concerns expressed by some that mature material should not be scheduled in periods when school-age children are home. There may also be certain mature material on pay television services that should not be programmed prior to 9:00 p.m. or after 6:00 a.m. in the home province of the service in question.
Licensees of pay television services will exercise particular care for all time periods in the scheduling of programs that are likely to be considered as not suitable for viewing in a family context.
The Pay Television and Pay-Per-View Programming Code regarding Violence
1.0 Content
1.1 Pay and pay-per-view licensees shall not air programming which:
(“Gratuitous” means material which does not play an integral role in developing the plot, character or theme of the material as a whole)
3.0 Scheduling
Subscription pay television services will not air scenes of violence intended for adult audiences prior to 9:00 p.m. or after 6:00 a.m. in the home province of the service in question.
4.0 Classification/Ratings and Advisories
4.1 Licensees will adopt the current ratings supplied by the Classification/Censor/Review Boards of their home province. Programming which is classified/rated by the applicable Provincial Board will attract the identical classification/rating by the pay or pay-per-view licensee. Any programming not classified/rated by the applicable Provincial Board will be classified in a manner consistent with the guidelines in effect for that Provincial Board.
4.2 All ratings will designate the intended audience (ie: age group) for programming or a warning that the programming is not intended for a specific age group.
[...]
4.4 Where a Provincial Board rating may be obsolete (i.e. rated more than 10 years prior to the current year), the film will be evaluated using the current practices of the applicable Provincial Board.
[...]
4.6 Viewer advisories and ratings will appear "on-air", in both written and spoken forms, in all programming not suitable for children.
[Note: The home province of Super Channel is Ontario.]
CBSC Broadcaster Associates Manual
Responsibilities of Participation in CBSC
Broadcasters who become CBSC Broadcaster Associates agree to:
[...]
b) submit a CBSC Broadcaster Associate registration form and a participation agreement form for each station in order to become a CBSC Broadcaster Associate. Broadcasters must notify the CBSC of any changes to the information provided in their original registration forms;
[...]
i) keep official logger files/recordings of challenged broadcasts and provide those recordings to the CBSC when requested
[...]
Logger Files
What are Logger Files?
Logger files are copies of exactly what was broadcast. The CBSC sometimes also calls them “logger tapes”, “logger recordings”, “loggers” or similar variations.
Logger files contain everything that was broadcast, including the program itself as well as any commercials, bumpers, promotional spots, viewer advisories, classification icons, etc. Television loggers also often contain a time code somewhere on the screen that indicates the precise time at which the content was aired. Screener tapes, unedited footage, edit packs or other incomplete copies of the broadcast are not the equivalent of loggers because they do not contain everything exactly as it was broadcast. The CBSC requires official logger files for its review purposes, but it does accept other versions of the content if the loggers are really no longer available. In such circumstances, however, the CBSC might find a broadcaster in violation of its Broadcaster Associate responsibilities for failing to retain and provide official logger copies.
Logger File Retention Time Period
Both CRTC regulations and CBSC Broadcaster Associate responsibilities require conventional radio, conventional television, and discretionary television stations to keep official logger files of all their programming for 28 days following the broadcast. [...]
CBSC Requests to Broadcasters to Conserve Loggers
When the CBSC receives a Code-Relevant and Specific complaint [...], the first thing the CBSC does is send a written message to the Logger Contact person at the station, with copies to any other people designated as Contacts for that station, asking the station to hold the loggers of the broadcast(s) in question. Broadcasters should conserve the entire broadcast regardless of how long it is, unless the complaint is about a clearly distinct segment broadcast within a much longer program. The CBSC requires the entire broadcast for its review because the context of the content is very important in its assessment of a complaint. Also, the CBSC can examine the whole broadcast in light of all broadcast codes, not just the specific concerns raised in the complaint.
[...]
The station must confirm in writing to the CBSC that the loggers have been retained and will, therefore, not be recycled or destroyed. The station should send this written confirmation within five (5) business days and definitely before the 28-day logger retention period has expired.
Broadcasters must preserve loggers for longer than 28 days when requested by the CBSC. Broadcasters must continue to preserve the loggers until the CBSC tells them the loggers can be destroyed. Because the CBSC process takes time, it can be months before a broadcaster receives notice from the CBSC that any loggers held pursuant to complaints are no longer needed.
[...]
Unavailability of Logger Files
Both CRTC regulations and CBSC Broadcaster Associate responsibilities require conventional radio, conventional television, and discretionary television stations to keep official logger files of all their programming for 28 days following the broadcast. [...].
There are various reasons that logger files might be unavailable within the required time period: a broadcaster cannot find the logger files when the CBSC first asks for the loggers to be preserved; a broadcaster cannot find the preserved loggers once the CBSC asks for them to actually be sent to it; or a broadcaster realizes that the logger files do not contain the programming that it actually intended to preserve for the CBSC complaint. This unavailability could be the result of human error, misunderstanding or technological failure.
If the official loggers are not available for the CBSC’s review, the CBSC requests from the broadcaster alternate versions of or information about the broadcast, such as screener tapes, raw footage, written transcripts or the like so that the CBSC has at least some indication of what was broadcast. The provision of this information may allow the CBSC to rule on the actual substance of the complaint. It is possible that no other documents of this sort are available, in which case, the CBSC will not be able to rule on the substance of the complaint.
In either case, the CBSC assesses the broadcaster’s failure to conserve loggers as required by CBSC Broadcaster Associate responsibilities. The CBSC has stated in previous decisions that the obligation to conserve loggers upon CBSC request is an obligation of result, not one of best efforts. The CBSC has the ability to find a breach of Associate responsibilities for failure to conserve loggers and has done so in previous decisions. Alternatively, the CBSC might issue just a warning in this regard, depending on the circumstances.
The Panel of Adjudicators read all of the correspondence and viewed the aforementioned challenged broadcasts. This decision involves eight different broadcasts on Super Channel Vault, Super Channel Fuse and GINX eSports TV Canada including feature films and programs devoted to e-sports and video gaming. This was a very detailed complaint as it included precise times and detailed descriptions for each of the instances that were of concern. As mentioned above, Super Channel failed to provide complete official recordings for Friday the 13th: Part VII, The First Hour and GINX Plays as required by its responsibilities of participation in the CBSC. The Panel concludes that each of the broadcasts breached one or more of the aforementioned code provisions. More detail is provided below.
The questions put to the Panel were:
Provision of Logger Files
Did the broadcaster breach its responsibility of CBSC participation to provide logger files of challenged programming by failing to provide the official logger for Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood, and the full loggers for The First Hour and GINX Plays?
In December 2019, Super Channel confirmed that it had the loggers for the eight subject broadcasts. Then in January 2020, Super Channel informed the CBSC that it did “not have the first parts of The First Hour or Ginx Plays” and that the logger for Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood was missing. Instead, Super Channel provided a copy of the broadcast file for Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood. No explanation was given by Super Channel as to why it could no longer provide the full loggers for those three subject broadcasts.
In addition, many of the loggers provided by Super Channel were of such substandard quality that it was very difficult for the Panel to review and assess the programs under review.
Moreover, there was a delay in securing all the loggers as the CBSC did not have up-to-date contact information for complaints lodged against Super Channel. The CBSC registration form requires each station to provide the names and email addresses of at least two individuals who will be copied on all CBSC correspondence.
The CBSC Broadcaster Associates Manual is both clear and unequivocal on what constitutes a logger file and the reasons why the CBSC requests broadcasters to conserve such loggers.
The CBSC Broadcaster Associates Manual states as follows:
Broadcasters should conserve the entire broadcast regardless of how long it is, unless the complaint is about a clearly distinct segment broadcast within a much longer program. The CBSC requires the entire broadcast for its review because the context of the content is very important in its assessment of a complaint. Also, the CBSC can examine the whole broadcast in light of all broadcast codes, not just the specific concerns raised in the complaint.
[…]
Broadcasters must preserve loggers for longer than 28 days when requested by the CBSC. Broadcasters must continue to preserve the loggers until the CBSC tells them the loggers can be destroyed. Because the CBSC process takes time, it can be months before a broadcaster receives notice from the CBSC that any loggers held pursuant to complaints are no longer needed.
When Super Channel failed to provide the logger for Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood and incomplete loggers for The First Hour and Ginx Plays, it prevented the Panel from assessing whether all appropriate advisories or ratings were used and whether all of the issues raised did in fact constitute a breach of a code.
Although the CBSC Broadcaster Associates Manual does not state what level of quality is expected of the loggers submitted, the Panel considers that, at a very minimum, the loggers submitted to the CBSC should offer video and audio quality that mirrors what was broadcast. At the very least, the logger should represent a clear and intelligible audio-visual recording of the programming as required under the applicable broadcasting regulations. Many of the loggers provided were barely intelligible audio-visual recordings.
Super Channel did not offer any justifications for its failure to provide complete official loggers for three of the broadcasts. The Panel can see no justification for the failure to do so in the present circumstances. Proper resolution of complaints require that broadcasters meet at a minimum their logger requirements. This is fundamental to the CBSC process.
In a previous decision on the broadcaster’s responsibility to provide logger files of challenged programming, namely, CJSB re The Wendy Daniels Show (CBSC Decision 92/93-0219, February 15, 1994), the CBSC stated that:
It is clear that the standard of the CBSC in this regard is no more or less stringent than that to which the broadcaster must adhere as a part of its responsibility under the Broadcasting Act and Regulations. There was no justifiable explanation proffered by the broadcaster for the loss of the tapes, whose retention ought to have been viewed as a matter of considerable responsibility for it.
Generally, where a broadcaster has long-standing experience with logger responsibilities and no explanation is provided for the failure to provide the loggers or the explanation is that best efforts were made to secure the loggers, the CBSC has found a breach of broadcasters’ responsibilities of participation in the CBSC. In CKNW-AM re the Peter Warren Show (Logger Tapes) (CBSC Decision 98/99-0643, May 9, 2000) the Panel stated that “its expectation is one of result, not of best efforts”:
Barring a natural catastrophe of the nature of a fire, broadcasters must retain and provide the tapes which are the essence of the self-regulatory, and regulatory, investigations. The failure to comply constitutes a breach of the one of the broadcaster's fundamental obligations as a member of the CBSC.
The Panel therefore concludes that Super Channel breached its responsibilities of participation in the CBSC by failing to provide adequate loggers upon request. In addition, the Panel reminds Super Channel that the loggers submitted to the CBSC must, at a minimum, represent a clear and intelligible audio-visual recording of the programming as required under the applicable broadcasting regulations. Finally, the CBSC wishes to remind all broadcasters to keep their contact information up to date to ensure that the CBSC complaints process proceeds without delay or interruption.
Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood
Did the film Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
Although the Panel agrees that the film Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood did not contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code, the reasons for this conclusion do differ in some respects as detailed below.
Under the Pay TV Programming Code, pay TV licensees must not broadcast material that is “offensive to general community standards”. The CBSC has applied this code provision in only one previous decision (HBO Canada re Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (CBSC Decision 11/12-2012, December 13, 2012). That documentary series covered the story of three young men convicted of murdering three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas in the 1990s. The film included video footage of the discovery of the naked, bruised bodies in a wooded area. One of the bodies was castrated. During footage of the court trials and during a press conference held to announce subsequent forensic developments in the case there were also photographs of and detailed discussions about the state of the bodies. The Panel did not find a breach of the applicable pay TV code provision:
The Panel fully acknowledges that the visual images of the young boys’ dead bodies were distressing and disturbing, as were the verbal descriptions of the state of the bodies. Indeed, the film as a whole explores controversial and difficult subject matter which could be unsettling to some viewers. Although it may not have been absolutely necessary to show as much detail about the bodies as the film did, those images and descriptions were relevant to the story being told because they demonstrated the severity of the crimes and underscored the tragedy that befell the boys. In that sense, the images were not gratuitous, nor were they exploitative of the deceased boys. Inclusion of the images also did not violate any laws or regulations and were not offensive to general community standards.
In assessing what material may constitute material that is “offensive to general community standards”, the Panel considered a report commissioned by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regarding community content standards (Community Content Standards and OTT Providers: Potential Challenges and Approaches, Final Report submitted to the CRTC March 23, 2012). The Report notes that Canada has developed among the most comprehensive set of broadcasting standards in the world through a series of codes that were developed with the input of broadcasters, community representatives and legal experts, and which is modified over time to reflect an expanding and evolving Canadian broadcasting system.
More importantly, the Report states that, together, classification ratings, advisories and the Watershed hour combine as the most “visible” of community standards. It also states that the administration of the broadcast codes is complex, requiring the delicate application of balance between evolving community standards and subjective taste – without resorting to censorship.
On the matter of community standards, the Panel (save S. Crawford) also considered how the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) dealt with the notion of “community standards”. In R. v. Labaye (2005) 3 S.C.R. 728, the SCC examined the concept of community standards in the context of the Criminal Code and the question of whether group sex in a private club constituted an indecent act. The majority of the SCC considered criminal legislation and indecency in societal norms and adopted a test based on the community standard of tolerance. The majority decision of the Court stated that “although a certain degree of subjectivity is inherent in the establishment of the standard of tolerance because of the judge’s role as interpreter of the community’s minimum standards regarding sex, the analysis remains objective as long as the judge ignores his or her personal convictions and instead tries to determine the nature of the social consensus.” The majority decision considered that the appropriate question in order to determine if an act was indecent was as follows:
“Do the impugned acts offend the standard of tolerance of the contemporary Canadian community, having regard to the place and context in which they occurred?” The following contextual factors may be considered in determining the standard of tolerance: (1) the private or public nature of the place; (2) the type of participants and the composition of the audience; (3) the nature of the warning given regarding the acts; (4) the measures taken to limit access to the place; (5) the commercial nature of the place and the acts; (6) the purpose of the acts; (7) the conduct of the participants; and (8) harm suffered by the participants. Regarding this last factor, attention must be paid to the risk of physical or psychological harm. This approach permits the risk of spreading sexually transmitted diseases to be taken into account. Finally, the consent of the participants or the fact that those present are informed adults is not in itself a determinative factor. A consensual sexual act that is totally acceptable in one situation may be indecent if it is performed in another context. It is the tolerance of the general public that counts, not the tolerance of the participants or spectators.
The majority decision of the SCC is clear that it is the standards of the community as a whole and not the standards of a small segment which must be considered. In fact, the test is a standard of tolerance, not taste. Accordingly, the test is not what Canadians think is right for themselves to see. What matters is what Canadians would not abide other Canadians seeing because it would be beyond the contemporary Canadian standard of tolerance to allow them to see it. Although the context of the SCC is different from the case at hand where the question requires a determination of whether a film broadcast on Canadian television includes content that is “offensive to general community standards”, since the concept of “community standards” is not defined in the Pay TV Programming Code, the Panel (save S. Crawford) considers that the manner in which the majority of the SCC dealt with the concept of “community standards” is both relevant and a helpful tool in making a determination under the Pay TV Programming Code.
For her part, S. Crawford believes that the Panel should not be relying on the majority SCC decision in how to interpret “community standards” under the Pay TV Programming Code. S. Crawford subscribes to the minority decision in the SCC decision for R. v. Labaye and particularly where the minority decision states that the majority’s definition for indecency was “neither desirable nor workable”, since it did not follow certain precedent and it discarded the contextual analysis of the Canadian community standard of tolerance. She agrees with the minority opinion when they said that the screening out of people who did not want to see the sexual conduct was not rigorous enough, and that “The community does not tolerate the performance of acts of this nature in a place of business to which the public has easy access.” In her view, Canadian television is a platform where there is easy public access and it is a platform subject to certain standards to ensure that the content made available meets the high standard established under the Broadcasting Act. Accordingly, S. Crawford considers that, in the pay TV context, with appropriate advisories and clarification of the nature of the film content then it is possible for a film to accord with community standards.
Friday the 13th is a series of horror movies about a psychotic killer named Jason Voorhees who wears a hockey mask on his killing rampages around Crystal Lake where he was believed to have died as a child. This style of movie, which some people term “slasher flicks”, includes considerable blood, gore, and explicit depictions of actual violent acts, particularly when compared to the horror movies of preceding eras and other types of horror subgenres. The slasher subgenre, including the Friday the 13th series, was nevertheless widely distributed and became very popular when it was introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Panel (save S. Crawford) believes that its wide and continued acceptance by filmgoers and television viewers is indicative of its tolerability under broad community standards.
As indicated earlier, Super Channel was unable to provide the official logger for this broadcast and, therefore, the video file did not contain any rating or advisory. The Panel has already concluded that Super Channel breached its responsibilities of participation in the CBSC by failing to provide an adequate logger upon request for Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood.
In this instalment of the Friday the 13th franchise, the killing rampage continues and the film includes much violence and even extreme violence consistent with the “slasher flick” model. There are some scenes with nudity and sexual activity; there are also multiple uses of the word “fuck” and the word “cunt” is used once. This movie focuses on the violence and gore as the plot line is essentially the horror of Jason’s latest killing spree.
The Panel recognizes that Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood does include frightening and intense scenes with much violence and gore. However, these scenes are all relevant to the plot. In this film, there are some scenes with nudity and sexual activity and the film does include multiple instances of coarse language. Notwisthanding this, the Panel considers that this movie does not contain material offensive to general community standards. The Panel (save S. Crawford) are of the view that horror movies, including “slasher flicks”, are widely tolerated and generally available in Canadian society. However, S. Crawford does not accept the argument that because a film is theatrically released and widely available means that it meets the notion of “community standards” acceptable for Canadian television. She considers this film acceptable to community standards in the pay TV context in which it was offered.
The Panel also agrees with the Report to the CRTC on community standards in that, together, classification ratings, advisories and the Watershed hour combine as the most “visible” of community standards. The general community standard is not meant to act as a censorship tool. With the appropriate advisories and classification, a wide array of programming, including horror movies or “slasher flicks”, forms part of the Canadian broadcasting landscape.
Did the scenes of sexuality and nudity in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
The Pay TV Programming Code provides more latitude to pay TV services with respect to programming intended for mature audiences. Nevertheless, it does contain a provision which restricts material to the “Watershed” period of 9:00 pm to 6:00 am. Although the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics (which is applicable to conventional television and other discretionary services not designated as “pay”) specifically identifies “sexually explicit material” and “coarse or offensive language”, the Pay TV Programming Code uses the vaguer term “certain mature material”.
The subject provision was considered in HBO Canada re Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (CBSC Decision 11/12-2012, December 13, 2012). Although there was no sexual activity in that film, there were disturbing images of castration which related to the suspected sexual nature of the crimes. The CBSC has said with respect to sexual content examined under the CAB Code of Ethics that explicit sexual material must only be aired between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am. The term “explicit” has been defined as material that depicts actual sexual activity, whether nudity is present or not. A case in point is Showcase Television re the movie Rats (CBSC Decision 99/00-0772, August 23, 2001) where a movie broadcast at 7:00 pm included two scenes involving sexual activity but no nudity. The Panel found that the scenes were intended for adult audiences:
[I]t is sexual activity and not nudity that drives the “adult” characterization. It is entirely clear that a scene may be sufficiently sexually explicit without nudity that it ought to be accessible to adults to the exclusion of younger family members. The Panel considers that the second love-making scene in Rats, which lasted for 1 minute and 25 seconds, falls into that category. It is not merely a romantic encounter or suggestive. It is erotic, actively demonstrative, extended, and climactic. It is inappropriate for airing at 7 pm.
A movie which featured numerous instances of the f-word as well as many scenes of frontal nudity of both men and women in a sexual context was determined to be content intended for adult audiences (Bravo! re the movie Perfect Timing (CBSC Decision 03/04-1719, December 15, 2004)):
[…] the Panel considers that the frequent level of sexual activity, combined with yet more frequent nudity, make it clear that the film was exclusively intended for adult audiences. The fact that the film could be categorized as romp, rather than a serious erotic film changes nothing in this regard. The material is inappropriate for viewing at a time of day when the younger members of families can be expected to be watching television and when the more adult members of families can expect that this can be done without the need to ensure that there will not be exclusively adult fare on the airwaves.
Detailed verbal descriptions of sexual activity are also considered explicit. In CHFD-TV re the documentary Dirty Business: Sex, Thighs and Videotape (CBSC Decision 04/05-1580, December 15, 2005), the Panel reviewed a documentary about the adult entertainment industry which aired at 1:00 pm. The program consisted primarily of interviews with fully clothed individuals, but it also contained some clips from pornographic movies, photographs from websites and footage taken at a sex trade show. Women were frequently shown in lingerie or other skimpy clothing, touching and flaunting their bodies for the camera. Images showing bare breasts or genitalia were blurred and no shots of sexual intercourse were shown. The Panel determined that given the program’s overall sexual theme, it should have aired after 9:00 pm and before 6:00 am:
[…] there is no mathematical formula applicable to such programming. It is not the presence or absence of scenes involving intercourse or other advanced sexual activity. It relates more to the balance of explicitness and subtlety or innuendo, the nature of the activities, the force or power of the sexuality or eroticism, the adult orientation of the content, the duration and/or frequency of the sexual activities, to some extent the context, and the overall confluence of such considerations.
Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood includes scenes of nudity and some sexual activity. These scenes are limited in duration and both the nudity and sexuality are relatively mild and are not meant to titillate. In the Panel’s view, none of these scenes are explicit in that they are not erotic, actively demonstrative, extended, and climactic. Accordingly, the Panel does not consider that the scenes of nudity and sexual activity included in this film were contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
Did the presence of the words “fuck” and “cunt” in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
The Pay TV Programming Code acknowledges that pay services have more latitude with respect to programming intended for mature audiences and this is largely in recognition of the fact that pay TV services are fully discretionary services and were originally licensed as a vehicle to bring a wide range of feature films and other programming in their original theatrical form to the television screen.
As mentioned above, nonetheless, the pay TV code contains a provision restricting mature material to the period between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am. This is the same “Watershed” period applicable to conventional television and discretionary services in the CAB Code of Ethics. The CAB Code of Ethics specifically identifies “sexually explicit material” and “coarse or offensive language” while the Pay TV Programmming Code uses the term “certain mature material”.
In determining whether the content of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” was used throughout the film and the word “cunt” used once.
The CBSC has consistently said, with few exceptions that do not apply in this case, that “fuck” and its variations and the word “cunt” must only be broadcast between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am. The broadcaster can air the program but it must either edit the words out, or leave them unedited and restrict the broadcast to after 9:00 pm but before 6:00 am. (See the following decisions where the CBSC has established and applied this principle: Showcase Television re the movie Destiny to Order (CBSC Decision 00/01-0715, January 16, 2002); WTN re the movie Wildcats (CBSC Decision 00/01-0964, January 16, 2002); Showcase Television re the movie Frankie Starlight (CBSC Decision 02/03-0682, January 30, 2004); Bravo! re the movie Ordinary People (CBSC Decision 03/04-1187, December 15, 2004); Bravo! re the film RKO 281 (CBSC Decision 04/05-0584, July 20, 2005); BITE TV re The Conventioneers (CBSC Decision 10/11-0627, July 12, 2011)).
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the words “fuck” and “cunt” before the Watershed period in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
Dissenting Opinion of P. Gratton and S. Crawford
With regards to the use of the words “fuck” and “cunt” in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood, we consider that the CBSC is out of touch with community standards of what constitutes appropriate and acceptable mature material for broadcast purposes especially in relation to the use of coarse or offensive language on a pay TV service. The reality is that many theatrically released movies contain coarse and offensive language and they receive a PG rating. This is not to say that we condone the airing of this film prior to 9:00 pm, but simply that the use of the words “fuck” and “cunt” in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood was not contrary to Article E(1) of the Pay TV Programming Code. Simply put, the use of the words “fuck” and “cunt” is something that should be reconsidered by CBSC panels as they apply the codes in light of evolving social habits, mores and values. The use of “fuck” has become almost ubiquitous in pop culture and it no longer has the same negative connotation without any consideration to context that would justify a finding of a breach in the circumstances.
In the context of the movie Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood, the use of the word “cunt” once does not, in our view, breach Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code. When it comes to coarse and offensive language, P. Gratton is of the view that this type of content, when present throughout a movie, should attract a higher rating and such higher ratings will inevitably lead to this content having to be aired during the “Watershed” period. P. Gratton also considers that the broadcaster should not have to count the number of times coarse or offensive language is used in a movie or program in order to determine whether there could be a breach of the code dealing with mature material, especially in the context of pay TV. S. Crawford believes that this film should have been aired after 9:00 pm but not because of the utterances of the word “fuck” or “cunt”. She considers that, in determining whether coarse language constitutes mature material that should only be aired after 9:00 pm, one needs to make a qualitative rather than a quantitative judgment. A qualitative judgment requires understanding the context of the use of the coarse language and whether in and of itself, it constitutes mature material that should only air after 9:00 pm.
Both dissenters are generally of the view to let the higher rating along with the viewer advisories deal with the issue of coarse and offensive language.
Did Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood contain gratuitous violence under Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
The provision prohibiting gratuitous violence contained in the Pay TV Violence Code is identical to the provision found in the CAB Violence Code which applies to conventional and discretionary television services.
The CBSC has applied this code provision of the Pay TV Violence Code in only one previous decision (HBO Canada re Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (CBSC Decision 11/12-2012, December 13, 2012). The Panel concluded that the film in that case did not contain any gratuitous violence because the violent content was relevant to the story.
When analyzing the context of a pay TV service, it is worth considering precedents taken under the CAB Violence Code as the provision wording is the same as what is found in the Pay TV Violence Code.
The CBSC first considered the meaning of gratuitous violence in CITY-TV re Silence of the Lambs (CBSC Decision 94/95-0120, August 18, 1995). In that decision, the CBSC Panel stated:
Gratuitous violence is defined by the Code as being “material which does not play an integral role in developing the plot, character or theme of the material as a whole.” Where, in other words, a program includes scenes of violence which are unnecessary to the progress of the story, which do not drive the plot forward, which play no role in the development or definition of the characters and are clearly serving a sensationalistic purpose, that program will be seen to contain gratuitous violence.
Programming which “sanctions, promotes or glamorizes violence” is, with the possible exception of the meaning of “sanctions”, more straightforward. While the Council understands that the verb “sanction” may have several meanings, an ordinary rule of interpretation would give it that meaning which is consistent with its accompanying verbs “promotes or glamorizes” and not a meaning which differs from those. […] ”Glamorize” is presumably a slang corruption of “glamour” and does not make it to the O.E.D. [Oxford English Dictionary], but we all would likely understand from the use of all three verbs encourage, if not glorify, the use of violence. The CBSC does not expect that any use of violence in programing will offend the Code but only that which encourages violence in the sense of the quoted phrase.
The foregoing descriptions will always need to be measured against the content of a challenged program and the Council expects that these general terms will only come to be fully understood when sufficient examples will have been considered.
It was the view of the Ontario Regional Council that the broadcast version of Silence of the Lambs neither contained gratuitous violence nor sanctioned, promoted or glamorized violence.
[…] Although the viewer learns of murders which have previously been committed, the only homicides seen to occur during the film are those connected with the escape of Lecter from custody. There is also a kidnapping and, ultimately, the shooting of Buffalo Bill by S/Agent Starling. The Council did not consider that the film was afflicted by considerable violence. It also viewed the violence present as integral to the development of plot and character.
Given that the violence in the film is all perpetrated by unattractive sociopathic characters, the Council did not consider that there was any glamorization of violence in Silence of the Lambs.
In CIHF-TV (MITV) re an episode of Millenium (CBSC Decision 96/97-0044, February 14, 1997), the Panel recognized that the program contained scenes in which the murderer imagined slaying a stripper and in which the murderer, after cruising for male prostitutes, took a dead body from his car. That body was later shown charred and decapitated. Although there was no finding of Code violation, the Panel acknowledged that this broadcast would not be suitable for everyone:
That is not, however, the point of television programming, which ought to be diverse and directed at different groups and tastes. Freedom of expression in our democracy carries with it the burden that there will be things expressed which not everyone will wish to hear. That being said, that freedom is not without its limits.
As in the case of Silence of the Lambs, the theme of this episode of Millenium involves a psychopathic serial killer and the attempts to put an end to his homicidal activities. While violence is central to the tale being recounted, the underlying saga is that of a former law enforcement official with psychic powers who is attempting to restructure his family life away from threats he and his family had suffered in the “backstory”, i.e. the time prior to the beginning of the first episode of the series. Such violence as occurs in the episode is central to the plot and character of the principal protagonist. Furthermore, the scenes complained of do not generally show the occurrence of violent acts as much as they do the results of the violent acts and, at that, the violence is not overplayed. There is also violent imagery and effective editing which give rise to fear, if not terror, on the part of the viewer. These are a part of a genre which is aimed at adult audiences but which does not per se fall afoul of the interdiction against gratuitous violence.
In CTV re Poltergeist – The Legacy (CBSC Decisions 96/97-0017 & -0030, May 8, 1997), the Panel did not share the complainants’ perspective regarding the extent or role of the scenes containing violent elements and did not find that the movie contained gratuitous violence or that it sanctioned, promoted or glamorized violence:
The movie Poltergeist – The Legacy contains many scenes with violent elements. In one scene, a woman who had been chased by an evil force was then seen following her transformation into a scarecrow. In another, a man is seen being shot and killed by his son. Some of the more graphic and disturbing scenes include that of another man being shot, eaten by maggots and instantaneously decomposing and that of a priest stabbing a woman (with whom he has previously had a love relationship) who is then transformed into a young boy child. […] Essentially, Poltergeist – The Legacy tells the story of the release of evil incarnate into the world of the living and the fight of one small team of humans against this evil force. The Council is of the view that the violent scenes contained in this program were integral to the development of the plot of the story and therefore not gratuitous. In addition, given that the violence in the movie is perpetrated by or against the “evil incarnate”, the Council does not consider that there was any glamorization of violence.
In CTV re The Sopranos (CBSC Decision 00/01-0130+, March 8, 2001) the CBSC Panel determined that the violence depicted in a dramatic series about the mafia was not in breach of Article 1.0 of the CAB Violence Code:
While there is an undercurrent of the threat of violence, the quantity of on-screen violence in each episode is not significant. Of each 60+ minute show, there are not more than two scenes of violent action. That being said, when it occurs, the violent action tends to be graphic. Graphic true, perhaps because it is realistic in its presentation, but not excessive, and always contextual. The Panel considers that no act of violence in the episodes was dramatically unsubstantiated. In other words, every such act was contextual and had a clear role in the advancement of the plot or was “justified” (not, of course, in a societal legal context) by some previous action on the part of the victim. While such justification flows from the socially distorted rules of the Cosa Nostra or of Tony Soprano’s mob family in particular, the story knows no random acts of violence such as those in some dramas which may only be circularly justified by the fact that the perpetrators “enjoy” or thrive on such random acts.
It follows that, in terms of Article 1 of the Violence Code, none of the violence in the episodes under consideration is gratuitous. The Panel equally considers that none of it is glamorized. Where acts of violence occur, they are, as noted above, retributory. They tend to be brutal and sometimes the result of sheer anger on the part of the perpetrators that the victim has not respected the Soprano rules for which they are being punished. […] What glamour there is in their world flows from their power and the respect/fear which they generate from outsiders. There is no glamour in their retributory acts, not even by their own colleagues. If anything, there is periodic regret, which results from the inefficiency of being able to achieve the result of making money without the need to resort to such acts.
In CTV re The Eleventh Hour (“Hard Seven”) (CBSC Decision 03/04-1738, December 15, 2004) the Panel reviewed an episode of a dramatic series about investigative journalists which contained scenes of violence, including the results of a suicide by hanging, a man being beaten in prison, flashbacks of a prison rape and a man shooting another man dead. The Panel concluded that the violence was not gratuitous:
Whether violence is or is not gratuitous, of course, depends on an appreciation of the plot and character development in each program. In the matter at hand, […] the Panel finds that neither “act of violence […] was dramatically unsubstantiated. In other words, [each] such act was contextual and had a clear role in the advancement of the plot or was ‘justified’ (not, of course, in a societal legal context)” in the “rules” of prison conduct.
[…]
In the episode under consideration here, the Panel finds that the scene involving the suicide and the two scenes of prison violence were integral to the development of plot and character. […] [T]he acts of violence were relatively infrequent and contextual to both of the storylines. They were not, in that material sense, gratuitous.
In Global re 24 (Season 6, Episode “1:00-2:00pm”) (CBSC Decision 06/07-0713, November 29, 2007), the Panel reviewed a dramatic action program about the fictional Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) of the United States government. In the episode, a CTU agent with computer programming expertise refuses to comply with a terrorist who wants the CTU agent to activate nuclear bombs. The refusal leads to the CTU agent being tortured with a drill until he capitulates. The program also contains two other violent scenes in which individuals were shot dead, as well as a chaotic scene of gunfire and explosions when the CTU team burst into the terrorists’ hideaway. The Panel concluded that the scenes were not gratuitous under Article 1:
The Panel considers that “gratuitous violence” is an occasionally misunderstood term. It is essentially the equivalent of “unnecessary” violence, unnecessary, that is, with respect to the development of the plot, character or theme of the material as a whole. If the violent content does not fulfill one or more of those frequently related functions, and is thus not required to drive forward plot, theme or character, it will be understood by the Panel to be gratuitous. This is not to suggest that gratuitous violence is an unacceptable dramatic device in its place; it is only to say that that place is not on Canadian television. […]
The foregoing being said, it is also essential not to confuse gratuitous with gruesome. There may be violence that is difficult to watch because it is frank, graphic, harsh or gruesome. This does not lead inexorably to the conclusion that it does not serve a dramatic purpose. It is, in the end, the question of the role it plays in the drama that must be considered by the Panel in assessing the gratuitous nature of the violent content.
[…]
In the matter at hand, the Panel acknowledges the brutality of the use of a drill to inflict the tortuous technique. That it may cause viewers to cringe in empathetic pain does not render the tactic gratuitous. Inflicting pain as a device to convince recalcitrant individuals to bend to the will of the administrator is an old dramatic device, and one that is well within the dramatic rationale of the challenged episode of 24. That it is original and unusual does not change its nature as plot-justified. One might even argue that that very fact drives the character of Fayed as a sadistic, absolutely no-holds barred individual. The Panel also concludes that all of the other preceding aggressive or murderous acts play contributory roles in the plot development of what is an undeniably violent episode, or, not unimportantly, the chronologically-oriented series itself.
The CBSC made its first finding of gratuitous violence in CHCH-TV re the movie Strange Days (CBSC Decision 98/99-0043 & -0075, February 3, 1999). In that case, the Panel considered the violent content of the science-fiction movie Strange Days which was set in a futuristic Los Angeles, “marked by crumbling social order and scarred by crime, violence, poverty and racial conflict”. This movie tells the story of a man who attempts to find a killer who “records” his victims’ deaths on a virtual reality system which enables the user to “experience” what has happened. The film included a lengthy scene of the gruesome strangulation and rape of a woman. The Panel found that this scene “exceeded” in the television context what may have been necessary to advance the plot:
Whether the scene should have been as long (or longer) in the theatrical version is not at issue. For the television version, measured against industry Codes, it is the view of the Council that it could have been edited without sacrificing any artistic integrity, and ought to have been edited in order to be long enough to make its point but not so long as to amount to violence for violence’s sake.
In this context, the Panel had to grapple with the difficult question of the justification of what may otherwise be seen as excessive violence in a television program in which such violence is one of the premises of the film itself. It concluded that the argument was circular and could not be used as a defence to the charge of gratuitous violence:
The very difficult question for this Council is to determine whether the violent scenes portrayed in Strange Days are, like those in programs noted above, so integral to the development of the plot that they do not amount to gratuitous violence. The difficulty in this case, as in others which the Council anticipates will come before it at some point, is that violence is one of the premises of the film itself, which is set against the backdrop of Los Angeles, a city futuristically conceived as being under siege and, as described above, “marked by a crumbling social order and scarred by crime, violence, poverty and racial conflict.” To the extent that a program has violence as its fundamental premise, the question for the Council is to determine whether that premise alone will justify any and all portrayals of violence which the creators of the program might wish to include in it. To this circular argument, the Council must answer no. If this were the case, Article 1 would be rendered devoid of substance and the Panel cannot presume that this was the intention of the codifiers.
As stated earlier, the Panel recognizes that, as a “slasher flick”, Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood does include frightening and intense scenes and a substantial amount of violence and gore. However, these scenes are all relevant to the plot. Horror and especially the “slasher flick” genre is essentially driven by such scenes. The plot depends on including scenes that are intended to frighten and often disgust the audience. In other words, the violence and gore included in such movies is intended to create intense feelings of fright and revulsion. This movie had wide dissemination and, with its general community acceptance, it would be expected that pay TV would air such a movie as long as the broadcaster used the proper scheduling, ratings and advisories applicable to pay TV.
The Panel considers that all the violence is plot driven and is justified given the characters and the material as a whole. As such, the Panel concludes that the violence in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood is not “gratuitous” as contemplated under Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Did Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood contain scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast during the “Watershed” period under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
Where a program or film contains violence that is not gratuitous but is nevertheless intended for adult audiences, it must only be aired between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am. Even with the greater latitude given to pay TV services, the “Watershed” period for adult programming still applies.
The CBSC has only applied this provision once in relation to a pay TV service (HBO Canada re Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (CBSC Decision 11/12-2012, December 13, 2012). That documentary series covered the story of three young men convicted of murdering three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas in the 1990s. The film included video footage of the discovery of the naked, bruised bodies in a wooded area. One of the bodies was castrated. During footage of the court trials and during a press conference held to announce subsequent forensic developments in the case, there were also photographs of and detailed discussions about the state of the bodies. The majority of the Panel concluded that the film should only have been broadcast during the “Watershed” period due to the mature theme, and violent images and verbal descriptions.
Under the CAB Violence Code, the CBSC has explained that there is no mathematical formula for determining what exactly constitutes violent scenes “intended for adult audiences”, but that the amount of blood, gore, graphic-ness, fear and suspense will be factors, as well as the overall context and theme of the program.
In TQS re the movie L’inconnu (Never Talk to Strangers) (CBSC Decision 98/99-0176, June 23, 1999), the CBSC Panel found the scenes depicting violence and sexuality were intended for adult audiences:
In this case, the Council has no hesitation in concluding that the combined elements of fear, suspense, gore and explicitness, referred to in [a previous] decision, are present in at least the scenes showing the mutilated cat, the bloody writing on the wall and the final showdown where the psychiatrist kills her father and her lover. The Council considers that the presence of these elements, in combination with the overall suspenseful and frightening nature of the movie, renders the aforementioned scenes as “intended for adult audiences”.
In Showcase Television re the movie Destiny to Order (CBSC Decision 00/01-0715, January 16, 2002), the Panel reviewed a fantasy film aired at 2:00 pm which included violent scenes such as a biker whose throat is slit, a character being strangled to death by a coat hanger, and an attempt to burn someone at the stake who is instead shot in the head. The Panel concluded that the violence in the film constituted scenes intended for adult audiences and should have been aired during the “Watershed” period:
The Panel considers the scenes of violence described above as relevant to the development of the plot. None of those scenes was, therefore, gratuitous or problematic in terms of its presence in the film. That being said, the Panel does find that the violence was graphic and explicit and, consequently, intended for adult audiences […].
In CTV re an episode of Criminal Minds (“Omnivore”) (CBSC Decision 08/09-1405, June 25, 2009), the Panel dealt with an episode of a crime drama program involving a serial killer known as the Boston Reaper. The first murder occurred within five minutes into the episode. The Reaper struck a man in the face with a crowbar and slashed the throat of a young woman. Later in the program the Reaper stabbed a man and then shot the man’s wife in the head with a revolver. He then went on a shooting rampage on a city bus and wrote numbers on the bus window in blood. At the end of the episode, the Reaper was shown in his prison cell, slicing his wrists along his bed frame and drinking the blood. The episode was broadcast at 7:00 pm and the Panel concluded that the nature and amount of violence in this episode was definitely intended for adult audiences:
The violence is sufficiently frequent; there are no less than twelve individual murders committed, four of individuals in the driver or passenger seats of their cars, seven of persons on a bus, and one off-screen of a police officer. The killings are explicitly depicted, and for those not seen directly, the gory and grisly consequences are graphically displayed. There is tangible fear in the individuals about to meet their end, and short-term terror-provoking suspense in the viewer, awaiting those executions.
Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood was aired starting at 4:45 pm and includes a large number of violent and gory scenes. Although none of these scenes are gratuitous, they include scenes such as when Jason uses a spear to fling a dead man’s body away or throws an axe at a man which is followed by a close-up of the axe hitting the man in the head as he falls back. Blood splattering or dripping from wounds is common. The bodies of his victims are often discovered later hanging from or pinned to trees in macabre fashion; he shoves a horn noisemaker into the face of a female character; he also leaves a severed head in the teenagers’ cabin. Throughout the movie Jason is wearing dark, tattered clothing and the bones in his back are visible. His attacks are preceded by eerie sound effects that are the signature of this series. Jason himself is electrocuted, strangled, burned, shot and pierced with nails, and at one point his hockey mask comes off to reveal a horribly decayed face with greyish skin, bloodshot eyes, nostril holes with no nose and sparse, yellow, crooked teeth.
As explained earlier, the plot of horror movies and more particularly “slasher flicks” is driven through the inclusion of frightening and intense scenes peppered with violence and gore. In some instances, there may be some sex and nudity as well as coarse and offensive language as in the case of this Friday the 13th film. The Panel concludes that in Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood there are multiple scenes of violence and gore that are frightening and intense and are, therefore, intended for adult audiences. Although the violence is plot driven and justified given the characters and the material as a whole, the violence is explicit and graphic and should only be aired during the “Watershed” period. Accordingly, the Panel finds that Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood contains scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter
Did Saw 3D: The Final Chapter contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding community standards referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter is the seventh movie in the Saw horror film series and was theatrically released in 2010. The Saw series and other similar films that were introduced in the early 2000s again took horror to a new level. Combining elements of the slasher genre and what is known as the “splatter” genre, they focus primarily on the mutilation of human bodies, depicting such acts in full morbid detail from both a physical and psychological perspective. Like the slasher genre that came before it, Saw and its kind were widely distributed and became quite popular with some audiences, which the Panel considers (save S. Crawford) speaks to their acceptance within the broad definitions of tolerable community standards.
In this instalment of the franchise, two individuals compete to continue Jigsaw’s legacy of forcing people to undergo various elaborate torture traps to achieve rehabilitation from whatever problems they have. The torture and killing rampage seen throughout the film is graphic and, therefore, there is much violence and even extreme violence and gore consistent with this film genre. There are also multiple uses of the word “fuck”. This movie focuses on the violence and gore as the plot line is essentially the torture and killing that form part of the various elaborate torture traps set up during the entirety of the film. Accordingly, these extremely violent and disturbing scenes are all relevant to the plot.
The Panel recognizes that Saw 3D: The Final Chapter does include frightening and intense scenes with much violence and gore. There is no doubt that this is a very disturbing film.
The Panel considers that this movie does not contain material offensive to “general community standards” for the reasons set out above regarding “community standards” under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The general community standard is not meant to act as a censorship tool. With the appropriate advisories and classification, a wide array of programming including horror movies forms part of the Canadian broadcasting landscape.
Did the presence of the word “fuck” in Saw 3D: The Final Chapter constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”. The Panel also considers that a broadcast beginning before the Watershed hour of 9:00pm but ending after it must be treated like a pre-Watershed program throughout its duration. That is to say, even if the first part of the film was benign and all the mature material occurred after 9:00pm, the broadcast would still be deemed in breach of the scheduling provisions of the codes. This was not the case, however, with Saw 3D since coarse language was present close to its 8:08 pm start time.
In determining whether the content of Saw 3D: The Final Chapter breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” and its variations were used throughout the film.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fuck” in Saw 3D: The Final Chapter was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in Saw 3D.
Did Saw 3D: The Final Chapter contain gratuitous violence under Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding gratuitous violence referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The majority of the Panel, with one Adjudicator dissenting and another abstaining, recognizes that Saw 3D: The Final Chapter does include frightening and intense scenes, a substantial amount of violence and gore, and is very disturbing to watch. However, these disturbing and frightening scenes are all relevant to the plot. Horror films and especially this subgenre are essentially driven by such scenes. The plot depends on including scenes that are intended to frighten and disgust the audience. In other words, the violence and gore included in these movies is intended to create the intense feelings of terror and revulsion. As noted in one of the precedents cited above, it is essential not to confuse gratuitous with gruesome. The elaborate torture traps, and the maiming and murder that results, convey just how creatively sadistic the perpetrators are. Accordingly, in Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, all the violence is plot driven and is justified given the characters and the material as a whole. The violence is the “raison d’être” for the film. This movie had wide dissemination and with its general community acceptance it would be expected that pay TV would air such a movie as long as the broadcaster used the proper scheduling, ratings and advisories applicable to pay TV.
As such, the majority of the Panel concludes that the violence in Saw 3D: The Final Chapter is not “gratuitous” as contemplated under Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code. One Adjudicator, S. Crawford, abstained as she considers that this film fits both the definition of “gratuitous violence” as defined in the CBSC decisions that were referred to in the section of the decision dealing with “gratuitous violence” for the film Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood and it also meets the criteria for acceptable violent content cited in those same precedents. She considers that there is a paradox in trying to reconcile the fact that violence and gore, where it has a clear role in the advancement of the plot, is justified and where the plot line itself is gratuitous violence this can also be considered an acceptable dramatic device. Which is it? If the plot line is required but “gratuitous violence” can also be a dramatic device in its place, it is difficult and, in this case, not possible to make a determination one way or the other.
Dissenting Opinion of K. Gifford
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter is a film that contains “gratuitous violence” throughout contrary to Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code. From essentially the first to the last frame of the film there is relentless graphic violence and gore. In my opinion, the violence is “gratuitous” based on the CBSC precedents previously cited in this decision. The graphic violence does not have a clear role in the advancement of the plot; it is essentially the plot line of the film. The premise of the film is a series of explicit and violent torture traps and the gore is not only relentless but it increases throughout the movie. I do not consider that this series of explicit and violent torture traps is a legitimate dramatic device and certainly not one that should be seen on Canadian television services. To accept that this type of content can legitimately be shown on Canadian television services would mean that our Canadian broadcast standards would have no meaning since essentially anything could be aired. In my view, once you accept that Saw 3D: The Final Chapter can be aired then anything goes. Even though pay services were licensed to allow theatrical releases on Canadian television, standards were created to ensure that this broadcast platform would not necessarily broadcast any and all content that was theatrically released. Even with the appropriate advisories and ratings this type of content simply has no place on Canadian television services.
Did Saw 3D: The Final Chapter contain scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding violence intended for adult audiences referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”. The Panel also considers that a broadcast beginning before the Watershed hour of 9:00 pm but ending after it must be treated like a pre-Watershed program throughout its duration. That is to say, even if the first part of the film was benign and all the mature material occurred after 9:00 pm, the broadcast would still be deemed in breach of the scheduling provisions of the codes. This was not the case, however, with Saw 3D since extreme violence was present right from its very start at 8:08 pm.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter is essentially a series of disturbing, violent and gory scenes. Although the majority of the Panel has concluded that none of these scenes are gratuitous, there are many extremely violent, disturbing and gory scenes seen throughout the film. For example, two men are bound to a worktable with a circular saw in the middle and the woman who has been romantically deceiving them both is suspended from the ceiling. The men must choose whether to try to kill each other or let the woman fall onto the saw. They ultimately choose the latter with the saw going through her midsection as she screams and blood splatters all over the three of them.
Other scenes show: a man cauterizing his own bloody leg stump on a steam pipe; a dream sequence in which a female character is sliced in two; a man glued to a car seat who must tear his own skin in order to reach a lever to save his friends; a man’s arms and tongue being yanked out because they are tied to a moving car; a woman’s face being reduced to blood and tissue after a revolving car tire falls on it; a woman affixed to a human-sized hamster-like wheel being punctured in the eyes and mouth with spikes; another woman trapped in a different contraption who has her neck and head penetrated by spikes; police officers being riddled with bullets from a turret gun; and a man being hung from a warehouse ceiling.
A male character is forced to pry out two of his own teeth, puncture his pectoral muscles with hooks and hoist himself up on chains in order to connect two extension cords before a timer runs out; otherwise his wife will be killed. He fails his challenge and is forced to watch as his wife is burned alive inside a brazen bull torture device.
In the battle between Hoffman and Jigsaw’s ex-wife, the two engage in a lengthy, violent struggle at the police station, which culminates in Hoffman tying the woman to a chair, placing a reverse bear trap over her head and the giant claw of the trap snapping her face off, with blood and tissue flying. There is a close-up of the hole where her face was, with blood dripping from it.
After that, Hoffman is captured by another male character from the very first Saw movie who was forced to saw off his own foot to escape. It is revealed that this character had been helping Jigsaw all along. The male character shackles Hoffman inside the warehouse bathroom where he had been trapped, throws the handsaw out of Hoffman’s reach, turns off the lights, locks the door and leaves so that Hoffman will presumably die in the room.
As explained earlier, the plot of horror movies and more particularly this slasher-splatter subgenre is driven through the inclusion of frightening and intense scenes replete with violence and gore. In some instances, there may be some sex and nudity (though there was none in Saw 3D) as well as coarse and offensive language. The Panel concludes that there are multiple scenes of violence and gore that are frightening and intense and are, therefore, intended for adult audiences. Although the violence is plot driven and justified given the characters and the material as a whole, the violence is explicit and graphic and should only be aired during the “Watershed” period. Accordingly, the Panel finds that Saw 3D: The Final Chapter clearly contains scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Pet Sematary
Did Pet Sematary contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding community standards referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
Pet Sematary is a horror movie based on a Stephen King novel that had its theatrical release in 1989. The rating used by Super Channel was 18A and the advisory included mention of mature subject matter, violence and coarse language. Horror movies by their nature include frightening and intense scenes and very often violence and gore. Horror movies can also include sex, nudity and coarse language.
The Panel recognizes that Pet Sematary does include frightening and intense scenes and some violence and gore. However, these scenes are all relevant to the plot. Although there is no sex and nudity, the film does include some coarse language.
The Panel considers that this movie does not contain material offensive to general community standards for the reasons set out above regarding “community standards” under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The Panel also agrees with the Report to the CRTC on community standards in that, together, classification ratings, advisories and the Watershed hour combine as the most “visible” of community standards. The general community standard is not meant to act as a censorship tool. With the appropriate advisories and classification, a wide array of programming, including horror movies, forms part of the Canadian broadcasting landscape.
Did the presence of the word “fuck” in Pet Sematary constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
In determining whether the content of Pet Sematary breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” was used once.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fuck” in Pet Sematary was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in Pet Sematary.
Did Pet Sematary contain gratuitous violence under Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding gratuitous violence referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
As stated earlier, the Panel recognizes that Pet Sematary does include frightening and intense scenes and some violence and gore. However, these scenes are all relevant to the plot. The horror genre is essentially driven by such scenes. The plot depends on including scenes that are intended to frighten and often disgust the audience. The violence and gore included in such movies is intended to create intense feelings of fright. Pet Sematary, although of the horror genre, is certainly not one of the most intense versions. All the violence is plot driven and is justified given the characters and the material as a whole. As such, the Panel concludes that the violence in Pet Sematary is not “gratuitous” as contemplated under Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Did Pet Sematary contain scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding violence intended for adult audiences referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
Pet Sematary was aired starting at 10:45 am and includes a number of violent scenes. Although none of these scenes are gratuitous, they are violent and explicit and include a young man who has been hit by a truck being carried into a medical building with blood and tissue spilling out of a massive head wound. This character reappears throughout the movie as a ghost with his wounds still visible. There are also scenes of a suicide by hanging, a young woman with spinal meningitis who dies by prolonged choking (who also reappears as a ghost later in the film), and a young psychotic man gnawing on a bloody bone from a child’s leg and then gouging his own face with his fingers. In the lengthy climax, the resurrected toddler attacks and kills the neighbour with a scalpel, slicing his Achilles tendon and mouth, then gnawing on the neighbour’s neck. The toddler then attacks his own mother, whose body is later seen hanging from the attic opening. The toddler goes on to attack his father and there is a lengthy struggle with the toddler biting and slicing the father with the scalpel. The father eventually manages to inject the toddler in the neck with a syringe, causing the toddler to finally die. In the film’s final scene, the resurrected mother enters their home’s kitchen where the father is waiting for her. She is covered in blood and mud, and one eye socket is missing an eye, but has yellowish fluid oozing from it. As she and the father kiss passionately, she raises a large kitchen knife and the scene cuts to black as the father screams.
As explained earlier, the plot of horror movies is driven through the inclusion of frightening and intense scenes with some violence and gore. In some instances, there may be some sex and nudity (though there was none in Pet Sematary) as well as coarse and offensive language. The Panel concludes that, in Pet Sematary, there are scenes of violence and gore that are frightening and intense and are, therefore, intended for adult audiences. Although the violence is plot driven and justified given the characters and the material as a whole, the violence is explicit and graphic and should only be aired during the “Watershed” period. Accordingly, the Panel finds that Pet Sematary contains scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Zero Dark Thirty
Did Zero Dark Thirty contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding community standards referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 dramatic feature film about the search for and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy SEALs. The main character is Maya, a CIA agent who is persistent in pursuing the search despite the challenges of the operation. The word “fuck” and its variations, including “motherfucker”, are peppered throughout the dialogue of the movie, along with other coarse language such as “shit”, “bullshit”, and “asshole”. The rating used by Super Channel was 14A and the advisory included mention of mature subject matter, violence, nudity, sexuality and coarse language (though there was no sexuality in this film).
The Panel considers that this movie does not contain material offensive to general community standards for the reasons set out above regarding “community standards” under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The Panel also agrees with the Report to the CRTC on community standards in that, together, classification ratings, advisories and the Watershed hour combine as the most “visible” of community standards. The general community standard is not meant to act as a censorship tool. With the appropriate advisories and classification, a wide array of programming including dramatic movies with some violence and coarse language forms part of the Canadian broadcasting landscape.
Did the presence of the word “fuck” in Zero Dark Thirty constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
In determining whether the content of Zero Dark Thirty breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” and its variations were used throughout the movie.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fuck” in Zero Dark Thirty was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in Zero Dark Thirty.
Did Zero Dark Thirty contain gratuitous violence under Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding gratuitous violence referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The Panel recognizes that Zero Dark Thirty does include violent scenes. However, they are relatively few and these scenes are all integral to the plot. All the violence is plot driven and is justified given the characters and the material as a whole. As such, the Panel concludes that the violence in Zero Dark Thirty is not “gratuitous” as contemplated under Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Did Zero Dark Thirty contain scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding violence intended for adult audiences referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
Zero Dark Thirty was aired starting at 2:56 pm and includes a few violent scenes. Although none of these scenes are gratuitous, they are violent and include scenes of prisoners being tortured by having water poured on them or punched, and one man being tied up like a dog. Other scenes include a shooting at an office building and an explosion at a restaurant. Much of the movie, however, consists of CIA officers discussing their plans. At the end, a Special Operations Unit invades the compound where they believe Osama bin Laden is hiding. There are sounds of gunshots, explosions, crying and screaming, as well as comments from the operatives about killing people. The lighting, however, is very dark such that the results of the violence are not entirely discernible, though there are some bodies shown lying on the floor.
The Panel concludes that, in Zero Dark Thirty, the scenes of violence are not exclusively intended for adult audiences and can be aired outside of the “Watershed” period. Therefore, this film could be broadcast any time of the day under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code as long the broadcast contained the appropriate rating and advisories which it did in the present circumstances.
A Cure for Wellness
Did A Cure for Wellness contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding community standards referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
A Cure for Wellness is a 2017 horror film about a financial executive who is sent by his company’s board of directors to retrieve the company’s CEO from a “wellness centre” in the Swiss Alps after that executive sent an unusual letter declaring that he would not return. The movie was widely distributed.
There is a clear story line and the suspense and violence clearly relate to the plot. There are a number of scenes of disturbing treatments at the “wellness centre”. There are some scenes with nudity and sexual activity and there are multiple uses of the word “fuck”. It falls more into the category of psychological horror film rather than slasher or splatter like some of the other films dealt with in this decision.
The Panel recognizes that the film does include frightening and intense scenes with some violence and gore. However, these scenes are all relevant to the plot. In this film, there is nudity and sexual activity and the movie does include multiple instances of coarse language. Notwisthanding this, the Panel considers that this movie does not contain material offensive to general community standards for the reasons set out above regarding “community standards” under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
Psychological horror movies are widely tolerated and generally available in Canadian society. The Panel also agrees with the Report to the CRTC on community standards in that, together, classification ratings, advisories and the Watershed hour combine as the most “visible” of community standards. The general community standard is not meant to act as a censorship tool. With the appropriate advisories and classification, a wide array of programming, including psychological horror movies, forms part of the Canadian broadcasting landscape.
Did the scenes of sexuality and nudity in A Cure for Wellness constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding sexuality and nudity referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
A Cure for Wellness includes scenes of nudity and some sexual activity. The first such scene involves a female nurse who removes her blouse and a male assistant masturbates while looking at her bare breasts. The other scene involving nudity and sexual activity is disturbing as it involves an incestuous rape. The centre’s director binds the wrists of his teenaged daughter to a bed, tears her dress away to reveal her bare breasts, then puts his hand up her dress, then takes his hand to his nose and sniffs deeply and then starts to unbutton his clothing, explaining that the daughter is “something pure” that resulted from his sexual union with his own sister centuries previously and that they will begin again to extend their bloodline.
Accordingly, the majority of the Panel considers that the scenes of nudity and sexual activity included in this film were contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code as they were erotic, actively demonstrative, included an attempted incestuous rape and were, therefore, clearly intended for mature audiences.
Dissenting Opinion of P. Gratton
I do not agree with my fellow Panel members that the scenes of nudity and sexual activity in this film were contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code. These scenes were relatively mild, no actual explicit intercourse takes place and, therefore, were not intended solely for mature audiences.
Did the presence of the word “fuck” in A Cure for Wellness constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
In determining whether the content of A Cure for Wellness breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” was used throughout the movie which was aired starting at 6:50 pm.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fuck” in A Cure for Wellness was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in A Cure for Wellness.
Did A Cure for Wellness contain gratuitous violence under Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding gratuitous violence referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The Panel recognizes that A Cure for Wellness does include violent scenes. However, these scenes are all relevant to the plot. All the violence is plot driven and is justified given the characters and the material as a whole. As such, the Panel concludes that the violence in A Cure for Wellness is not “gratuitous” as contemplated under Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Did A Cure for Wellness contain scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding violence intended for adult audiences referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
A Cure for Wellness was aired starting at 6:50 pm and includes a number of violent scenes. Although none of these scenes are gratuitous, they are violent and include the disturbing “treatments” given at the “wellness centre” such as placing the protagonist in a giant submersion tank and then having him unexpectedly surrounded by squirming eels; rows of people suspended in isolation tanks; the protagonist having a tooth forcibly removed and later live eels forced down his throat through a large plastic tube; the director peeling off his facial skin to reveal a greenish disfigured face with no nose; the protagonist preventing the incestuous rape by the director of the “wellness centre” by putting gasoline on the floor and lighting the fuel so that the director is engulfed in fire; the daughter, who was nearly raped, taking a shovel and swinging it at the director, her father, which is followed by a close-up of the director’s burned face with the shovel in his forehead. The director takes a step back and falls in the aquifer and the eels surround him and blood is seen in the water; with the “wellness centre” now on fire and people running in panic as flaming debris falls around them, one person falls as he runs down the stairs and then gets trampled.
As explained earlier, the plot of horror movies is driven through the inclusion of frightening and intense scenes with some violence and gore. The Panel concludes that, in A Cure for Wellness, there are scenes of violence and gore that are frightening and intense and are, therefore, intended for adult audiences. Although the violence is plot driven and justified given the characters and the material as a whole, the violence is explicit and graphic and should only be aired during the “Watershed” period. Accordingly, the Panel finds that A Cure for Wellness contains scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
The First Hour
Did The First Hour contain any material that was “offensive to general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding community standards referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
This program is made available as part of GINX eSports TV Canada which is a channel devoted to e-sports and video gaming. The First Hour is a video game information program where the two male hosts play and discuss a variety of video games. During this episode, they play a game called Gears 5 which is part of the Gears of War series of games. It is a third-person shooter game. The game itself is shown on screen while the two hosts play it. The quality of the loggers provided by Super Channel is poor and it is difficult to see fully the images as the video is very grainy. The video game includes some gory and bloody images when a character of the video game is killed, and includes a dramatic decapitation. At one point in the video game a character in the game is heard shouting “one by fucking one”. Also during this episode, there is a commercial break featuring a promotional spot for the dramatic program Berlin Station. It contains a scene of a man hitting another man over the back of the head and someone saying “We’re up to our fucking eyeballs in some serious shit”.
The majority of the Panel recognizes that the video game played by the two hosts includes scenes with violence and gore. However, these scenes are all relevant to the video game. The video game also includes use of the word “fuck” and this word was also used as part of a promotional spot aired during this program. Notwithstanding this, the majority of the Panel considers that this program does not contain material offensive to general community standards for the reasons set out above regarding “community standards” under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The majority of the Panel considers that video games are widely tolerated and generally available in Canadian society. The majority of the Panel also agrees with the Report to the CRTC on community standards in that, together, classification ratings, advisories and the Watershed hour combine as the most “visible” of community standards. The general community standard is not meant to act as a censorship tool. With the appropriate advisories and classification, a wide array of programming, including the playing of violent video games, is part of the Canadian broadcasting landscape.
Dissenting Opinion of S. Crawford
I acknowledge that amongst the community of gamers, the content of these types of video games will likely meet the “community standards” of gamers but I do not consider that this type of content necessarily meets the “community standard” established for Canadian television set out in the Pay TV Programming Code. Moreover, for the reasons I set out above regarding “community standards” under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”, I do not believe we should be relying on the majority SCC decision cited earlier in how to interpret “community standards” under the Pay TV Programming Code. As such – and, also because of the lack of context of the narrative of the video game itself – I consider that the video game content in The First Hour contains material “offensive to the general community standards” under Article B(4) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
Did the presence of the word “fuck” in The First Hour and its commercial break constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
In determining whether the content of The First Hour breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” was used both during the playing of the video game and during a commercial break in a program starting at 5:00 pm.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fuck” in The First Hour was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in The First Hour.
Did The First Hour contain gratuitous violence under Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding gratuitous violence referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The majority of the Panel recognizes that there is some violence and gore as part of the video game. However, in The First Hour, all the violence in the video game played is justified given the characters and the material as a whole. These types of video games are widely distributed and played in the gaming world. Coverage of the latest in a series of video games or even of a single video game that includes violence would be expected by the gaming community. One could expect that the inclusion of such content would be made available as long as the broadcaster used the proper scheduling, ratings and advisories applicable to pay TV.
As such, the majority of the Panel concludes that the violence in The First Hour is not “gratuitous” as contemplated under Article 1 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Dissenting Opinion of S. Crawford
I consider that programs reviewing video games themselves are not plot narrative driven and, in my view, they offer no contextual justification for the violence shown. Moreover, a program reviewing video games cannot justify the “gratuitous violence” by saying that the plot line itself is gratuitous violence since the premise of the show is not simply the video games themselves but rather how the hosts rate the subject video games.
In addition, some of the flip, light-hearted comments of the hosts made while extreme violence is depicted could be seen as glorifying or encouraging violent behaviour and, therefore, renders some extreme violent scenes “gratuitous”. Comments such as “simple fun”; “cold blooded eliminations”; and, “all good things you want in a shooter game” during a video game where multiple scenes of bloody gun kills also glorify and encourage violent behaviour and are, therefore, “gratuitous”. Accordingly, I have determined that the video game content in The First Hour includes “gratuitous violence” contrary to Article 1.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code.
Did The First Hour contain scenes of violence intended for adult audiences and therefore should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding violence intended for adult audiences referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
The First Hour was aired starting at 5:00 pm and includes a number of violent scenes as part of the video game played and includes some gory and bloody images such as when game characters are dragged along by a beast and then their heads ripped off in bloody and dramatic fashion. A majority of the Panel has concluded that none of these scenes are gratuitous, with one Panel member abstaining her vote given the poor quality of the grainy loggers provided by the broadcaster. All Panel members concur that the quality of the logger provided was very poor.
The majority of the Panel, with one Panel member abstaining her vote because of the poor quality of the logger provided, concludes that in The First Hour, the scenes of violence are not exclusively intended for adult audiences and can be aired outside of the “Watershed” period. Therefore, the scenes of violence in this program could be broadcast any time of the day under Article 3.0 of the Pay TV Violence Code as long the broadcast contained the appropriate rating and advisories. The broadcaster did not provide a complete logger for this program, therefore it was not possible to ascertain whether the appropriate rating or advisories were broadcast. The Panel has previously determined that the broadcaster breached its responsibilities of participation in the CBSC by failing to provide adequate loggers upon request.
Squad
Do the three instances of the word “fuck” during Squad constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
Squad is a magazine-style talk show about e-sports and video gaming with three hosts. They review games, and discuss e-sports events, gaming culture and other topics of interest to their audience.
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
In determining whether the content of Squad breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period. The Panel notes that the word “fuck” was used three times during the program which was aired starting at 1:10 pm.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fuck” in Squad was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in Squad.
GINX Plays
Do the instances of the word “fuck”, both verbally and in words on screen, during GINX Plays constitute mature material that should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm (and before 6:00 am) under Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code?
In assessing this question, the Panel considered the same principles and precedents regarding coarse language referred to above under the heading “Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood”.
In determining whether the content of GINX Plays breached this code provision, the Panel considered whether coarse or offensive language was included before the “Watershed” period.
GINX Plays is a program on which gamers play a video game. The game itself usually takes up most of the screen with smaller boxes at the top showing the individual players’ faces. Many games periodically feature words on the screen to explain what is happening or caption the dialogue of the game characters. The players and usually one other person are heard giving commentary while they play.
In this episode, two young men are playing a game involving shooting zombies. There is considerable blood and gore when zombies are killed.
To express frustration about the game, the players utter “Fuckin’ hell” and “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” At one point, there are also words on the screen that read “If I die in a fucking hallucination because I ran out of bullets [...]”.
Consistent with CBSC precedents in this regard, the majority of the Panel finds the use of the word “fucking” in GINX Plays was contrary to Article E(1)(a) of the Pay TV Programming Code.
The two adjudicators who dissented on this point in the case of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood maintain their position regarding the use of the word “fuck” on pay TV and find no breach with respect to the language in GINX Plays.
Finally, GINX eSports channel aired an advisory at the beginning of the broadcast but did not repeat it coming out of commercial breaks. Unlike the CAB Code of Ethics, which requires broadcasters to air advisories at the beginning of the broadcast and coming out of commercial breaks, the Pay TV Codes do not specifically state that advisories must be repeated. This requirement was not included in the Pay TV Codes as such services did not originally include commercial content and were not – due to a CRTC policy on genre exclusivity – authorized to broadcast programs such as shows about video games which could include commercial content. With the elimination of genre exclusivity in 2015, pay TV services can now broadcast content that may include commercial content. In addition to that change, in September 2017, the CRTC merged the two licence categories of “specialty” and “pay” television services into one category called “discretionary”. Super Channel’s pay licence therefore transformed into a discretionary licence at its licence renewal in June 2020. The Panel wishes to remind the broadcaster that its broadcasting licence renewal means its multiplexes are now discretionary broadcasting services, and they thus need to abide by the CAB Code of Ethics which requires broadcasters to air advisories at the beginning of the broadcast and coming out of breaks.
Broadcaster Responsiveness
In all CBSC decisions, the Panels assess the broadcaster’s response to the complainant. The broadcaster need not agree with the complainant’s position, but it must respond in a courteous, thoughtful and thorough manner. In this case, Super Channel provided a reply to the complainant, explaining its programming approach and acknowledging that there were some lapses in judgment with respect to its scheduling choices. The broadcaster fulfilled its obligations of responsiveness and, subject to the announcement of this decision, nothing further is required on this occasion.
DECISION ANNOUNCEMENTS
Super Channel Vault
Super Channel Vault is required to: 1) announce the decision, in the following terms, once during prime time within three days following the release of this decision and, within seven days following the release of this decision, once during the time period in which Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood was broadcast, once during the time period in which Saw 3D was broadcast, once during the time period in which Pet Sematary was broadcast, and once during the time period in which Zero Dark Thirty was broadcast, but not all on the same day; 2) within the fourteen days following the broadcasts of the announcements, to provide written confirmation of the airing of the statements to the complainant who filed the Ruling Request; and 3) at that time, to provide the CBSC with a copy of that written confirmation and with air check copies of the broadcasts of the announcements which must be made by Super Channel Vault.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has found that Super Channel Vault breached the Pay TV Programming Code and the Pay TV Violence Code in its broadcasts of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter on October 31, 2019, Pet Sematary on November 8 and Zero Dark Thirty on November 11. All of the movies contained coarse language intended for mature audiences that should not have been broadcast before 9:00 pm. Friday the 13th, Saw 3D and Pet Sematary contained violence that should not have been broadcast before 9:00 pm. Super Channel Vault also failed to provide an official broadcast copy of Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood to the CBSC for its review as required.
Super Channel Fuse
Super Channel Fuse is required to: 1) announce the decision, in the following terms, once during prime time within three days following the release of this decision and once more within seven days following the release of this decision during the time period in which A Cure for Wellness was broadcast, but not on the same day as the first mandated announcement; 2) within the fourteen days following the broadcasts of the announcements, to provide written confirmation of the airing of the statement to the complainant who filed the Ruling Request; and 3) at that time, to provide the CBSC with a copy of that written confirmation and with air check copies of the broadcasts of the two announcements which must be made by Super Channel Fuse.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has found that Super Channel Fuse breached the Pay TV Programming Code and the Pay TV Violence Code in its broadcast of the movie A Cure for Wellness on November 13, 2019. The movie contained sexuality, coarse language and violence intended for mature audiences that should not have been broadcast before 9:00 pm.
GINX eSports TV Canada
GINX eSports TV Canada is required to: 1) announce the decision, in the following terms, once during prime time within three days following the release of this decision and, within seven days following the release of this decision, once during the time period in which The First Hour was broadcast, once during the time period in which Squad was broadcast, and once during the time period in which GINX Plays was broadcast, but not all on the same day; 2) within the fourteen days following the broadcasts of the announcements, to provide written confirmation of the airing of the statements to the complainant who filed the Ruling Request; and 3) at that time, to provide the CBSC with a copy of that written confirmation and with air check copies of the broadcasts of the announcements which must be made by GINX eSports TV Canada.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has found that GINX eSports TV Canada breached the Pay TV Programming Code in its broadcasts of The First Hour on November 1, 2019, Squad on November 14, and GINX Plays on November 14. All of the programs contained coarse language intended for mature audiences that should not have aired before 9:00 pm. GINX also failed to provide complete copies of The First Hour and GINX Plays to the CBSC for its review as required.
This decision is a public document upon its release by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
APPENDIX A
The Complaint
The CBSC received the following complaint via its webform on November 14, 2019:
Name of Television or Radio Station: various
Program Name: various
Specific Concern:
Hostel
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/20 8:00-9:35pm
specific concern:
at least 135 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
several scenes of sexuality around 8:05pm, 8:07pm, 8:10pm, 8:26pm,
several scenes of violence for example around 9:06pm and 9:29pm.
Sorry to Bother You
Super Channel Fuse
2019/10/23 12:15-2:15pm
specific concern:
at least 187 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
2 scenes of sexual activity around 12:28pm and 1:28pm.
Little Children
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/24 12:15-2:45pm
specific concern:
at least 16 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
several scenes of sexuality for example around 1:13pm and 1:34pm.
Cecil B. Demented
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/24 2:45-4:15pm
specific concern:
at least 76 uses of the F-word and variations of it.
Hobo With a Shotgun
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/27 2:50-4:20pm
specific concern:
at least 130 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
several scenes of violence for example around 3:13pm and 3:32pm.
Hostel Part II
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/27 8:05-9:40pm
specific concern:
at least 82 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
several scenes of violence for example around 8:57pm and 9:33pm,
sexual activity around 9:11pm.
Scarecrows
Super Channel Fuse
2019/10/29 11:05am-12:30pm
specific concern:
at least 27 uses of the F-word and variations of it.
Pet Sematary
Super Channel Vault
2019/11/08 10:35am-12:20pm
specific concern:
1 scene of nudity around 11:26am,
1 use of the F-word around 11:30am.
The viewer advisory does not mention nudity.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/31 4:45-6:15pm
specific concern:
at least 7 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
several scenes of sexuality around 4:58pm, 5:36pm, 5:40pm.
Saw: The Final Chapter
Super Channel Vault
2019/10/31 8:00-9:30pm
specific concern:
at least 89 uses of the F-word and variations of it,
several scenes of violence for example around 8:08pm and 9:20pm.
Zero Dark Thirty
Super Channel Vault
2019/11/11 2:45-5:30pm
specific concern:
several uses of the f-word and variations of it.
A Cure for Wellness
Super Channel Fuse
2019/11/13 6:35-9:05pm
specific concern:
several uses of the f-word and variations of it,
scene of sexual assault around 8:48pm.
GINX Plays
GINX Esports TV Canada
2019/11/14 3:00-3:30pm
specific concern:
at least 4 uses of the F-word and variations of it around 3:04pm, 3:20pm, 3:22pm, 3:23pm.
The rating of 18A seems high.
The First Hour
GINX Esports TV Canada
2019/11/01 5:00-6:00pm
specific concern:
at least 2 variations of the F-word appear around 5:38pm, 5:39pm,
at least 1 variation of the F-word and the S-word appear during the advertisement for a TV series on Super Channel Fuse.
Squad
GINX Esports TV Canada
2019/11/14 1:00-2:00pm
specific concern:
several uses of the F-word and variations of it around 1:18pm, 1:20pm.
The rating of 18A seems high.
Broadcaster Response
The station responded to the complainant on December 19:
We understand that you have issued a complaint to The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) regarding various movies and programs broadcast on Super Channel Vault, Super Channel Fuse and Ginx Esports TV Canada on several dates.
As a member in good standing with the CBSC, Super Channel welcomes comments from viewers and takes seriously any issues our viewers may have with our programming. We adhere to respecting the regulations as a pay tv service concerning programming content with mature language, violence and sexuality, and take our broadcast and programming responsibilities very seriously.
On an ongoing basis, we strive to ensure the appropriate viewer advisories and classification disclaimers are present at the start of each program/movie. After receiving your complaint, we reviewed the program loggers related to the programming you referred to us and we found the required viewer and classification notices were in effect, presented at the beginning of each program/movie. However, we also realized there seems to have been a few occasions where scheduling practices resulted in some mature content being aired prior to the prescribed late-night viewing hours. As a result, we wish to ensure you that we have, and are, taking steps to make sure this type of oversight does not happen again.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to bring your concerns to our attention and we sincerely hope you will continue to be a regular viewer of programming on Super Channel.
Additional Correspondence
The complainant submitted his Ruling Request on December 19. He did not make any additional comments.
Once it had been notified of the upcoming Panel meeting, Super Channel submitted the following short note:
[F]urther to below [referring to an email sent by CBSC to Super Channel advising them of the Panel adjudication meeting], I would like to point out that Super Channel is still licensed under the CRTC as a Pay TV service and the Rogers’ subscriber who complained had to subscribe to a Pay TV service. Since this complaint has been brought to our attention we have taken measures to bring our scheduling more in line as a discretionary service. But for the record, our current CRTC license is still as a Pay TV service.
That is the only additional information I’d like to provide at this time.
APPENDIX B
Super Channel is a pay television service with four multiplex channels. Three of those four multiplexes are at issue in this file.
All of the channels are broadcast from Toronto on Eastern Time (even though Super Channel’s corporate headquarters are in Alberta).
Super Channel Vault
Pet Sematary
November 8, 2019
10:45 am
Pet Sematary is a 1989 horror feature film based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. The plot of the movie centres on the Creed family – father Louis, mother Rachel, 8-year-old daughter Ellen (“Ellie”) and toddler son Gage. The family has moved to rural Maine from Chicago so that Louis can work as a doctor at the nearby college. When Ellie’s cat Church dies, across-the-street neighbour Jud Crandall shows Louis a “Micmac” burial ground located deep in the woods behind their house, past the titular pet cemetery. Creatures buried at the site come back to life, but as malevolent, violent versions of their former selves.
The broadcast was preceded by a viewer advisory in audio and video formats at 10:44 am:
[words on screen]
The following presentation is rated
|18A|
Viewer discretion is advised.
|MS| Mature Subject Matter
|CL| Coarse Language |V| Violence
[voice-over] The following presentation is rated 18A. This presentation deals with mature subject matter and contains scenes with violence and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.
The following are the times and descriptions of the most relevant scenes:
10:46:51 opening scene
There are slow pan close-ups of deteriorating wooden crosses and stone tomb stones in a wooded area. Some have words carved into them. The audio is eerie chanting and children singing with occasional children’s voices saying things like, “Bye, Old Shep. See you in heaven”, “Spot, goodbye. We love you.” An aerial shot then reveals that these are arranged in a circle in a field surrounded by woods.
10:49:41
Ellie is playing on a tire swing hanging from a tree in their front yard. Ellie notices a path leading into the woods. She yells that she sees a cat, then the rope holding the swing breaks and Ellie falls out of the tree with the tire on top of her. Her parents rush over to help and do not notice that toddler Gage is walking around near the busy road. He almost gets hit by a truck, but neighbour Jud Crandall scoops him up just in time. Rachel asks Jud where the path leads. He hesitates, but says he will take them there sometime.
10:56:13
Jud takes the Creed family to see the pet cemetery. He says the busy road has killed a lot of pets and made a lot kids unhappy.
11:02:12-11:04:03
At the college, a group of students are carrying a young man (Victor Pascow) with a massive head wound up the stairs of the medical building. They say he was hit by a truck. There is a lot of blood on the young man’s head and what looks like brains spilling out. There is a commotion around him as students are shouting and screaming. Dr. Creed starts doing interventions to save Victor’s life, but he does not succeed. Dr. Creed is alone with the body behind the hospital curtain. The side of the man’s head is still covered in blood and ooze. Creed closes Victor’s eyes. There is a close-up of the gory head wound. The young man suddenly opens his eyes and gasps, and grabs Louis’s shoulder. He whispers, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis”. Victor coughs blood. Louis says “How did you know my name?”, then Victor says “I’ll come see you”. Victor smiles a sinister, bloody smile with wide eyes, then his head falls back and he dies.
11:04:42-11:08:08
It is nighttime at the Creed house. Louis is startled awake by Victor’s ghost. The head wound still appears wet with blood & ooze and one eye is dulled. Victor insists that Louis go with him and walks out of Louis’s bedroom. Louis goes down to his creepy dark basement to look for Victor’s ghost. The ghost pops out and grabs Louis’s shoulder. Victor leads Louis down the path to the pet cemetery and warns him to never go further past “the barrier” because “the ground beyond is sour”. There is a blue glowing light coming from that area.
11:10:35-11:15:31
Jud phoned Louis to say he thinks Ellie’s cat Church is dead on his lawn. Louis goes over and examines the stiff cat corpse. Louis peels the cat off the ground and Jud holds a garbage bag open for Louis to put the body in. Jud suggests they bury it past the barrier that Victor’s ghost warned Louis about. Louis is reluctant, but follows Jud anyway. They have to climb up a hill and over a lot of bramble. Jud warns Louis not to stop, but Louis does and the branch he is standing on breaks, causing Louis to fall. Jud helps Louis up and they continue on through the woods. Louis hears an unusual scream and asks Jud what it is. Jud tells Louis to shush, but says it was just a loon. After climbing some cliffs, they eventually arrive at a clearing where rocks are arranged in circular patterns. Jud explains that it was the burial ground of “Micmac Indians” and he wants Louis to bury Ellie’s cat there, but he will not explain why. Jud hands Louis the shovel but says he will not help because “each buries his own”. Jud sits and smokes while Louis digs.
11:16:55-11:17:07
Jud tells Louis to keep what they did a secret because “the soil of a man’s heart, Louis, is stonier than the soil out there on the old ‘Micmac’ burying ground”. Louis flashes back to Victor using this same wording to warn Louis as Victor was dying.
11:18:57-11:19:13
Louis goes into his basement. Church is there with glowing eyes and hisses at him. It startles Louis and he falls backward. Church runs away.
11:19:48-11:20:11
Louis picks up Church to look at him because he cannot believe that Church has been resurrected. Louis says “Jesus Christ!” then Church scratches his cheek. Louis drops Church and puts his hand to his cheek. When he moves his hand away there are two claw scratch marks.
11:22:16
Louis: Has anyone ever buried a person up there?
Jud: [is so surprised by the question that he knocks the bottles off the table] Christ on his throne, no! Who ever would?
11:23:23-11:23:56
Louis is in the bathtub. A rat falls into the bath. Louis is startled and throws the rat on the floor. He looks up and sees Church standing on the counter with glowing eyes. Louis yells, “How the hell did you get in here?” and Church hisses. Louis shoos Church off the counter and accidentally steps on the dead rat.
11:25:45-11:26:27
The Creeds’ housekeeper Missy, who has complained of stomach pains in previous scenes, writes a suicide note, goes to the basement, and gets up on a table where she has already hung a noose. She wraps the noose around her neck and slowly steps off the table. There is the sound of her gasping and gurgling and a close-up of her feet dangling. Her whole body is then shown hanging limply from the noose. There is then a shot of the “Micmac” burial ground.
11:29:29-11:32:01
Rachel tells Louis about when her sister Zelda died from spinal meningitis. The story is shown in flashback. Rachel is a little girl. She opens a bedroom door. There is another girl, possibly adolescent age, lying on the bed. This girl, Zelda, is very bony and wearing a nightgown. Her spine is contorted and her face is pale, gaunt and bruised. Young Rachel spoon feeds Zelda as adult Rachel tells Louis she used to have to feed her sister sometimes and hated it. Zelda begins gagging. Adult Rachel tells Louis her family wished that her sister would die so that she would be free from pain and so they would not feel any more pain because she was like a monster of which they were ashamed. There is a close-up of Zelda’s deformed back. Adult Rachel says her parents were gone when Zelda died. Young Rachel is standing on the stairs inside her house. Zelda is yelling “Rachel” in a creepy voice and gripping the bedsheets as she convulses. Young Rachel slaps Zelda on the back to try to help. Zelda continues to convulse as her eyes roll back in her head, but for a moment she stares intently at Rachel and reaches a bony hand toward her, then collapses partially hanging off the bed. Young Rachel runs out of the room. Adult Rachel explains she was scared that her parents would come home and accuse her of murdering Zelda because she hated Zelda and wanted her to be dead; Rachel acknowledges she did feel that way about Zelda.
11:34:32-11:35:28
Gage starts toddling too close to the road in pursuit of his kite string. Jud & Rachel notice and start screaming “Get the baby!” Louis runs, but Gage gets onto the road. A truck is barrelling down on Gage. The driver’s eyes go wide and he slams on the brakes when he sees Gage. The viewer sees Gage standing right in front of the oncoming truck, followed by a close-up of the underside of the truck as it passes over, followed by the red kite spiralling to the ground and a little shoe falling onto the road. The truck is turned over and Louis screams “No!” repeatedly as family photographs of Gage flash on screen.
11:37:40-11:38:11
At Gage’s funeral, Rachel’s father, Irwin, starts yelling at Louis, “I hope you rot in hell! Where were you when he was playing in the road!? You stinking shit! You killer of children!”. Irwin punches Louis and Louis falls down. Irwin kicks Louis as Rachel screams and there is a commotion to stop the fight. Irwin throws Louis against the casket and it falls open briefly. Louis screams and tries to move toward the casket while someone else holds him back.
11:39:39
Louis opens the door to the room where is wife is sleeping. Church is sitting on the bed beside her with glowing eyes, staring and growling at Louis. Louis says “Fuck off, hairball”. The cat jumps at his face and then runs out of the room.
11:42:37-11:44:28
Jud tells Louis the story of a local man whose son, Timmy Bateman, died when returning home from World War II. The man was so grief-stricken that he buried Timmy in the “Micmac” burial ground. Jud says the person that gets buried there does not come back as the same person. There is a flashback in which Jud describes what happened to Timmy. Timmy is on his hands & knees in the yard of a house; Timmy looks up and is gnawing on a bloody bone from a child’s leg with a shoe still on the foot. Timmy’s face is covered in blood and he is acting like an animal, gouging his fingers into his own face until it bleeds and grunting/cackling. A woman is beating her laundry on the line. Timmy approaches, walking with a limp and the woman screams and runs away. Jud tells how the neighbouring “menfolk” (of which he was one) got together to plan to kill Timmy. They drive to the Bateman house where they see Timmy & his father struggling. The group of men break the windows and throw gasoline into the house and light it ablaze. Timmy fights with his father and has his father in a headlock, preventing him from escaping the house, which goes up in flames. Jud insists to Louis that the burial ground is evil and he should not consider burying his son there.
11:47:16-11:47:37
Louis is at the regular cemetery preparing to dig up Gage and move him to the “Micmac” burial ground. He sees the ghost of Victor Pascow standing near another tomb stone. Victor is pale with the gory head wound still visible and blood on his clothing. Victor ominously reminds Louis that the barrier was not meant to be crossed.
11:49:38-11:50:05
Ellie & Rachel have gone to stay with Rachel’s parents. Ellie has just told Rachel that she saw a ghost named “Pax-cow” who told her her daddy was going to do something bad. Rachel reassures Ellie that it was just a bad dream. Rachel is walking down the hallway in her parents’ house repeating the word “Pax-cow”. Victor’s ghost appears beside her with his gory head wound fully visible, but Rachel does not see him. He whispers “Pascow” to Rachel. Rachel realizes who Ellie was referring to and rushes down the stairs. Victor nods approvingly and smiles slightly.
11:53:09-11:53:59
Night has fallen and Louis has dug up Gage’s casket. He is holding Gage’s body tightly in his arms, rocking it, saying “It’s going to be all right. I swear, it’s going to be all right.” He puts the body down and wraps it in a sheet.
11:54:20-11:55:09
Rachel is in the hallway of her parents’ house at night. She goes to the bedroom that was Zelda’s. Zelda’s ghost is lying on the bed in a contorted position. Zelda sits up suddenly. She is still gaunt and pale and holds her hands in front of her in an unnatural position. She says in an eerie voice, “I’m coming for you, Rachel. And this time, I’ll get you. [her voice switches to a deeper scary voice] Gage and I will get you. For letting us die!” Zelda cackles menacingly.
11:55:23-11:55:26
Rachel is on an airplane going back home. Victor Pascow’s ghost is sitting across the aisle and one row behind her. He looks the same as in his previous scenes with his gaping head wound and one unseeing eye. He is smiling.
11:55:50-11:55:56
Victor Pascow’s ghost is standing near the passageway that leads to Rachel’s connecting flight, as Rachel hurries to make it onto the plane. He prevents the flight attendant from closing the door. Neither Rachel nor the flight attendant sees him.
11:56:10-11:57:32
Louis walks with Gage’s wrapped body down the path that leads to the pet cemetery, past it and on to the “Micmac” burial ground. There is a bluish light coming from deep in the woods, as well as strange noises and a tree falls down.
11:57:34-11:57:54
Rachel is at the desk of a car rental company being told there is nothing available. Victor’s ghost is standing beside her. He says something about one car that is available and the woman at the car rental desk immediately parrots his words and offers Rachel that car, but he is invisible to the two women.
11:58:11-11:58:35
Louis is climbing up the cliff with Gage’s body. He looks down at one point and a scary apparition with an ominous voice moves towards him and transforms into a scary face. Louis closes his eyes for a moment and the apparition disappears with a gagging noise.
11:59:28-11:59:40
Rachel’s rental car gets a flat tire and causes her to drive off the road. Rachel gets out the car and says to herself, “Now what?” Victor’s ghost appears and says, “It’s trying to stop you.” Then he fades into thin air.
12:00:45-12:00:58
Louis has buried Gage at the burial ground and returned home where Church eyes him menacingly with his glowing eyes. The rocks under which Gage is buried begin to move and a child’s hand reaches up.
12:01:47-12:06:25
The latch on the door unlocks and the door creaks open. Small feet are shown walking across the floor with the possessed cat Church following behind. A little boy’s shadow is visible on a door and he walks slowly toward it and opens it. His little hands are seen taking Louis’s medical bag and removing a scalpel from it.
Jud fell asleep on his porch, but wakes up and sees a child’s muddy footprints leading into his house. He goes inside and looks around. An object drops and rolls across the floor in the room beside him and he hears a child’s laughter. A child’s voice says “Let’s play hide-and-go-seek” and there is the sound of a child’s footsteps. Jud walks around inside his darkened house and more objects drop, this time from upstairs. Jud goes upstairs and calls for Gage to come out. Jud is in a dark room. He takes out a pocket knife and calls to Gage “I brought you something”. Jud is holding his knife at the ready. As he is about to look under the bed, Church jumps from somewhere and meows at him. As Jud looks up at the cat, a child’s hand reaches out from under the bed and slices Jud’s Achilles tendon with the scalpel. Blood spills from the cut. Jud rolls over onto his back, crying out in pain. There is a close-up of his shaking hand touching the wound and covered in blood. The cat’s glowing eyes stare at him. A sinister-looking Gage emerges and grits his teeth as he approaches Jud, who is at Gage’s eye level because he is sitting on the floor. Gage wields the scalpel and Jud’s face is full of fear. Jud screams and Gage slices the scalpel across Jud’s mouth horizontally. Blood comes out the sides of Jud’s mouth and he falls backward onto the floor. Gage gnaws at Jud’s neck. There is a close-up of Jud’s hand as he writhes in pain, but then the hand stops moving. There is a close-up of Jud’s face, dead, with the eyes open, frozen in fear, blood coming from his mouth, and an obvious neck wound where Gage bit him. Church looks on with his glowing eyes.
12:06:45-12:22:10
Rachel hitchhiked with a transport truck. When the driver drops her off in front of her house and she gets out of the truck, Victor’s ghost emerges to fill the seat she has just vacated. He turns to her and says, “Think nothing of it”, but Rachel still does not see him. The trucker says a few words and then Victor says “It’s the end of the line for me too. I’m not allowed any further.” Rachel says “I’m sure things’ll be fine.” Victor says, “I’m not” and slams the door. He fades away again.
As the truck drives away, Rachel hears her name being called and a cackle. She walks towards Jud’s house where the sound came from. She slowly walks up the steps and Church jumps onto the porch, meowing, which startles Rachel. Church snarls at her. Rachel enters Jud’s house and walks slowly around. There is a strange groaning noise and other mysterious sounds. Rachel calls out for Jud and then slowly walks upstairs. A voice calls “Rachel” in a drawn-out, eerie manner. Rachel opens the door to a bedroom and sees Zelda’s ghost hunched on the floor. Zelda stands up as much as she can. Zelda says, “I finally came back for you, Rachel. I’m going to twist your back like mine, so you’ll never get out of bed again. Never get out of bed again.” Zelda scampers closer to Rachel and yells “Never get out of bed again! Never get out of bed again!” Rachel closes her eyes and slumps against the doorframe. There is a close-up of Zelda’s scary face, cackling. The cackling turns into Gage’s giggling. Rachel opens her eyes again a second later and sees Gage dressed up in an old-fashioned hat & outfit with a cane. Rachel is stunned to see him. Gage says, “I brought you something, Mommy” and holds up the scalpel. Rachel goes to hug him. Gage is shown approaching her, then Rachel is heard screaming and there is a flashback to the scene of Gage being hit by the truck and Rachel screams louder.
The scene switches to daytime. Louis wakes up and falls out of his bed. He sees a child’s muddy footprints on the floor and then notices his medical bag is open with the scalpel removed from its case. He hears Gage’s laughter and footsteps. The phone rings and Louis answers. It is Rachel’s father asking if Rachel got back okay and if Louis can put her on the phone to talk to Ellie. Louis begins to realize what might have happened as he sees Gage’s footprints leading outside. He lies to Rachel’s father, telling him that Rachel is fine, but asleep. The father is heard telling Louis that he should wake Rachel up because Ellie is very upset because she had a dream that her mother was dead. Louis hangs up on his father-in-law and follows the footprints into the basement.
The phone rings again and Gage’s voice asks, “It’s Gage, Daddy. Can you come over and play with me? First I played with Jud. Then Mommy came and I played with Mommy. We played, Daddy. We had an awful good time. Now I want to play with you.” Louis says, “What did you do?” and Gage just giggles sinisterly. Louis yells again, “What did you do?”
The scene cuts to a close-up of Louis’s hand holding a syringe. Then Louis is seen crossing the road to Jud’s. Church is on Jud’s porch. Louis throws some steak down on the ground to distract Church. Church arches its back and hisses at Louis, but then starts eating the steak. Louis puts on surgical gloves. Louis grabs Church by the neck and holds him up. Louis injects the syringe into Church as Church mews. Louis puts Church on the ground beside the steak and yells “Go on, play dead. Be dead!” Louis lifts up Church’s head to check that Church is really dead, then lays him back down again.
Louis sees Rachel’s bag on the porch and walks up the porch steps. He enters the house; the door creaks. Louis calls out for Gage. There is a strange fog inside the house and a green substance covering the walls and stairs. Louis covers his mouth and nose as if the smell is bad. Louis picks up a sharp object on the stairs and hears Gage’s voice say, in a sinister manner, “Now I want to play with you.” Louis pulls out another syringe and says “All right, Gage. Let’s play.” Gage giggles and Louis slowly ascends the stairs. Louis goes into the bathroom and pulls the shower curtain back quickly. Gage is not there, but is heard laughing again. Louis slowly makes his way down the hall and into the bedroom. He pulls back the quilt that is hanging over the side of the bed and sees Jud’s dead body on the floor, with the eyes still wide and blood around the mouth. He hears Gage’s laughter again.
Louis goes out into the hallway again. Suddenly, the door to the attic falls open above him, and Rachel’s body falls out, hanging from a noose. Gage appears at the attic opening and then jumps onto Louis. Louis screams and tries to fight Gage off as Gage bites him in the arm. In the scuffle, Louis drops the syringe. Louis screams as Gage attacks him. Gage manages to slice Louis in the arm and above the eyebrow with the scalpel. There is a close-up of blood pouring from Louis’s wound. Louis tries to hold back Gage’s hand holding the scalpel and eventually Louis throws Gage off of him. Louis then gets out another syringe, but drops it. Louis scrambles to pick up the syringe with his one good arm, while Gage is crawling for the dropped scalpel. Gage picks up the scalpel and walks menacingly towards Louis, who is sitting on the floor with the syringe ready. Louis inserts the syringe into Gage’s neck and Gage cries out in pain. Gage manages to walk down the hall a ways, saying “No fair, no fair” before he collapses. Gage looks at Louis one more time and then slumps over in death. Louis looks at Gage as Rachel’s legs dangle in front of him.
The scene switches to Louis dumping gasoline all over the inside of Jud’s house. He lights a match and the fire travels along the gasoline trail, to Gage’s body which is then engulfed in flames.
Louis is then seen coming around the outside of the house carrying an adult-sized body wrapped in a sheet. It is clear that it is Rachel’s body from the high-heeled shoes on her feet, which are visible. Flames burst out each window as Louis walks past them.
Victor’s ghost stands on the road in front of Louis and tries to convince Louis not to make things worse. Louis replies, “I waited too long with Gage. With Rachel, it will work this time. Because she just died. She just died a little while ago.” Louis walks right through Victor’s ghost, which turns and shouts, “Louis, please don’t! Louis! Please!” before fading away. Louis walks down the path carrying Rachel’s body.
12:23:25-12:24:29
Louis has already buried Rachel in the burial ground and is sitting on his kitchen floor, still bleeding from his wounds, waiting for her to return in her resurrected form. He hears the door and a dirty female hand reaches in. Her muddy & bloody legs, one foot in a high-heeled shoe and one bare, are seen walking across the kitchen floor towards him. She is first shown from the back. An alarm clock rings to indicate that it is midnight. Then her face is visible. One eye socket is missing its eye and is gaping and bloody. A yellowish fluid drips from the socket and much of that side of her face is also covered in blood. Louis stands and Rachel smiles at him and says, “Darling”. As they kiss passionately, Rachel’s hand is seen picking up a large knife off the kitchen table. She raises it, the scene cuts to black and Louis is heard screaming “No!” along with the sound of a stabbing.
Friday the 13th: Part VII – The New Blood
October 31, 2019
4:45 pm
Super Channel was unable to provide the official logger for this broadcast. This video file therefore does not contain any classification or advisory. It has a time counter but it indicates running time, not actual clock time.
Friday the 13th is a series of horror movies about a psychotic killer named Jason Voorhees who wears a hockey mask on his killing rampages around Crystal Lake where he was believed to have died as a child. This instalment of the franchise was released in 1988. The story centres on Tina Shepard who has psychokinetic powers. As a young girl, Tina’s powers caused the death of her father at the lake. Her mother and psychiatrist Dr. Crews bring her back to her family’s lakeside cabin when she is a teenager because Dr. Crews claims it will help Tina work through her guilt about her father’s death. Next door, a group of teenagers has gathered to hold a surprise birthday party for their friend Michael.
The following are the times and descriptions of the most relevant scenes:
1:00:38-1:03:22
The scene is foggy and rainy. A male narrator’s voice says that there is a legend of Jason Voorhees’s curse, a killer buried but not dead who keeps coming back. There is a series of clips from previous movies as the narrator describes more of the curse. There is a close-up of a man walking, carrying a large knife.
A boy is by a window and a man wearing a hockey mask jumps through the glass and grabs the boy.
There is a close-up of a bloody blade being stabbed into wood.
There is a close-up of a hand holding a knife in front of a young girl who looks terrified.
Blood splatters on windows.
Jason stands in front of a child. Someone comes up to him from behind and as he turns, his hockey mask falls off to reveal a disfigured face. The child hits him with a sharp object and there is the sound of him being cut and blood appears on his face.
A tombstone that reads “Jason Voorhees” is struck by lightning and sparks fly off it and the stone explodes. An electrical current flows into the grave. There is a close-up of one eye opening in a disfigured face, with maggots crawling on it and then a man putting on the signature hockey mask and picking up a large weapon.
Another man shoots Jason with a gun, but then grunts. Blood splatters onto a windshield of a car in which a woman is sitting. The woman screams. Jason uses a spear to fling the man’s dead body away and then smashes the rear windshield.
Jason is holding another woman’s head in front of a mirror. She screams as he pushes her head into the mirror.
Jason is hiding in the woods, his mask covered in blood. He throws an axe towards a man who is standing on a dock. There is a close-up of the axe hitting the man in the head and then he falls back and lands in a boat tied to the dock.
A man is in a row boat on the lake and taunts Jason to come get him. Jason walks into the water. The man pours gasoline into the water around the boat and sets it on fire. A flaming Jason suddenly jumps out from under the water and grabs the man. The man attempts to wrap a chain around Jason, but Jason manages to pin the man down under him in the boat. Jason sinks with the chain around his neck and a boulder at the other end of the chain.
01:06:28-01:07:16
Jason is shown still chained to the boulder at the bottom of Crystal Lake. A little girl named Tina Shepard hears her parents fighting, including the sound of a slap as her father hits her mother. She runs to get into a row boat. Her parents chase after her, but she already has the boat out in the lake. She yells at her father that she hates him and gives him a menacing stare. The water bubbles up in the lake and the dock that her father is standing on begins to sway and crumble. The dock fully gives way and the father falls into the water. He is shown sinking to the bottom. Tina screams “Daddy!”
01:09:48
Nick: [to himself] “Great, asshole.”
01:12:29-01:12:36
Tina is now a teenager. She is arguing with her psychiatrist, Dr. Crews and shouts, “That’s bullshit!” A matchbook bursts into flames on a desk due to her telekinetic powers.
01:14:57-01:15:50
Tina is standing on the dock at the lake wishing she could bring her father back. Under the water, Jason’s body reanimates and the chains break. The water on the surface bubbles. Jason bursts up out of the water and Tina faints. Jason walks out of the water. Shown from behind, the bones in his back are visible through his tattered clothing. He walks slowly out of the water. Throughout the movie, he is wearing dark, tattered clothing with seaweed and other aquatic debris hanging off it.
01:16:36-01:16:45
Michael and Jane’s car has broken down on the road on the way to the lake. Michael, says, “Piece of shit”. Michael and Jane go into the woods.
01:19:44-01:21:00
Michael and Jane are walking in the woods. Jane is standing by herself because Michael has stepped away to urinate. Jason comes up behind her and slaps his hand over her mouth. Jason holds up a sharp object and lunges it toward Jane. There is the squishing sound of the object penetrating Jane as the camera shows her closing her eyes. Michael returns to Jane and sees that she is dead, her body pinned, standing upright, to a tree with a blade in her neck. Michael backs away. Jason pulls the blade out of Jane’s neck and the body slumps to the ground. Jason walks toward Michael and Michael runs. Jason follows. Jason throws the weapon at Michael. It stabs Michael in the back. Michael is crawling along the forest floor with the blade sticking out of his back and Jason in pursuit. Jason catches up to Michael, and pulls the bloody blade out of his back.
01:21:04
A character says, “Oh shit” as he is about to drop something.
01:22:23
Russell, one of the teenagers who has arranged the party at his uncle’s cabin, complains that his friends are eating all the food at his uncle’s cabin and says, “He’s going to shit”.
01:22:33
There is the sound of something breaking and one of the male teenagers says “Fuck!” One of the females says “Oh shit!”
01:23:10-01:23:46
Tina is at a party with the teenagers in the neighbouring cabin. David drinks a canned drink too quickly, causing him to spit and cough the liquid out of his mouth. At that moment, Tina has a vision of Michael with blood pouring out of his mouth, down his shirt and Jason is behind him, pulling a blade out of his back. Michael falls forward. Tina is startled and drops the glass bottle she is holding. Tina runs out of the cabin and back to her own. There is a spike stuck in the doorjamb.
01:26:33-01:28:07
A man named Dan and his girlfriend are camping in the woods. The girlfriend sends Dan to get some more wood for their fire. As Dan is carrying the logs back, Jason sneaks up behind him, plunges a blade into his back, covers Dan’s mouth and twists his neck. The bloody wound in Dan’s back is visible. Jason picks the blade up and walks away, leaving Dan’s dead body. Jason approaches the tent where Dan’s girlfriend is waiting in her yellow sleeping bag with one bare shoulder visible. Jason slices through the tent. The woman screams and covers her head with the sleeping bag. Jason drags the sleeping bag out of the tent with the woman trapped inside. He swings the bag, so it hits against a tree. He drops the sleeping bag and the woman’s face is bloody and her eyes open and vacant, indicating she is dead. There is blood on the sleeping bag.
01:34:50-01:34:58
Tina, her mother and Dr. Crews are arguing about whether they should stay at the cabin. The rising tempers trigger Tina’s telekinesis and a television set moves across the room toward Dr. Crews. He ducks so the television hits the picture on the wall behind him, causing it to fall and shatter.
01:35:13
Nick says, “Melissa was a bitch.”
01:36:34-01:37:53
Russell and his girlfriend Sandra are by the lake at night. Sandra takes off her clothes and encourages Russell to go for a skinny dip. She is shown only from the side and back, including her bare buttocks as she goes into the water. As Russell is removing his own clothes, Jason comes along. Russell sees him and backs away in fear. Jason takes out his blade and swings it at Russell as Russell yells “No!” When Sandra pops her head out from under the water, she sees Russell’s dead body lying on the beach, the face bloodied. She screams and Jason pops out from under the water near her. She screams even more and struggles in the water. Her bare buttocks and kicking legs are shown from under the water as she tries to escape Jason. Jason grabs her leg and pulls her under. One bare breast is visible from the side as she sinks.
01:38:59-01:01:39:08
Jason drags Sandra’s body out of the lake onto the beach.
01:39:43-01:40:00
Jason approaches the cabin with eerie sound effects.
01:41:29-01:42:19
Dr. Crews is taking a walk in the woods at night. He sees one of the dead bodies suspended in a tree and a bloody spike lying beside it. Dr. Crews picks up the spike. There is a flash of lightning. Dr. Crews drops the spike and runs away.
01:44:47-01:45:28
Tina has overheard her mother and Dr. Crews arguing over Tina’s treatment. She gets into her mother’s car and drives away from the cabin. As she is driving along the dark dirt road, she sees a vision of Jason impaling her mother with a spike. The mother writhes in pain and there is a bloody wound in the middle of her torso as Jason moves the blade up and down. The hallucination causes Tina to drive off the road.
01:47:45-01:49:57
Maddy is outside in the dark. Russell’s dead body drops from a tree in front of her and she gasps and screams. Maddy runs into a shed. Jason follows. Maddy tries to hide in a corner and be quiet. She has her back up against an interior wall. Jason breaks one arm through it on one side of Maddy, holding her so she cannot get away. His other hand breaks through the other side, holding a blade. Maddy screams and the scene cuts to the woods where Tina is running.
01:50:26-01:53:19
Jason goes to the teenagers’ cabin. Melissa and Eddie are clothed, lying on a bed kissing. Robin and David are in another room, naked, but covered with bedsheets as they kiss and make out. Ben and Kate are having sex in a van parked outside the cabin. The latter couple notices the van is shaking. Kate suggests it might be Michael who has finally arrived to the party. Ben replies, “Yeah, right. Happy fucking birthday.” They open the van door, but see no one. Ben says, “The motherfucker’s out there.” Ben goes outside the van to look for Michael, holding a birthday horn noisemaker. Jason comes up behind him and grabs Ben’s head. Ben struggles and grunts. Kate sticks her head out the van window and calls for Ben. Jason grabs her and shoves the horn noisemaker into her face.
01:54:30-01:57:34
Jason pulls the main power wire on the outside of the cabin, causing all the lights to go out inside. Robin and David continue to make out. Meanwhile, Tina and Nick are running through the woods. They find Michael’s dead body suspended in the tree. His eyes are vacant and Tina flashes back to the vision she had of Michael with blood dripping from his mouth. Back at the cabin, Jason’s feet are seen entering the cabin. David and Robin are in the bed upstairs. David tries to get out of bed, but falls over because he is stoned. Robin sits up and giggles, the sheet falling to reveal her bare breasts. David goes downstairs carrying a flashlight. There is thunder and lightning outside. David notices a sticky substance on the floor (presumably blood) and says, “What the fuck?” Jason, carrying a large knife, comes up behind David as David is looking in the fridge. David stands up, turns around and Jason stabs him in the torso with the knife. David falls to the floor with the blade stuck in him.
01:58:27-02:04:50
Tina and Nick are back at Tina’s cabin. She finds newspaper clippings in a desk drawer about the killer whose body was never found and realizes that was the figure she saw emerge from the lake. She is overcome with emotion, which triggers her telekinesis. Everything in the room begins to shake with pictures on the walls and books falling down, and lamps breaking. Meanwhile, back at the other cabin, Eddie is reading Michael’s birthday cards after being rejected by Melissa. “’Happy birthday, Michael. You lucky son of a bitch. Many happy returns. Love, Melissa’. Cunt.” Jason walks around the cabin, unbeknownst to Eddie. Eddie is sitting on the couch, opening some of Michael’s birthday gifts. Jason comes behind him, but Eddie does not turn around at first, thinking it is Melissa. Eddie then turns around, looks startled and Jason stabs him in the neck. Jason’s feet are seen walking up the stairs. Robin is lying in bed waiting for David to come back. She sits up. Her breasts are visible again as she lets the sheet drop and puts on her shirt. Robin gets up and leaves the room to search for the others. She calls out to them, but no one responds. She goes into another room and shines her flashlight around. She hears something in the closet. She slowly opens the door and a cat jumps out. Robin sits down and snuggles with the cat. The cat jumps away and Robin notices there is blood on the blanket covering the window seat where she is sitting. Then she sees a severed head and screams. Jason barges into the room and Robin screams more. She backs away from him, but he grabs her by the throat, picks her up and throws her out the second-storey window. Robin lands on the ground with a thud.
02:06:08-02:07:02
Mrs. Shepard and Dr. Crews are in the woods looking for Tina. When Dr. Crews says he is going back to the cabin, Mrs. Shepard says, “You’re not just a lousy doctor. You’re a fucking coward”. Jason comes up behind her carrying a large blade. Mrs. Shepard gasps and both she and Dr. Crews run. Jason catches up to them and stabs Mrs. Shepard in the back while Dr. Crews holds her and blood splatters onto his face.
02:07:16-02:07:28
Nick is in the teenagers’ cabin looking for everyone. He sees Eddie’s dead body with a stab wound at the neck lying under the living room table.
02:09:53-02:11:09
Dr. Crews is in the woods, running. He stops for a second and hears the sound of an electric saw. Jason appears with an electric rotating saw on a long handle. Dr. Crews runs. Jason follows Dr. Crews with the saw. At one point the saw noise stops. Dr. Crews slows down and looks around. Jason comes up behind him and knocks Dr. Crews to the ground. Dr. Crews somersaults backwards and Jason starts up the saw again. Dr. Crews looks up at Jason, terrified, as Jason lowers the saw onto him. The saw is shown briefly touching Dr. Crews’s torso, but then the camera moves to Dr. Crews’s face, which goes dead as the sound of the saw continues.
02:11:09-02:15:50
Tina finds her mother’s dead body lying in the woods. There is blood all over Mrs. Shepard’s shirt. Tina cries and says “Oh, god”. Tina continues on into the woods and sees Jason from afar. Tina follows Jason and comes across Kate’s body situated in a tree. Tina touches the body and Kate’s head falls back, showing the noisemaker horn shoved in Kate’s eye. Tina backs up a step and bumps into Sandra’s naked dead body on the ground as well as that of Maddy splayed in a tree. There is a close-up of Maddy’s wrist with two nails through it, keeping her affixed to the tree and another close-up of Maddy’s slit neck. Suddenly, Russell’s body falls hanging upside down from a higher branch. The face is bloody and Tina screams.
Tina runs and finds herself face to face with Jason on the road. Tina uses her telekinetic powers to cause a tree branch to entwine Jason and knock him into a deep mud puddle. Tina then causes a power line to fall from an electrical post and go into the puddle. Sparks and electrical bolts fly as Jason struggles and then falls face first into the puddle. Tina approaches the puddle and looks at Jason’s lifeless body. Suddenly, he stands up again and Tina runs. Jason follows her. Tina makes her way back to the teenagers’ cabin, but it is dark and empty. Jason jumps through a glass window in front of her. Tina screams. Tina and Jason stare at each other as Tina backs out of the room. She uses her telekinetic powers to close the kitchen doors on him and barricade it with a table. Jason pushes the table aside and pries the doors open. Tina cries and backs further away from him. She uses her powers to pick up the couch and cause it to knock over Jason. Tina stumbles backward onto a step. She puts her hand down and realizes she is touching the severed head of one of the other teenagers, which has been placed in a flower pot. She screams as Jason pushes the couch off himself. Tina causes the flower pot containing the severed head to fly across the room and knock Jason over. Tina manages to get out the front door and down the front steps. She turns and watches Jason come out the door. She uses her powers to cause the porch to crumble around him, including the wooden porch roof, which crushes Jason.
02:16:19-02:16:21
Tina has gone back to her own cabin where Nick and Melissa are and told them she killed Jason. Outside, Jason’s scary hand pops up from the porch wreckage.
02:16:36-02:24:03
Jason’s hand is shown picking up an axe. Inside Tina’s cabin, Nick tries to convince Melissa not to go outside. Melissa responds, “Fuck you! No, no. Fuck you both!” Melissa opens the door to leave, but Jason is standing right there. Tina screams and Melissa is stunned speechless. Jason steps into the cabin and hits Melissa with the axe. The axe is stuck in her head and he throws the body across the room, causing it to slide over the television set and into a lamp. Nick puts himself between Tina and Jason. He yells at Tina to go out the door, but Jason slams it shut. Tina and Nick try to run up the stairs, but Jason manages to grab at Nick’s clothes, causing Nick to stumble. Nick manages to scramble up the stairs after Tina. As Jason slowly makes his way up the stairs, Tina stands at the top of the staircase and uses her powers to cause a hanging light to fall and knock Jason backwards down the stairs. The wooden stairs give way under Jason’s weight. Nick and Tina go back down the stairs, carefully stepping over the gap where Jason fell through. As they are about to open the front door, Jason bursts through the wood under the stairs and grabs Nick. Jason throws Nick to the ground and places his boot on Nick’s back. Tina screams and then stares at Jason’s back, his back bones still visible through his tattered clothing. There is a close-up of the hairless, grotesque back of Jason’s head as Tina causes whitish-yellowish goo to ooze from it. Jason turns around to face her. Her telekinetic powers cause his hockey mask to burst off his face, revealing a greyish decayed face with bloodshot eyes, nostril holes but no nose, and sparse, yellow, crooked teeth. He turns his head to reveal a bloody wound in the side of his head. Tina causes a light above him to shatter and the cord coils around Jason’s neck. The cord rises, taking Jason with hit, as he struggles and chokes. Tina causes the floor below him to break and open up into a hole. Then the cord breaks and Jason falls into the hole to the basement. Tina sees Jason’s unmoving body lying in the basement below. The camera zooms in on his disfigured face and he opens his eyes. Tina is checking to see if Nick is alive. Jason reaches up and grabs Tina. She screams as he pulls her down into the basement. He stares at her and rips the light cord from his neck. Tina causes a jar of nails to pierce Jason. Jason pulls out the nail that went into his forehead. Tina causes a can of gasoline to spray at Jason. Jason tries to avoid the spray. Tina causes the stove to ignite and shoot fire out into the basement. Tina stares at Jason’s gory face and causes a large fireball to explode from the stove toward Jason. Jason is engulfed in flames and stumbles around the basement, eventually falling over. Nick and Tina run out of the house as burning boards fall around them. They make it to the dock before the house explodes in a fireball.
Tina and Nick are hugging on the dock when suddenly Jason grabs Tina and throws her away from Nick. Nick and Jason face each other. Nick shoots Jason with the pistol he has been carrying. Jason flinches with each shot, but keeps moving towards Nick. Jason gets close enough to knock the pistol out of Nick’s hand and into the lake. Jason pushes Nick off the dock and Nick lands in a boat. Jason turns back to Tina and starts walking toward her. She is lying on the dock, holding her leg as if it is injured. She uses her telekinetic powers and the lake starts to bubble. Her father bursts through the wooden dock and grabs Jason’s legs, then wraps a chain around Jason’s neck and pulls him into the water. Tina faints.
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter
October 31, 2019
8:08 pm
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter is the seventh movie in the Saw horror film series, theatrically released in 2010. The movies centre on a serial killer nicknamed Jigsaw, whose real name is John Kramer. Jigsaw forces people to undergo various elaborate torture traps. He believes that if they survive these challenges, they will be rehabilitated from whatever problems they have. The backstory to Saw 3D is that Jigsaw has died, but his ex-wife Jill Tuck and a disturbed police officer named Mark Hoffman (who became Jigsaw’s assistant) are now competing to continue Jigsaw’s legacy. A man named Bobby Dagen has become a celebrity motivational speaker after writing a book about surviving Jigsaw’s torture, but the public is unaware that Bobby fabricated the whole story.
The broadcast was preceded by a viewer advisory in audio and video formats at 8:08 pm:
[words on screen]
The following presentation is rated
|18A|
Viewer discretion is advised.
|MS| Mature Subject Matter
|CL| Coarse Language |V| Violence
[voice-over] The following presentation is rated 18A. This presentation deals with mature subject matter and contains scenes with violence and coarse language.
The following are the times and descriptions of the most relevant scenes.
8:09:48-8:10:15
There is a series of quick images appearing on a screen. They show two men covered in blood. One points something at the other that makes a zapping sound. The other man screams and tries to grab something. The first man closes a set of heavy doors. The screen cuts to black. Then the camera pans along a thick trail of blood until it shows a foot dragging along the ground.
8:10:19-8:10:28
Dr. Lawrence Gordon is crawling along the floor of an industrial-type building, pushing himself with his hands and one foot. His other leg is a bloody stump, losing a lot of blood as he travels.
8:10:57-8:11:32
Lawrence is crawling along the floor and arrives at a steaming pipe. He reaches out and feels that the steam is very hot. He rolls up his pant leg to reveal the bloody stump. He forces himself to hold the stump to the hot metal in order to cauterize it. There is a close-up of this act. Lawrence screams in pain as he holds it there for a few seconds.
8:11:48-8:17:05
There is a windowed enclosure in the middle of a public street. Two men, Brad and Ryan, appear to be unconscious at either end of a worktable with a circular saw in front of each of them. People begin to gather by the window to see what is going on. They both wake up and realize they are bound to the table. They say “What the fuck is this?” and “What the fuck are you doing here?” They struggle to free themselves from the wrist cuffs that bind them to the table, while the onlookers look alarmed. The men yell at the onlookers to help them. A cover drops to reveal a woman, Dina, is suspended in a contraption on the ceiling. She also looks scared and says “Let me out of here!” Brad yells at the onlookers to “Break the fucking glass”. A woman tries to break it with her bag, but it does not work. A scary looking puppet comes around the corner on a tricycle. The puppet has a white face with red lips and what looks like blood dripping from it. It has bulging cheeks with red concentric circles on them, black sockets for eyes and unruly black, shoulder-length hair. In a sinister robotic voice, the puppet explains that Dina has been playing both men, convincing them to do criminal acts to fulfill her material needs. The puppet says she is toxic and to get out of the triangle, the men must compete to push the saw all the way to the other side (thus killing the other) or “walk away” and let Dina die. Brad yells to the onlookers “What are you fucking staring at, you motherfuckers?! Do something!” The saws and a timer start, counting down 60 seconds. Ryan yells “Oh, fuck!” and Dina screams as the saws whir. Brad & Ryan push the saw back and forth with each one almost getting killed. The words “asshole” and “bitch” are used during the struggle. Ryan pushes the saw enough to scratch Brad, so there is blood on Brad’s shirt and neck. Dina encourages whomever is currently winning to kill the other man. They all yell “fuck” a number of times. Then Ryan convinces Brad that Dina is not worth their lives. The rotating saw in the middle of the device gets closer to Dina as she screams. The saw goes through her midsection as she screams and her blood splatters all over Brad, Ryan, the puppet and the window. The saw causes her guts to fall out and fall to the floor with a splat. Dina goes limp as the saw continues to slice her in half.
8:17:15-8:19:49
Jill Tuck enters a room in an industrial-type building where Mark Hoffman is sitting in a chair with his back to her. She points a device at him that makes an electrical zapping sound and his body convulses. Then she puts a contraption known as a reverse bear trap over his head and fastens it. Jill says “Game over” and seals Hoffman inside the room. She hears him scream, but then the glass on the small window of the door breaks. Hoffman’s face appears and he has inserted the mouthpiece of the contraption he is wearing between the bars on the window. Jill runs away as Hoffman manages to free himself from the contraption, but not without a lot of blood resulting around his mouth. The clawed contraption closes shut on itself and falls to the ground. Hoffman screams as blood pours down his body from his mouth. Jill runs through the warehouse, but Hoffman follows her. Jill hides behind a utility shelf, watching as Hoffman gets some white fabric and wraps it around his injured hand. Hoffman takes the contraption to another area where there are multiple versions of the puppet mask lying around. Hoffman sews stitches into his own facial injury as he listens to a television news report about a grisly crime scene.
8:26:21-8:27:32
Jill leaves the police station at nighttime. It is foggy. She sees a tricycle outside like the one the puppet was riding in the earlier scene. Someone rushes to her and covers her mouth with his hand. The scene cuts to black for a second. A gloved hand is shown in close-up turning on some machinery. Hoffman pulls a starter cord and an electric blade saw starts up. The gears have the same white & red spiral as the puppet’s cheeks. The device is set up on railroad tracks which have been assembled inside a warehouse. Jill is in a short, sleeveless pink dress. She is standing at the other end of the tracks with her hands tied up to posts on either side of her. Hoffman, who still has his wound from the contraption, says, “You want to know the only thing wrong with killing you, Jill? I can only do it once.” He sets the machine in motion. It rolls down the track as Jill screams. On impact, Jill’s body flies backward and blood splatters. Her bloody body flops down, sliced in two. Jill wakes up, implying the previous scene was just a dream.
8:27:40-8:31:03
The camera pans up a man’s legs, Evan, as he struggles to free them from under a steering wheel. Evan has a shaved head, is shirtless and has many tattoos. He notices he is sitting in a car with a shattered windshield, but the car is inside a large garage. He struggles and screams. There is blood on his back where it touches the seat. It is shown that his legs are chained to the car. The scary puppet voice tells Evan that he, his friends and girlfriend are racist and are in a situation of their own making. The car’s headlights go on to reveal one of Evan’s male friends is chained to a garage door in front of the car. That man yells “Fuck, get me out of here!”. Another male friend is tied up behind the car with a band around his forehead and chains attached to his tongue and both arms. A female friend is tied up with ropes on a board lying under the car. The puppet voice tells Evan that in 30 seconds the jack holding up the car will fall setting off a deadly chain of events. To stop it from happening, Evan must tear himself away from the seat to which he is glued and pull a red lever. The voice tells Evan he has judged people by the colour of their skin, but today he will learn that they are all the same colour inside. The timer starts and all four people start screaming. There is a close-up of Evan’s bloody back as he tries to tear himself from the glued seat. He manages to get the back of one arm free, but he cries out in pain. He tries the other arm and there is a close-up of his skin tearing. The main chained to the door yells, “Do it! Fucking do it!” Evan screams and strains to reach the lever as his skin tears and peels from the seat. They all scream and Evan’s skin peels away more from the seat.
The timer stops. The car’s wheel falls onto the female’s face, then rolls the length of her body, crushing and maiming her, with blood splattering. The man who was chained behind the car has his two arms and tongue ripped off his body. Then the car plows forward, running down the man chained to the door. The car bursts out the door and rams into another car sitting in the junkyard outside. Evan flies from the car and through the windshield of the other car. The viewer can see the blood and tissue on his back where all the skin tore off from the glued seat.
8:31:47-8:32:08
Bobby Dagen is facilitating a survivors of Jigsaw support group. A woman named Sidney is describing her experience and it is shown in flashback. Sidney and a man are hanging from bars over a large group of fan blades. They are facing each other. Sidney takes a swing at the man and he falls into the blades, splattering Sidney with blood. Sidney screams.
8:32:48-8:32:55
Another woman at the group says, “You want to know the best thing that happened to me after having to cut off my own arm?” and the scenario is then shown in flashback. The woman is by a table and picks up a large meat cleaver. There is blood already all over the table. She also has a contraption on her head. She swings the blade down. The viewer sees her grimace in pain but does not see the arm get cut.
8:36:31-8:36:40
Bobby goes out to the parking lot after the support group meeting. His wife Joyce had told him she would meet him at the car. He is confused when no one is in the car and then someone comes out of nowhere and grabs him.
8:36:42-8:36:55
Detective Matt Gibson is at the police station, in the autopsy room. There are bloody, charred human remains on a table. When Gibson asks the staff member what happened, the staff member says, “They always tell you not to smoke at the gas station”.
8:37:02-8:37:55
Officer Rogers phones Gibson from the junkyard crime scene. He is standing in front of the body of the man who had his arms and tongue yanked off. There are bloody, gaping wounds at the body’s shoulders and mouth. Gibson goes to the scene. There are lots of police cars and personnel around. Gibson is leaning into the car listening to and rewinding the recording that contained the puppet’s message to Evan. The front seat is covered with Evan’s blood. Evan’s legs are visible hanging out of the car he got thrown into.
8:38:17-8:39:05
There is a close-up of the female’s body. What used to be her head is just a mash of tissue, bone and blood. The man who had been tied to the garage door is lying on the floor as the police look at the body. There is blood on the man’s shirt. In the bathroom of the garage, on the mirror is written in red block letters, “Gibson, See for yourself” and the reverse bear trap that had been on Hoffman’s head is lying on the floor.
8:39:07-8:42:47
Bobby wakes up to find himself in a very small cage. A television set situated outside the cage beside him goes on and the scary puppet appears on screen. The puppet tells Bobby he is a liar because he has been getting fame and notoriety for having survived Jigsaw, but the truth is Bobby has never been in one of Jigsaw’s traps. The screen then shows Joyce with a shackle around her neck. The puppet gives him one hour to survive a series of obstacles to gain access to his wife whom he has also deceived. If he cannot meet the challenge, Joyce will die. A series of floodlights go on and the cage begins to move. A pulley system moves the cage from a horizontal position on the floor to a vertical position dangling over spikes. Bobby reaches up to pull a handle and the bottom drops out of the cage, so Bobby is dangling over the spikes. Bobby slips, but manages to catch the rungs of the cage to prevent himself from falling onto the spikes. Bobby struggles to prevent himself from falling, but then starts moving his legs so that the cage moves back and forth like a swing. He manages to swing the cage far enough past the spike floor to leap out and onto the regular floor.
He sees another screen showing his bound wife. The scene then cuts to the actual room where she is. She is in bare feet with a chain around her neck, yelling “Bobby! Help!” and tugging at the chain which is affixed to a trap door on the floor. A screen flickers on in her room, showing Bobby on the floor in another part of the building.
8:46:29-8:47:35
Officer Rogers is still at the junkyard site. He phones Gibson to say there was a small explosion from one of the cars. The car is shown on fire. While he is on the phone, another giant fireball goes off. Rogers and the other police workers at the scene back away. Gibson warns Rogers to get out of there and call bomb squad. Gibson and another officer watch a video that Hoffman has sent to them in which he asks Gibson to make a deal. If Gibson turns Jill over to Hoffman, Hoffman will stop killing. If Gibson does not, Hoffman says, “Everyone dies”.
8:47:58-8:52:01
In the warehouse, Bobby has followed the red line down a hallway to another door on which is written “Redefine your priorities”. Bobby pushes the door open and lights go on in the room. The woman who served as his publicist, Nina, is in a chair in the middle of the room, hooked into a circular contraption with spikes pointing at her and wearing a strait jacket. Her chin is locked into another device and there is a string going into her mouth. She is screaming for Bobby to help her. Bobby plays a tape recording in which the puppet voice explains that there is a key in her stomach and a fish hook on the end of the string down her throat. Bobby has to get the key onto the fish hook and out of Nina and then use the key to unlock the device she is trapped in before the spikes penetrate her. The spikes will move closer to her each time the decibel level goes above a whisper, meaning Nina must keep quiet while Bobby tries to get the key. Bobby pulls on the string, Nina screams and the spikes move closer to her. Bobby covers Nina’s mouth with his hand to try to get her to stop screaming. Bobby pulls on the string again, but stops when she starts screaming again. Bobby says, “Please, please just shut the fuck up”. Bobby pulls the string again and blood splutters out of Nina’s mouth. He stops again and covers her mouth. Then he pulls again and gets the key out. As he struggles to actually unlock the device, the time runs out and the spikes penetrate Nina’s head and neck.
Joyce has witnessed the whole thing on the screen in her cell. She is traumatized and yells for help. The chain around her neck retracts further into the floor so that she is forced to be on her knees.
8:55:34-8:59:38
Bobby goes into another room in the warehouse. Bobby’s lawyer Suzanne is lying on her back strapped to another torture device. Her feet and hands are shackled and there is a contraption around her head. The cage that Bobby was in before breaks through a glass window into the room. The puppet is in it and tells Bobby he has to get into the other machine that is in the room and lift the bars to the highest position and hold it there for 30 seconds or the contraption on Suzanne’s head will pierce her eyes and mouth. Suzanne screams, “Get me out! Get me the fuck out!” Suzanne’s machine starts to move, revealing that it is a hamster wheel-type machine and it is starting to incline her forward. Bobby manages to get the bars in the right position, so Suzanne’s machine stops moving. But there are spikes digging into his sides and he loses his grip, dropping the bars. Bobby tries again, as Suzanne screams. He succeeds but struggles to keep holding the bars up. The spikes get closer and closer to Suzanne’s face as she screams more. Bobby yells too. Bobby cannot sustain his force and there is a close-up as the spikes pierce Suzanne’s eyes and mouth and blood pours from them. Joyce has again seen the incident on the screen and her neck chain retracts further into the floor.
9:00:57-9:06:06
Bobby goes into another room. The door locks behind him and lights go on. Bobby sees he is on a ledge overlooking a large warehouse space. His assistant Cale is on the other side, blindfolded and on a similar ledge. Cale’s neck is also attached to a collar and chain suspended from the ceiling. Bobby plays another recording from the puppet voice. Bobby has to direct Cale over the broken beams to walk to him. He must also get the key that is hanging from the ceiling to unlock the collar around Cale’s neck; otherwise Cale will be hung. Bobby directs Cale to shuffle along the boards. Cale is extremely distraught and anxious and therefore not listening well. Bobby himself shimmies along the ledge. Cale yells at Bobby “Get me out of this fucking thing” and repeatedly uses the f-word. A beam breaks out from under Cale, but he manages to grab another one with his arms. Bobby jumps to a beam to get closer to Cale. Cale manages to pull himself up onto a beam and Bobby gets close to the dangling key, but cannot quite reach it. Bobby grabs the key with 8 seconds to spare, but must still get it to Cale. Bobby throws Cale the key, but it bounces off Cale and falls to the floor below. Cale’s noose rises, his body flails and then Cale dies, his body hanging limply in front of Bobby. Joyce again sees this on the screen.
9:06:37-9:07:46
In his search for Hoffman, Gibson has been led to a location that Gibson tells Rogers is where Hoffman saved his life. The scenario is shown in flashback. The area was a flophouse for homeless people and junkies and Gibson was responding to a distress call. He approaches the area with his gun drawn. A man comes at Gibson from behind and hits him over the head with a bottle, causing him to fall to the ground. The man rushes at Gibson, but Gibson kicks him away. Gibson is on the ground and the man kicks at him. The man manages to get a hold of Gibson’s gun and points it at Gibson. Hoffman arrives from behind the man and tells him to drop the gun. The man does, but Hoffman shoots him anyway, repeatedly. There are close-ups of the blood splattering out the wounds and onto Gibson.
9:08:31-9:10:31
Bobby goes down some stairs and finds another television screen showing Joyce on the screen. Joyce and Bobby are able to hear each other and Bobby assures her he is coming. The image on the screen changes to the puppet. The puppet tells him that the combination numbers for the lock on the door to Joyce’s cell are etched into two of Bobby’s teeth. A pair of pliers and a dental diagram are there to help Bobby extract his own teeth to see the numbers. Joyce is screaming and can see Bobby on the screen in her cell. Bobby puts the pliers into his mouth and the scene cuts away briefly to show that Gibson and some police officers have entered the building.
9:10:44-9:11:42
Bobby is yanking on his teeth with the pliers. Blood drips onto the table in front of him. Bobby manages to get one tooth out as blood pours from his mouth onto the table. Gibson and a tactical team have entered the building and discover Nina’s body still bloody in the contraption.
9:12:29-9:13:52
Bobby is trying to pull out his other tooth. He hears the tactical team and throws himself up against a door to try to get them to hear him. The tactical team discovers Suzanne’s body in the wheel. Bobby throws himself against the door again and the tactical team hears him. At the same time, he manages to loosen his second tooth. The pliers drop to the floor, as does Bobby as blood pours out of his mouth. The tactical team finds Cale’s body hanging. Bobby reaches into his mouth and pulls out the tooth. He lines up the bloody teeth on the bloody table. His hands are covered in blood as he punches in the lock code. His shirt is also covered in blood.
9:14:55-9:34:10
Bobby finally reaches Joyce. She is on a raised platform surrounded by a wire fence. Bobby touches the fence and it electrocutes him. He falls back but does not die. A television screen comes on and the puppet explains this next challenge. Bobby has to pierce hooks through his chest muscles, hoist himself on the chains to which the hooks are attached, and connect the extension cords above him before the clock expires.
Meanwhile, Gibson and two officers have entered an office at the junkyard where they think Hoffman is hiding out. There is a man sitting at a desk, but as Gibson approaches and kicks the person over, he sees that it is the body of the man who had his tongue pulled out. The wound is fresh and visible on the body.
Gibson looks at the body on the floor and flashes back to when this same body was being zipped into a body bag to go to the coroner’s office at the police station. In flashback, Hoffman sets off the car explosion and, while all the officers run to investigate, he unzips the body bag and drags the mutilated corpse into his office. Gibson realizes Hoffman changed places with the body to sneak into the police station. As he is phoning Officer Palmer back at the police station, an automatic turret gun pops up in the junkyard office and shoots Gibson and the two other officers repeatedly, in slow motion. They all die with bloody gunshot wounds visible.
The coroner, in the examining room at the police station, unzips the body bag and looks startled to see Hoffman alive. Hoffman immediately stabs a knife into the coroner’s neck. Blood spurts dramatically and there is blood on the knife as Hoffman pulls it out. The coroner drops to the floor and writhes in pain, clutching his neck until he stops moving. Hoffman hears someone else coming into the room. As the door opens, Hoffman covers the man’s mouth to silence him and stabs him in the neck as well.
The tactical unit is still searching the warehouse (which the audience has since learned is an abandoned mental asylum). When an officer tugs on one particular door, a substance drops into a liquid in a caged tray, causing a noxious chemical reaction. Gas fills the room and all the tactical officers keel over.
Hoffman sneaks up on another officer at the station and stabs him in the neck. Blood pours from the officer’s mouth and neck.
Back in Joyce’s cell, there is a close-up as Bobby pierces one pectoral muscle with the hook. He screams in pain.
At the police station, Officer Palmer is still on the phone shouting for Gibson as Hoffman comes up behind her. Hoffman wraps his arm around her mouth. She struggles and manages to get out a scream. She reaches up behind her to smack Hoffman. He tightens his grip into a headlock and her eyes close, presumably because Hoffman has killed her.
Back in Joyce’s cell, there is another close-up of Bobby inserting the second hook into his pectoral muscle. Blood spills out of the wound.
At the police station, Palmer is lying on the floor. Hoffman peers through a small window to see Rogers and another officer guarding Jill Tuck in a cell.
In Joyce’s cell, Bobby pulls the chains to hoist himself up as Joyce shouts words of encouragement.
At the police station, Hoffman holds Palmer’s face up to the small window and knocks. The officer opens the door because he does not realize Palmer is dead. Hoffman drops Palmer and stabs the officer. There is blood on the officer’s shirt.
Bobby continues to try to hoist himself up, but is getting tired. Joyce screams at him to pull as she sees the clock counting down.
At the station, Rogers turns around and Hoffman shoots him point blank in the eye with a pistol. There is a bloody wound where Rogers was shot and his body slumps to the floor. Jill Tuck screams inside her cell and grabs a pencil off the small table. Some of Rogers’s blood splatters onto her. Hoffman grabs the cell door keys off of Rogers’s bloody body and unlocks the door. He approaches Jill and leans in to her face to whisper something to her. She stabs him in the neck with the pencil. The act slows Hoffman down enough for her to run out of the cell, but Hoffman then pulls out the pencil and follows her.
Bobby gets high enough to reach one of the extension cord ends.
The exit doors at the police station are locked, so Jill runs around to escape Hoffman. She encounters the bloody body of one of the officers he killed.
Bobby has both extension cord ends and is about to plug them together when the hooks tear through his flesh, no longer able to hold his weight, and he falls to the ground. Joyce screams.
Hoffman walks menacingly through the police station looking for Jill. He also passes by the officer’s bloody body. He looks around for Jill and finds her hiding by a filing cabinet. He kicks her when he sees her.
Bobby slips on his own pool of blood trying to stand up. The timer runs out. The platform that Joyce is on sinks down a bit and metal sides come up, trapping her in a brazen bull torture device. A fire ignites around it. Bobby tries to approach but is electrocuted by the fence again.
Hoffman drags Jill along the floor. He lets her go to arrange a chair in the middle of the room. When she tries to stand up, he bashes her face against a table repeatedly until she is unconscious. There is blood dripping from her eyebrow and he picks her up and throws her over his shoulder.
Joyce is screaming from inside the torture device. Bobby can see her through a small window in the contraption.
The scene flashes between Joyce burning alive in the contraption and Hoffman strapping Jill to the chair.
Joyce’s hair and skin begin to char and she collapses while Bobby collapses helplessly to the floor.
Hoffman gets the reverse bear trap from the police evidence room and puts it on Jill. She wakes up and struggles in fear. There is a timer on the device and after a few seconds, the device snaps shut, spraying pieces of her face out. There is a close-up of the hole where her face was, with blood dripping from it. The body slumps forward.
Hoffman goes back to his hideout, turns on some gas tanks, pours gasoline over everything and lights the building on fire. The building explodes as he walks away. Two individuals in pig masks jump out and surround him. One of them hits Hoffman with a board. He tries to fight back, but they hold him. A third pig-masked person comes out and stabs Hoffman. That person takes off his mask to reveal it is Dr. Lawrence Gordon. Hoffman says, “What the fuck?” In a series of quick flashbacks, it is shown that a bloodied Jigsaw found Lawrence in the hallway after he cauterized his own leg. Jigsaw drags Lawrence down the hallway with a close-up of Lawrence’s bloody leg stump. It is then shown that Jigsaw tended to Lawrence’s leg and fitted him with a prosthetic. After that, Lawrence helped Jigsaw. There are scenes of Lawrence doing something to a person’s eye, a man having a contraption poke him in the eye, a close-up of using a surgical rotating saw, blood splattering a woman’s face, Lawrence sewing a man’s eyelids shut and then the man awake and screaming that he can’t see.
There are scenes from a previous Saw movie of a group of people trapped in a bathroom. They are hurting themselves and screaming or lying in pools of blood. Hoffman finds himself in this bathroom, chained up, with the rotting corpses of previous victims. The hand saw that Lawrence used in the first movie to saw off his own foot is lying on the floor. Hoffman tries to reach it, but Lawrence picks it up and flashes back to when he sawed off his foot, screaming in pain. He says “I don’t think so” to Hoffman and throws the saw into the hallway where Hoffman cannot reach it. Hoffman yells, “What do you think you’re doing? What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” Lawrence sees the shackle he had been stuck in with a rotting foot bone still attached to it. Lawrence turns out the light, says “Game over”, and shuts the door.
Zero Dark Thirty
November 11, 2019
2:56 pm
Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 feature film about the search for and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden by the CIA. The main character is Maya, a CIA agent who is persistent in pursuing the search despite the challenges of the operation. The word “fuck” and its variations, including “motherfucker”, are peppered throughout the dialogue of the movie, along with other coarse language such as “shit”, “bullshit”, and “asshole”.
The broadcast was preceded by the following advisory at 2:56:16
[words on screen]
The following presentation is rated
|14A|
Viewer discretion is advised.
|MS| Mature Subject Matter
|CL| Coarse Language |N| Nudity |SX| Sexuality |V| Violence
[voice-over] The following presentation is rated 14A. This presentation deals with mature subject matter and contains scenes with coarse language, nudity, sexuality and violence. Viewer discretion is advised.
The following are the times of the most relevant scenes.
2:59:16-3:00:02
CIA Officer Dan walks into a compound known as “Black Site” where Ammar is being detained. Ammar’s face is cut with dried blood. Dan threatens to hurt Ammar if Ammar does not look at him when he’s talking to him, if Ammar steps off the mat he’s standing on, or if Ammar lies to him. Dan’s assistants push Ammar around a bit. Dan’s assistants tie Ammar’s arms up. Dan and his assistants walk out.
3:04:05-3:06:26
Dan is interrogating Ammar with Maya looking on. He tells Ammar, “When you lie to me, I hurt you.” Dan drags a gym mat over to where Ammar is standing, his arms still tied up. Dan wrestles Ammar onto the mat. Another assistant helps hold Ammar down. Ammar grunts and struggles to free himself. Dan tells Maya to fill a nearby bucket with water, which she does. Dan holds a cloth over Ammar’s face and pours water on it as he continues to bombard Ammar with questions about the last time he saw bin Laden. Dan stops pouring, the cloth is removed from Ammar’s face and Ammar spits out water. They stand Ammar back up but he is still choking on the water. Dan & Maya leave.
3:15:33-3:19:49
Dan is interrogating Ammar again, trying to get Ammar to tell him who else is a member of the Saudi Group. They are each sitting on a chair, facing each other. Maya is also in the room, sitting in a chair off to the side. Ammar insists he does not know. Dan kicks the chair out from under Ammar, as Ammar shouts “I don’t know!” Ammar slumps to the ground, his arms still tied up. Dan puts Ammar upright and yanks Ammar’s pants down in front of Maya and says “What, did you shit your pants?” Ammar’s buttocks is visible when he is filmed from behind. Dan puts a dog collar on Ammar as Ammar struggles. Dan undoes Ammar’s wrist ties and holds the dog leash while Ammar limps along on all fours. Dan says “What the fuck do you think is going on?” Dan and his assistants cram Ammar into a small box as punishment for not telling them the specific day of an upcoming attack.
3:19:54-3:20:26
A group of men with semi-automatic weapons walks into an office building in Saudi Arabia and start firing. People scream and run. Blood is visible on some of the bodies with gunshot wounds. A television screen is showing the aftermath of the attack, with pools of blood on the floor and stairs, as the CIA agents watch a news report.
3:25:14-3:27:09
Maya watches video footage of other men being interrogated. Some are tied up or have hoods covering their faces and seem distressed.
3:31:29-3:32:09
A double-decker bus in London explodes, followed by a scene of an ambulance driving away from the mangled bus. CIA Chief Joseph Bradley is watching news reports on a television set. The report shows an interview with a survivor, a man with blood all over his face.
3:40:44-3:41:14
Maya is interrogating another detainee, Faraj. When Faraj tells Maya something she does not believe, the other agent in the room with them punches Faraj in the face. Maya warns Faraj to give her the information she needs. Her assistant punches Faraj in the face again. Faraj undergoes the same type of water torture as Ammar, where they cover his face with a cloth and pour water on it.
3:45:51-3:47:13
Maya and fellow CIA officer Jessica are eating at a restaurant at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. There is an explosion, tossing diners and dishes into the air. Maya and Jessica stumble into the kitchen and see a body slumped over. Other people are putting cloths to a person’s wound. Lights are flickering, there is worried murmuring and fires break out as Jessica and Maya try to get out. Footage of the incident, with the building burning, is then shown in a news report on a television screen. The report says the explosion was caused by a truck bomb.
3:57:01-3:57:15
Jessica has scheduled a meeting with a doctor they believe has ties to bin Laden’s inner circle. His car pulls up at the US military base called Camp Chapman. He exits the car holding a cane and keeps his other hand in his pocket. The US military agents point their guns at him and yell at him to take his hand out of his pocket. The car explodes. A news report a few seconds later reports that seven CIA agents died including station chief Jessica.
4:29:37-4:30:18
Maya gets in her car and drives out of the gated area in which she lives in Pakistan. Two men get out either side of an old green Mercedes holding automatic weapons. They fire repeatedly at Maya’s car and at the guard station of the gated apartment. Maya ducks down and manages to back the car behind the gate and push a button to shut the gate door. The two men continue to shoot, leaving bullet holes in the car and steel gate door.
4:51:15
Two of the male Special Operations Unit members who are going to infiltrate bin Laden’s headquarters are playing horseshoes while they wait for the mission to begin. One says to the other, of Maya, “If her confidence is the one thing that’s keeping me from getting ass-raped in a Pakistani prison, I’m gonna be honest with you, bro. I’m cool with that.”
5:03:41-5:14:53
A Special Operations Unit is in the walled compound where they believe Osama bin Laden is living. The scene is mostly dark or filmed as if through green-tinted night vision goggles. There are spans of several seconds throughout the scene where the officers are quietly making their way from one area to another.
The officers have their semi-automatic weapons ready. Gunshots go through a door. A person comes out with her hands up. The officers yell at her to get down and put her hands up. She says “you killed him”. The officers enter a room and see a man lying on the floor dead with gunshot wounds in his torso. An officer fires at him two more times.
An officer uses explosives to open a door. The Unit continues to search around the house, using explosives to open doors. At one spot, they encounter a fire.
They enter another area and a woman screams. She is about to reach for a gun, but the officers shoot her dead. They roll her body over and see that she and another man are dead.
There is a flash of more explosives, presumably to open another door. There is the sound of children crying. An officer finds them in a room and tells them it is okay.
Officers go into another area and there is the sound of a gunshot. There is the sound of more children screaming and an officer says “Shut that fucking kid up, please.” Another officer says “There’s no fucking way we can blow this thing.” An officer replies, “God, fucking damn it.”
Officers meet up and one says “I fucking smoked Abrar and his wife.” Another asks if the wife is still alive and the first officer replies, “She’s gonna bleed out”. The other then says “What a fucking mess”.
They set off another explosive to open another door and then another a few seconds later.
An officer fires his weapon and a man drops to the ground dead.
An officer has a woman by the hair. She squeals as he pulls her away.
A group of people start approaching and shouting in Arabic. An officer who speaks Arabic warns them to go back or the officers will kill them.
Another pair of officers pushes two women up against a wall and frisks them, then says “all clear”.
An officer finds an office full of files and says “Oh, fucking shit”.
An officer is in front of a door with his weapon pointed at it. He whispers “Osama”. Two women shriek and cry as officers storm into the room. There is the sound of gunshots. There is a body with gunshots in it. The officers turn a light on and there are women and children crying. The officers push the women against the wall and ask them who the dead person is. The women shout and struggle as the officers try to take them out of the room. An officer takes photos of the body with a cell phone camera.
5:17:06-5:17:16
An officer is going through the house and sees two of the dead bodies with gunshot wounds in them.
5:17:35
An officer shines a light on another man lying in a pool of blood.
5:20:08-5:20:45
The Unit blows up one of the helicopters they arrived in because it was damaged. There is a fiery explosion that billows smoke as the other helicopter flies away.
Super Channel Fuse
A Cure for Wellness
November 13, 2019
6:50 pm
A Cure for Wellness is a 2017 horror movie. Financial executive Lockhart is sent by his company’s board of directors to retrieve one of their fellow directors from a “wellness centre” in the Swiss Alps after that director, named Roland Pembroke, sent an unusual letter declaring that he would not return. Over the course of the movie, Lockhart gradually learns, from different sources, the history of the centre/sanitarium. It was built on the ruins of a castle. The castle belonged to a baron who, in order to ensure his bloodline was pure, tried to procreate with his sister, the baroness. The baroness was infertile, so the baron conducted experiments on the local peasants to try to find a cure. Eventually the baroness got pregnant, but the peasants revolted against them for having conducted the experiments. The peasants killed the baroness, cutting the female baby from her womb and throwing it into the castle’s aquifer. The peasants also burned the castle to the ground, but the baby survived, though she knows nothing of her history.
Lockhart is forced to stay at the sanitarium after surviving a car accident. He discovers that the sanitarium’s patients are still being used as subjects in experiments. The water from the aquifer has life-extending properties for its resident eels. The water is toxic to humans, but the centre’s director, Dr. Heinreich Vollmer, has devised a filtration process whereby the humans consume the water and then he extracts it from their sweat to create an elixir that humans can consume. All of the sanitarium’s staff and patients take drops of this elixir on a regular basis.
The broadcast was preceded by the following advisory at 6:51:01
[words on screen]
The following presentation is rated
18A
Viewer discretion is advised.
MS Mature Subject Matter
CL Coarse Language N Nudity SX Sexuality V Violence
[voice-over] The following presentation is rated 18A. This presentation deals with mature subject matter and contains scenes with coarse language, nudity, sexuality and violence. Viewer discretion is advised.
The following are the most relevant scenes:
6:54:00-6:54:44
A man named Morris is by himself in an office tower in a room full of computers. He clutches his chest as if he is having a heart attack. He falls down and knocks the water cooler over in the process. He writhes slightly and then stops moving. Water pools around him from the spilled water cooler. There is a close-up of his dead face with the eyes open.
6:55:51
“Stop being such a pussy.”
6:59:57
Board director: “Have you ever had a 12-inch black dick in your ass? Prison, Mr. Lockhart.”
7:00:57
“Fuck Morris.”
7:01:59
“Fuck, call me back.”
7:02:53
“Shit!”
7:14:11-7:15:20
The centre’s staff refused Lockhart permission to see Pembroke, so he is being driven back down the mountain. A deer jumps out in front of the car and hits the windshield. The driver loses control and the car flips repeatedly as it tumbles down the hillside. Both Lockhart and the driver are tossed around inside the car until the scene ends with Lockhart’s mother gasping awake.
There is then a series of quick cuts of: eels writhing, liquid dripping into a bottle, multiple ballerina figurines like the one Lockhart’s mother had been painting earlier, a ethereal young woman suspended in air, someone screaming underwater, a burning photograph of a young woman, the castle on fire, a close-up of a man wearing a hat that was in a photograph that Lockhart noticed earlier in the centre’s office, the dancing ballerina figurines again. Lockhart’s mother falls back onto her pillow and drops a ballerina figurine she was holding and the dancer breaks off her stand.
The next scene is Lockhart watching as a priest pushes a coffin along a conveyer belt into a crematorium. The coffin goes up in flames.
7:15:25-7:15:48
The deer that hit the car limps into the road. It repeatedly falls and struggles to stand until it eventually collapses in the road. The car is upside down with a tire spinning.
7:22:34-7:23:06
Lockhart goes to the steam bath room of the sanitarium to look for Pembroke. There are numerous elderly men and women wandering around in various states of undress. There are two men with their buttocks visible being hosed down by a staff member. Two naked women walk by as Lockhart surveys the scene. Another naked woman passes him as he goes through another set of doors.
7:26:50-7:26:54
Pembroke’s naked buttocks are visible as he removes a towel and steps into a pool.
7:27:58
Lockhart to Pembroke: “Well, people get fucked over every day.”
7:45:28-7:49:38
Lockhart agrees to undergo the first of his “treatments”. He is put in a tank of water with a breathing apparatus and told to just give himself over to the process, which could involve seeing repressed memories. One male staff member is in a nearby room monitoring him. Earlier in the movie, there have been allusions to Lockhart’s father committing suicide. Lockhart’s memories come back to him. He is watching through the windshield of a car with the windshield wipers on because it is raining. The car appears to be on a bridge. A man in a suit is outside the car. In the tank, the shadow of an eel flickers on Lockhart’s face. An eel is then seen swimming in the tank with Lockhart, but he does not notice because his eyes are closed.
A nurse walks into the adjoining room and eyes the male staff member who is supposed to be monitoring Lockhart. She leans against a wall and unbuttons her blouse. She is seen from the back and side.
Lockhart has a vision of Hannah, a mysterious adolescent girl he met earlier, suspended in water. Lockhart opens his eyes and sees multiple eels around him. He flails to get them away from him, then swims over to the window in the tank, which the male staff member told him he could knock on if he needed anything. Lockhart bangs on the window.
The male staff member is shown from the shoulders up. His shaking movements imply he is masturbating. There is a close-up of the bare breasts of the topless nurse.
Lockhart swims to the top of the tank to try to get out. His breathing apparatus falls out of his mouth and sinks. Lockhart looks down and sees it fall among all the eels. He struggles with the top of the tank, trying to get it open. He screams for help, but is muffled under the water. The machines tracking his heart rate are racing.
There is a close-up of the male staff member’s clothed torso as he continues to masturbate. The nurse is standing near him, still topless. She puts dropper in a vial and then drops the liquid into the man’s open mouth.
Lockhart continues to struggle and shout for help inside the tank. Then his movements slow, he closes his eyes and starts to sink. The heart monitors flatline. There is another vision of Hannah under water. As Lockhart sinks, there is a flashback of himself as a boy, sitting in a car playing with an action figure as the car drives in the rain. In the present, Lockhart’s body sinks to the bottom of the tank and the eels surround him. In the flashback, the car pulls over to the side of the bridge. Through the windshield, young Lockhart sees his father get out of the car, carrying a briefcase. The father gets up on the bridge ledge, briefcase in hand. The father leans forward and falls while young Lockhart shouts “Dad!”
7:49:43
“There’s something in the fucking water!”
7:53:54-7:54:47
A “patient” at the centre, Mrs. Watkins, tells Lockhart she has done some research on the history of the sanitarium. There were stories of people going missing and in 1814 a farmer found disfigured and emaciated bodies. As she gets up to leave because she has been summoned for her next treatment, she whispers to Lockhart, “There is terrible darkness here.”
8:07:46-8:08:03
Lockhart has managed to go into town. He speaks with a local farmer who explains that the baron had been trying to find a cure for the baroness’s infertility. The farmer says he has to kill a cow because it is unwell after drinking sewage water. The farmer stabs at the cow’s midsection. A large amount of fluid, blood and innards flow out onto the floor. Lockhart looks down and sees eels writhing and an aborted cow fetus have come out of the cow.
8:10:07
Board director about Pembroke: “No, the guy’s a fucking health nut. He ate kale, for Christ’s sake. What the fuck is going on? [...] Get Pembroke on a plane or this whole place goes ass over tits.”
8:10:54-8:11:51
Lockhart and Hannah are at a pub in the village. Lockhart phoned his office and found out that Pembroke was perfectly healthy before he left and that no one from the sanitarium phoned his company to tell them about Lockhart’s car accident like they had claimed. Lockhart is getting more suspicious. He puts the phone down and goes over to Hannah who is dancing with a rough-looking young local man. Lockhart yells at her to explain more about what she knows about the sanitarium. He grabs her to try to pull her away from the young man. Lockhart holds both her arms as he questions her. She says, “Please let me go”. He grabs the vial hanging around her neck, which earlier she told him was vitamins, and demands she tells him what it is. The young man grabs Lockhart by the jacket and Lockhart says to him, “Fuck off, Adolf!” The man kicks Lockhart’s crutch out from him and pushes him backwards into a table. The man grabs Hannah and suggests they keep dancing. Lockhart yells at the man to let Hannah go. Hannah struggles to get free of the young man’s grip. Lockhart strikes the man in the back of the knees with his crutch. The man stumbles but grabs the crutch and swings Lockhart off it, causing Lockhart to fall backwards into another table. The man pulls out a blade and walks menacingly towards Lockhart who is splayed on the floor. The man holds the blade near Lockhart’s face and says something in German. Dr. Vollmer walks in and shouts, so the man backs away.
8:15:44-8:15:53
Lockhart has a dream where Hannah is in a bathtub full of writhing eels.
8:20:08-8:20:31
Lockhart has snuck into a prohibited area of the sanitarium. It is a series of hallways, one of which is labelled “Transfusions”. He comes upon an old man lying on a gurney near an elevator. When the elevator dings the man suddenly opens his eyes wide and screams, showing that he does not have many teeth in his mouth. Lockhart hides as two male orderlies walk out of the elevator. The man is still screaming. The orderlies yell at the man who continues to scream and shake his head. One orderly raises a hand as if to slap the man, but the screen goes black.
8:24:40-8:26:14
Lockhart is hiding in another room. He flicks a switch and a series of aquarium-like water tanks are illuminated. There are people suspended in the tanks, some lying down, some upright, with their eyes open. They are elderly men and women, all topless, but wearing small bikini bottoms. Lockhart notices Roland Pembroke is one of the people. Pembroke twitches as Lockhart is looking at him. Lockhart tries to break the glass with his crutch, but is unsuccessful.
8:27:28-8:29:13
Dr. Vollmer has Lockhart in a chair in order to have Lockhart’s teeth examined by Dr. Brennan. Lockhart notices a large jar full of teeth. The teeth seem to move in the jar. Lockhart blinks. After exchanging a few words with Dr. Vollmer about taking Hannah into town, two orderlies aggressively strap Lockhart’s arms to the chair and pull a metal device over his head to prevent him from moving. Dr. Vollmer explains they do not use chemical anesthetic. The orderlies insert a metal device into Lockhart’s mouth to keep it open. Lockhart struggles and breathes heavily as he panics. Dr. Brennan approaches Lockhart with a dental drill as Lockhart whimpers in fear. There is a close-up of the drill penetrating Lockhart’s front tooth. Blood comes out of his gums and splatters slightly onto this face.
8:35:48-8:36:43
On two previous occasions, Lockhart has noticed that the handle on the toilet jiggles on its own. He notices it again and this time takes the lid of the toilet tank off. The tank is filled with writhing eels. Lockhart drops the lid and jumps back in surprise. He looks in the tank again and the eels are gone. He breaks the toilet away from the wall and floor, causing water to spray everywhere. He slips and falls; the water sprays at him as he sits on the floor.
8:37:05-8:39:00
As Lockhart writes his own letter to his company board, similar to Pembroke’s from the beginning, there are scenes of Lockhart partaking in treatments. The bodies suspended in the tanks are shown again, including one with Lockhart in it. There is also a scene of it being Lockhart himself who is holding the briefcase and tips himself off the bridge, paralleling the earlier scene of Lockhart as a boy watching his father.
Lockhart breaks a glass and uses the shard to cut his leg cast off. Blood drips along the cast and is on Lockhart’s hands.
8:41:23-8:43:50
Lockhart has broken into the small building located in the yard of the sanitarium, which he has been eyeing suspiciously throughout the film. This building was the only remnant of the original castle. Lockhart has walked along the darkened tunnels and arrived in a large chamber housing numerous glass jars and old-fashioned scientific equipment. There are eel specimens in jars and partially cut open on the table. There are human fetuses in jars and also multiple facial skins suspended in liquid. At the end of the room is a shrine to the baroness, including a painting of her which bears a striking resemblance to Hannah.
8:45:14-8:47:34
Lockhart goes to another area of the building and sees a body covered with a sheet lying on a stretcher. He pulls back the sheet and sees an emaciated body. Meanwhile, Hannah has entered the pool in the sanitarium, fully clothed. Blood starts to appear around her, implying she is menstruating. There is a large amount of blood and Hannah clutches her abdomen in pain. The eels seem to be attracted to the blood and enter the pool through underwater grates in the sides. Back in the castle building, Lockhart hides while he watches an orderly dump the emaciated body of the man who had been screaming by the elevator into the aquifer that is inside the building. The body floats as the eels swarm around it.
The creepy orderly jumps at Lockhart and tries to hit him with a shovel. The scene jumps back and forth between Lockhart in the castle and Hannah in the pool. Hannah is scared as the eels swarm around her. The orderly missed Lockhart with the shovel, but caused sparks to fly when he hit metal. He knocks Lockhart to the ground. There is a flaming stove nearby. Steam escapes from somewhere and the orderly screams. Lockhart hits the orderly on the head with a blunt object. The orderly is motionless. Hannah is being circled by eels in the pool.
8:47:44-8:47:49
Lockhart and Hannah have both run back to the main hallway in the sanitarium. Lockhart tells her they need to go, but she tells him to stay away from her. He approaches her closer and she punches him in the face, knocking him to the floor.
8:48:18
Lockhart: “I am not a fucking patient!”
8:50:25-8:50:45
Lockhart is in the dining hall full of patients and has just shouted to everyone what is really happening and that they are not really sick. All the patients begin to stand up one by one and approach Lockhart. They move like zombies, swarming him and touching him. He screams.
8:52:42-8:54:19
Vollmer has Lockhart in a type of body capsule. His head is exposed, but the rest of his body is inside the capsule. There are other people in the same devices in the room. Lockhart resists Vollmer placing a contraption over his mouth by shaking his head and refusing to open his mouth, but Vollmer holds Lockhart’s nose until Lockhart is forced to open his mouth to breathe. At that moment, Vollmer places the device in Lockhart’s mouth. The device holds Lockhart’s mouth open so Vollmer can insert a large plastic tube down his throat. Vollmer keeps shoving the tube further and further down Lockhart’s throat. Lockhart’s face reveals he is in significant distress. At the other end of the tube is a tank full of small eels in discoloured water. Vollmer flicks a lever on the tank and the eels and dirty water flow down the tube into Lockhart. Lockhart twitches and his eyes roll back into his head.
9:00:36-9:08:19
Dr. Vollmer has married Hannah in an eerie ceremony at the castle building. It was nighttime and all his staff attended, wearing robes and carrying candles. During the reception, Vollmer takes Hannah back to the castle building and shows her the portrait of the baroness. He pulls back a curtain to reveal a bed and tells her it is where she first began. He ties one of her arms to the bed post. She says, “Please don’t”. He pushes her hand away as she tries to untie herself and says, “Soon we’ll be a family again”. He attempts to bind her other arm, but Hannah slaps him. Vollmer tells Hannah that his sister was also resistant at first, but not after a while. Vollmer touches Hannah’s breasts through her dress as he explains to Hannah that she was “something pure” that came of his union with his sister. He says “And now we can begin again” and tears her dress away, exposing her breasts. At the same moment, back in the sanitarium office, Lockhart smashes the glass on a photograph when he realizes the man in the old photo is Dr. Vollmer and that Dr. Vollmer is the baron. The elixir has caused the baron and Hannah to age very slowly.
Vollmer reaches his hand up Hannah’s dress and she whimpers in pain. Vollmer is on top of her and her face winces. Vollmer puts the hand that he just had under her dress up to his nose and sniffs deeply. With desire, he says, “I’ve waited so long”. Vollmer strokes Hannah and she squirms with displeasure. Vollmer removes his tie and unbuttons his top shirt button. He tells Hannah, “You know I love you” as she looks at him with disgust. He moves as if to unbutton his pants. They both stop and look to the side when they hear a noise.
It is Lockhart. Hannah kicks at Vollmer and he steps off the bed to approach Lockhart. Hannah is still topless and bound to the bedposts. Vollmer peels off his facial skin to reveal a greenish disfigured face with no nose. Hannah catches sight of it in a mirror and screams. Vollmer hits Lockhart and Lockhart falls backwards onto the floor. Lockhart flicks a lighter. Vollmer looks down and realizes that Lockhart has put gasoline on the floor. Lockhart throws the lighter and flames go up around Vollmer. Vollmer stumbles around on fire. Lockhart runs over to Hannah and starts to untie her bindings. Vollmer puts a cape around himself and rolls around on the floor to smother the flames. He marches over to Lockhart, pulls him away from Hannah and throws Lockhart into a shelf. Hannah, with bare breasts still exposed, tries to untie her wrists herself. Lockhart swings a long, sharp object at Vollmer. Flames escape up through the vents to the dining hall where the wedding guests are still dancing. A woman notices and yells “Fire!” as the flames ignite the curtains.
The portrait of the baroness is burning as Hannah still struggles to untie her binds. Lockhart and Vollmer fight for control of the sharp object. Vollmer pushes Lockhart over a small ledge. Vollmer walks down the steps toward Lockhart as Lockhart purposely rolls down the steps away from him.
People in the dining hall are screaming and running as they try to find a way out, but the flames are overtaking the room.
Lockhart grabs onto a gurney to pull himself up, but knocks the body off it. The dead face stares up at him. Vollmer grabs him by the back collar and drags him so that Lockhart is partially hanging over the aquifer within the building. Vollmer strangles Lockhart. Vollmer tells Lockhart that everything he has done has been for his daughter and he will not let Lockhart destroy it. Hannah has managed to untie herself and comes up behind them. She says, “Dad?” Vollmer lets go of Lockhart to turn and face Hannah. He implores, “Hannah” and then she swings a shovel at him. There is a close-up of his burned face with the shovel shoved in his forehead. He takes a step backward and falls into the aquifer. The eels surround him and blood is seen in the water.
The people in the dining hall run, panicking, as flaming debris falls around them. The deputy director stands calmly in the middle of the room looking around. One person falls running down the stairs and gets trampled.
9:09:44-9:09:56
Lockhart is riding Hannah’s bicycle with Hannah on the back, leaving the scene of the burning sanitarium. He is blinded by car lights, Hannah screams and he is thrown into the windshield of a car. He rolls off onto the road and the driver who first took him there gets out of the car and picks him up. Lockhart is unharmed.
GINX eSports TV Canada
GINX eSports TV Canada is a channel devoted to e-sports and video gaming.
The First Hour
November 1, 2019
5:00 pm
Super Channel was unable to provide the first part of this broadcast; it was only able to provide the second part of this program, beginning at 5:21 pm.
The First Hour is a video game information program hosted by Adam Savage and Anthony Richardson. The two men play and discuss video games. During this episode, they play a game called Gears 5 which is part of the Gears of War series of games. It is a third-person shooter game. The game itself is shown on screen while Savage and Richardson play it, including the sometimes gory and bloody images when a character is killed.
5:24:33
During a commercial break, there is a promo for a documentary called Fyre Fraud about a failed music festival. The promo contains clips from the film, including one where a person says, “It was a shit show”.
5:43:53
The game characters hatch out of red gooey pods.
5:47:06
A character in the game yells, “One by fucking one!”
Savage: Wow.
Richardson: There’s swearing.
Savage: Very sweary. Very sweary.
5:50:29-5:51:33
In turn, each of Savage’s and Richardson’s game characters get dragged along by a beast and then their heads ripped off in bloody and dramatic fashion. Savage: My head’s been ripped off, mate. [...] You will be decapitated in T minus one second.
5:52:22
During a commercial break, there is a promo for season 3 of the dramatic program Berlin Station about a CIA operative in Berlin, Germany, airing on the channel Fuse. The promo contains a scene of a man hitting another man over the back of the head. A man says, “We’re up to our fucking eyeballs in some serious shit.”
Squad
November 14, 2019
1:10 pm
Squad is a magazine-style talk show about e-sports and video gaming hosted by Lisa Doan, Brody Moore and Ajay Fry. They review games, and discuss e-sports events, gaming culture and other topics of interest to their audience.
1:10:27
[voice-over]: Warning: This program may contain strong language, flashing images, and scenes of threat and violence that may not be suitable for younger viewers. This program is rated 18A.
[words on screen]
Warning:
This program may contain strong language, flashing images, and scenes of threat and violence that may not be suitable for younger viewers.
18A
1:27:06-1:27:16
During a debate segment called “Unmuted”, there is a sub-segment called “Clip It!” where they show user-generated videos and comment on them. In this episode, they note the trend of user-generated videos showing people doing magic tricks. They air a clip of a man doing a card trick.
A man who goes by the nickname E-Rob is with two friends. He tries to do a card magic trick. When he asks, “Is this your card?”, his friends say no. One says “What the fuck?” E-Rob turns over a few more cards, asking each time if that was their card. They say “No” a couple of times until he turns up the right one. When they finally say “Yes”, he shouts “Fuck!”
1:29:13
In another user-generated video, there is a narrator providing his own commentary to an e-sports event. At one point he says, “Duuuude. That’s fucked up.”
GINX Plays
November 14, 2019
3:00 pm
Super Channel was unable to provide the first part of this broadcast; it was only able to provide the second part of this program, beginning at 3:21 pm.
GINX Plays is a program on which gamers play a video game. The game itself usually takes up most of the screen with smaller boxes at the top showing the individual players’ faces. Many games periodically feature words on the screen to explain what is happening or caption the dialogue of the game characters. The players and usually one other person are heard giving commentary while they play. In this episode, George and Phil are playing a game involving shooting zombies. There is considerable blood and gore when zombies are killed.
3:29:28
One of the players says in frustration, “Fuckin’ hell”.
3:32:45
words on screen as part of game: If I die in a fucking hallucination because I ran out of bullets, I am going to be [?]
3:36:47
A player exclaims during a burst of intense gameplay, “Oh shit! ... Oh shit! ... Oh shit!”