OFCOM

 OFCOM

The Office of Communications, also known as OFCOM, is the United Kingdom's government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications, and postal industries. OFCOM has broad authority over the television, radio, telecommunications, and postal sectors. 

OFCOM plays an important role in the realm of TV broadcasting as OFCOM prevents some sensitive content such as swearing, sex, drugs, etc. out of live TV by filtering them out. There is also a watershed period from 05.30 A.M to 09:00 P.M where no sensitive content can be aired to children as according to research these are the times where children watch TV more frequently.

OFCOM cannot censor TV programs or shows before it's release, but when it is already aired then they can censor it. But the TV shows can only be censored by audience requests via the OFCOM complaint center where they would read their complaints with care and will censor or fine whatever TV show they complained about accordingly. 

Though not all of the complaints will result in a censorship, fine or even a ban. In much rarer cases some TV shows would be fined or even get their broadcasting licenses revoked. This is because OFCOM will only make a move based on the context, legality and offensiveness of the TV show or program.

Case Study

(For some reason I cant get any images it's either unusable or downloadable :<)

Unlike in Indonesia we don't have OFCOM instead the government regulates most content that gets released on TV, by first watching and checking it before releasing it to the public and usually they have a spesific set of rules to regulate said releases one of these rules and possibly the strictest one being the "no LGBTQ+" content rule as this is due to Indonesia being a religious country and therefore don't support such movements.

Lightyear is a Disney spin off movie which was adapted from the famous and beloved toys story series released on June 17, 2022 which was unfortunately hit by the Indonesian censorship system and was swiftly banned in the country.

The story takes place somewhere in space and a unnamed red planet which they made their home (either the planet does have a name or I just forgot), and the plot of the movie is just Buzz trying to get the "Turnip" ship working so that they can get of that planet to get to their actual destination but as he was trying to get a new hyper drive engine for it and testing it he ends up time warping while warping causing everyone around him to age 4 years every time he does it but his age stays the same (the plot is everywhere so here's the plot link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)#:~:text=The%20film%20follows%20Buzz%20Lightyear,threat%20to%20the%20universe's%20safety.). The representation is very colorful featuring a bunch of characters from different ethnicities such as Black, Asian and Hispanic which are treated like equals in the movie non of them are stereotyped at all because most of them act like normal human beings. 

The overall scenery of the movie is splendid they did a great job on the animation department as it really captures the moment of some of the scene including the scene that got this movie banned in Indonesia and like 14 other countries, from the empty void of space to the dust on the space suits the attention to detail is the best ever from this studio and any other movie it might compete against as for the animation it's very high budget and it's really effective. The story on the other hand is non existent I can't for the love of god remember anything that happened the writing seems to have a high budget but overall its ineffective because no one can remember the plot as it was boring.

The movie conforms the expectations of it's audience as it's just Star Wars but with Buzz lightyear. The movie has your typical Star Wars plot items and devices such as a laser gun & sword, spaceships that require a hyper drive engine to function alien wild live that will get brutally murdered.

In my opinion this movie is hot garbage and that the Indonesian censorship has every right to ban it as children is not missing much by not seeing and that it is a horrible way to represent LGBTQ+ people on the big screen of cinema.