By the beginning of the twenty-first century in the West, the notion of government-appointed bodies mandated for censoring cinematic content had fallen considerably out of fashion as institutional censorship was largely curtailed. The necessity of shielding potentially vulnerable viewers from offensive, and in some cases socially “dangerous” content, had become secondary to the priority of protecting the rights of adult viewers to freely seek out whatever entertainment they wished, so long as it did not constitute criminal activity. Many government institutions previously charged with suppressing morally or legally challenging films or stripping them of problematic content, such as the British Board of Classification (BBFC), Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in Australia, and the Ontario Film Review Board (OFRB) in Canada, accordingly shifted the emphasis of their activity from censorship—the regulation and expunging of film content deemed obscene—to “classification,” a method of merely informing consumers as to the content of films they were about to see. Several high-profile cases from the early twenty-first century reveal the particulars of this shift. In some instances, controversies surrounding the treatment of films by classification institutions generated significant media and political backlash, ultimately spurring key changes in film regulation and exhibition practices in the countries concerned.

The “liberalization” of classification policies that marks the shift away from overtly moral censorship practices, and the effects of which are most apparent in the period between 1997 and 2004, seemed to promise a utopian ideal for ground-breaking, envelope-pushing cinematic artistry. No longer would the political conservatism of the censor's taste be a hurdle that filmmakers, exhibitors, and distributors would have to overcome. Barring widely shared concerns regarding the exposure of underage children to material deemed inappropriate, classification boards have acted themselves to limit the extent to which they can prohibit images from entering the public market. Many filmgoers think that since the growth of the Internet, this move has been insufficient. New technologies have emerged—consider the ease with which online file-sharing platforms provide access to wide-ranging and sometimes provocative forms of entertainment culture, and how such ready access suggests that even if censorial institutions continued in their previous modes of operation, enforcement of their policies would now be largely impossible to implement. The circulation of visual material has become too vast and too expansive to police with any efficiency.