Six years ago, I wrote a short blog post about something I called “the restricted cat”. Since then, more than 2000 people have found my site with searches like (in declining order of popularity): “restricted panther”, “restricted cat”, “restricted cougar”, “restricted movie logo” and so forth.
British Columbians and Ontarians of a certain age will remember this iconic little cat. You saw it on movie posters, in movie listings in the newspaper, and in a series of cute ‘bumpers’ before restricted movies. Here’s one of them:
Coincidentally, we’re working with Consumer Protection BC at the moment on a campaign to relaunch the restricted cougar videos. Part of their work is to classify–that is, assign a rating like ‘General’ or ‘Mature’–all the films shown in BC (and Saskatchewan, as it happens).
To accompany the videos, we helped them make this little timeline in Prezi, a cool presentation tool I use occasionally. The timeline has a ‘path’ to it, so it’s best explored by clicking the arrows in the lower-right corner, or using the arrow keys on your keyboard.
The timeline shows a recent history of movies classified as restricted in BC. I didn’t know this, but in 1997, classification categories were revised and the “18A” rating replaced “Restricted”. So, the R rating now only applies to a rare class of ‘adult’ motion pictures with “artistic, educational, scientific, historic or political merit”. Examples you might know include Requiem for a Dream and Shortbus.
Thanks for the shout out Darren!
Having taken a break from living in BC to grow up in Ontario, the only place I’ve ever seen this in real life is on the sign for the Fox Cinema on Main Street: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photocat62/3394172174/
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