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Well last night’s Race Relations ep was pretty full-on. I have a tough skin, but seeing 4 inch nails get driven into John Safran’s hands was confronting even for me. But hey, nothing wrong with that. If TV was all Smurf collectors and peony pruning it’d be a very lacklustre medium. (There are whole channels like that, so I guess lacklustre floats some people’s boats.)

The episode’s rating, though, was questionable: M – adult themes and course language. M is generally considered to mean that it may be unsuitable for people under the age of 13. There’s a higher AV 15+ rating, and that’s the highest rating on Australian free-to-air TV. There’s no rating for content suitable only for those 18 and over, and in practice this means a lot of non-violent content that should be rated 18 gets an M rating and violent content gets M or AV 15+. Every show gets rated, which would lead you to think that we care about what content developing minds are exposed to. Yet the lack of an 18 rating demonstrates that we clearly don’t!

Anyway, practising Jew, Safran, flies off to Bulacan in the Philippines to take part in a Christian crucifixion ceremony as the ultimate way to burn his Jewish bridges so as to be free to date a Eurasian! (It might also have something to do with getting good TV ratings.  )

As a religion that sets itself apart by having had its prophet uniquely nailed to a cross, it seems odd that this festival should do this to around three men every year. But then odd and religion go together like hammer and nail...

Safran is certainly pushing the boundaries. Let’s hope he doesn’t get crucified by the critics...

► John Safran’s Race Relations encore, tonight at 9pm on ABC2

Image: ABC