When I started the job, I worried that watching Hollywood horrors would gradually pollute my brain. If anything, it has made me less tolerant of obscenity and brutality. But you have to develop mental strategies to protect yourself. My experience as a criminal law barrister helps. When I was first appointed to the board, I was warned there were no set guidelines for coping with disturbing films.
Censors have different personalities and their own ways of dealing with things.
Anyway, you don't get chosen for this kind of work if Bambi gives you nightmares. But while I must concentrate on the screen and make notes where appropriate, there is another world going on in my head. Furthermore, this trickery seems pathetic compared to the simple, beautiful reality of the brilliant yellow flowers on display in the viewing room. And no gruesome film image can match the splendour of a waterfall as it cascades down a mountainside into a river. The mental image of the rushing water cleanses, sustains, quenches and refreshes.