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Hey, it's turning into movie review city. We saw this at the documentary festival on in Dublin last weekend and it was a hoot. The US has a very different system for censorship compared to most of Europe: it's privatised. It's not called censorship, it's called a ratings system to help parents protect their children. We have a more paternalistic state run system. It's called censorship and they simply won't release films with extreme sex or violence except through porn and mail order outlets. If a film gets an NC-17 rating the theatre owners are theoretically free to show the film. They won't however. The US non-censorious "censorship" is remarkably effective at stopping films being seen. I've been thinking a fair bit recently about what is done well in the US privately and bad by the government and what is done badly by Europe privately and well by the government (no one sector fits this exactly but you can say European public health is good, US private education is good...). Funnily enough most US citizens would scream blue murder if their government had half the censorship power that they gladly cede to an unelected cabal at the service of big business. In Europe the opposite is the case. And I do think that in this instance we are right. If the government applies ratings it has to do it in an open, transparent, and legally challengeable way. You have to be able to take them to court. The appeals process in the US system is that you appear before an anonymous board comprised of members of the organisation that convened the first panel and you are not allowed argue any precedent. This is huge. Forget denying constitutional rights. This is bigger: the common law is explicitly denied you. There is no presumption that you should be treated fairly.

Dick exposes the inevitable result of this: homophobia, anti-women, pro-violence films in the theatres. Kevin Smith argues that the censor should come down hard on misogynistic violence: it is disproportionately the lazy plot device of the intellectually neutered hollywood violence movie. Can't argue with him on that one. Do we really need to see women raped or in fear of rape constantly? What's better and less worthy of protecting children from seeing that or normal, bog standard sex between two people? The British censorship board draws a distinction between pornography and cinema with actual sex acts filmed in it. It reminds me of Negativland's distinction in copyright law between theft and artistic appropriation of a sample: they argued that ordinary people could tell the difference. You can. So why not do that, in public, and with right of appeal?

The censorship system in America won't be destroyed by this film: it's an embarrassing anachronism already. This film will only be seen by many people because this is already the case. The question is what will fill the void of its collapse? A free for all of violent women hating pro gun homophobic porn? A snide self serving censorship by new media which will serve to deny access to customers for smaller media organisations but do nothing to stem the tide of misogynistic gung ho violence that pollutes our channels? The US government needs to take control of this issue but is too weak to do so. I figure another century of hypocrisy is on the way.

As a postscript I feel I must link out to the in evitable far right wing blog which describes the film as "shameful". The Kirby Dick film talks about a film which was initially given an NC-17 and later downgraded to 13. This film is Gunner Palace, this fact is discussed in the film. It is entirely in context of the US censorship system that a film full of violence and what is hilariously called "dropping the f-bomb" should be passed rather than a film with normal activity like sex. Most of us don't go invading foreign countries and killing civilians.We do engage in enthusiastic sex.
The "f-bomb", have you ever heard anything so peurile? And their mammies* weren't even with them as far as I can tell.
I'd sooner we dropped the motherfucking f-bomb all over the fucking place than cluster bombs all over Southern Lebanon.

*mommies

Happy thanksgiving from the no-control room!

I meant to write an entry last Friday. Only thing was it was supposed to be about the premiere of Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price that I was hosting last Thursday night. I had planned to have somebody from Impact (the retail workers union) and Tesco (which is the closest to Wal-Mart here) and to be completely ignored by Lidl and Aldi, and maybe somebody from Superquinn to try and have a different tack on supermarkets. I thought it would be a great antidote to that simpleton Eddie _!_ Hobbes and his series of programmes that managed to convince most people here that the problems with prices in Ireland were all to do with tax and that if we all had an Aldi nearby our money problems would be over. Like grocery prices are really the deal rather than non-productive assets (say land for example). Like Irish farmers are actually getting a reasonable price for quality product. Like supermarkets are ever an economically sensible place to buy fresh food, fresh meat, fresh fish, or anything healthy. Seriously, they do all these programmes about the varying cost of items. Hobbes went on about how a LidlAldi in every town would be the saviour of housewives. Did he ever pop into a local greengrocer and have a deco at the prices? And the quality is of course incomparable. Food might actually taste of something if you buy it in the greengrocer, or if you want to pay supermarket prices, in your local organic market. And that's without thinking about food miles and other issues that you may want to consider that go beyond cost and quality. But Eddie _!_ Hobbes successfully campaigned to get the groceries order revoked thus ensuring Tesco's complete domination over this country (and the filling of our roads with monstermotherfuckingtrucks that they can't actually deal with and the levying of huge tolls and another round of taxation to pay for the road upgrades to make Tesco richer). I felt this film would be very relevant in Ireland with the impending IBEC led collapse of social partnership and Irish Ferry's hilariously blatent contempt for its workers, the government, and of course all of us. You're never getting on one of their ferries again, right?

Anyway, I began to get suspicious as the promo materials didn't arrive. Last Thursday dawned, dull and dreary (actually it was bright and sunny at dawn as it has been for the last while till the fogs rolled in) and still no sign of the film. A disasterous day looked like happening. I was thinking of showing Robert Greenwald's previous film 'Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's was on journalism' but then I remembered that it was only the second best film about a satellite news channel that I and my Beloved saw at the documentary film festival that year. So we showed 'Control room' about Al Jazeera instead. This turned out also to be topical given the current revelations about the US's willingness to bomb their headquarters (they of course bombed their bureaux in Afghanistan - nearly killing the puppet Karzai - and in Baghdad - killing a journalist but ensuring that their all important spin on the invasion of Baghdad was the only one out there). There were all sorts of organisational nightmares but it went well enough, I was just bitterly disappointed that we let people down, including those that came via the film's website to the only showing in Ireland. They've been in touch and when the film actually arrives we'll be able to have a full showing and do lots of publicity. Hope to see you there.