Sunday 19 July 2009

The End Of The Beginning?

In defence of censorship and against its permanently adolescent detractors, Stuart Reid says some excellent things arising out of the case of Antichrist, which certainly could not have been shown in this country, and probably could not have been made almost anywhere in the Western world, even only 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, cinemas remain licensed by local authorities, which retain the power to ban certain films. They should ban Antichrist. That would not be the end. It would not be the beginning of the end. But it might be the end of the beginning.

5 comments:

  1. For some reason, the image of Father Ted and Father Dougal holding up signs saying 'Careful now' and 'Down with this sort of thing' spring irresistibly to mind.

    Less facetiously, I'm curious as to why you're singling this particular film out for condemnation when most of the the halfway intelligent commentary on it (example here) has been defending it as a profoundly moral work - and one by a Catholic convert too (something Lars von Trier shares with Ken Russell, whose The Devils was also widely condemned and misunderstood in the early 1970s, but which has been taken very seriously indeed in many Catholic circles).

    Certainly, the highly distinguished track record of the makers of Antichrist demands that its detractors at least do it the courtesy of watching it before condemning it - which neither you nor Stuart Reid have bothered to do. And I'm usually far more disturbed by the eagerness of people to ban things sight unseen than I am by anything that ends up onscreen.

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  2. As for this claim:

    which certainly could not have been shown in this country, and probably could not have been made almost anywhere in the Western world, even only 10 years ago.

    ...The Devils, Cries and Whispers and In the Realm of the Senses were all released in the 1970s. I'll be more certain when I've seen it, but at present I'm not aware of any element of Antichrist that isn't already present in one or more of those films. So on what grounds are you claiming such certainty?

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  3. It has real sex in it, and is therefore pornography. I will not be going to see pornography.

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  4. Actually the sex is simulated through the use of 'stunt genitalia'.

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  5. Which makes all the difference, of course.

    This next question is intended to be rhetorical rather than to prompt intimate discussion of such matters: is female homosexual activity real sex? It, too is largely "simulated through the use of [as you might put it] stunt genitalia".

    Even the BBFC descibes Antichrist as "containing real sex". In which case, it should never have been given a certificate.

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