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When the future of reconciliation between indigenous Australians and those of white settler stock is at risk because Prime Minster John Howard has banned the word 'sorry' from his vocabulary, it might seem trivial to worry about film censorship. All that's apparently happening, after all, is an attempt to ban the representation of an erect penis here, a blow job there and, demonstrating the inevitable coupling of Eros and Thanatos, a spot of S&M wherever. But in recent years, with absolutely no evidence of any significant public demand, the freedom of every 'reasonable adult' to 'read, see, or hear whatever they choose', a right supposedly enshrined in Federal legislation, has been restricted by an insidious censorship creep.
In 1995 the Spanish anti neo-nazi film Tras el cristal was banned from a film festival - an event previously considered immune from censorship. The following year the various State censorship ministers approved more restrictive classification guidelines for films and videos. In 1997, the Federal Government came close to banning sexually explicit non-violent videos. Now it was possible for previous classification decisions to be reviewed, Pasolini's polemic against fascism, Salo, having been unbanned in the early 1990s after seventeen years of prohibition, was once again banned. Meir Zarchi's confronting rape-revenge movie, I Spit on Your Grave (once voted Australia's top horror movie), suffered a similar fate.
The scene was set for the fiercely censorious Senator Brian Harradine who held the balance of power in the Upper House, to start calling the shots. Populist and Roman Catholic, he successfully built upon a moral panic resulting from an horrific mass murder in Tasmania in 1995 and sought to impose his personal views of how sex and sexuality should be represented on the screen.
The minority Liberal Government danced to his tune. Declaring ignorance and inexperience to be more valuable than expertise, it set up a series of so-called 'community groups' to monitor the decisions of the Office of Film & Literature Classification. The official classifiers were reassessed and, with a callous disregard for the nation's infertile and non-parous, new ones were appointed largely on the basis of a stated preference for parents, especially mothers. Very few of those now responsible for deciding what a notional 'reasonable adult' may see in the cinema possess much, if any, understanding of the basics of a screen education. An art form which relies upon a distinction between fantasy and actuality by using realism to represent the illusion of reality, is completely lost on our classifiers and censoring Ministers. There's no way they would secure a pass grade in Film Studies 101.
The postmodern, queer cinema film, Hustler White, for example, was refused classification because of its representation of consenting sex in the form of some realistic masturbation and some very unrealistic buttock-slashing. Jim Jarmusch's acclaimed film, Dead Man, was initially refused classification because of 4 seconds depiction of non-consenting fellatio.
Early this year the same thing happened to Catherine Breillat's art-house movie Romance featuring Rocco Siffredi's magnificent erectile tissue. Initially, the realistic consenting sex in this film was deemed unacceptable for cinema audiences but acceptable for consumers of video pornography. The clearly dramatised non-consenting sex (a rape depicting the heroine as survivor rather than victim), however, was considered unacceptable for video pornography but acceptable for cinema audiences. The decision was overturned due to substantial protest from screen critics, filmmakers, broadcasters and others in the industry - precisely the sort of experts no longer valued as classifiers.
Absurdity is the name of the game. We can watch a sexy spanking on prime-time television in Allie McBeal but we can't watch a re-run of the 1970s popular soap (titled Number 96) featuring a naked woman. A former deputy Chief Censor transmogrifies into the producer of porn videos with titles such as Buffy Down Under. And the community groups prove more liberal than the official censors.
It gets more bizarre. The price Senator Harradine exacted for his support took the form of a Government bill on 'Non-Violent Erotica' banning depictons of anything other than very mild fetishism - one smacked bottom yes, two smacks no. Outlawed would be representations of perfectly legal activities - body-piercing, candle wax applications, golden showers, defaecation, bondage, spanking and fisting. At the eleventh hour, however, Harradine led a successful rout and opposed the bill originally made to his measurements, demanding the name of the bill be changed from 'erotica' to 'pornography'. The Attorney General was left with egg on his chin when no-one, not even his Prime Minister and the responsible Arts Minister (who both joined Harradine in the lobby), bothered to inform him of this about-turn.
This particular circus promises to turn into something more bloody with the porn industry (which supports the concept of non-violent erotica) threatening to 'out' all those - politicians and their voters - who buy X-rated material. The pusillanimous Labour Opposition, meanwhile, supports the pornographers and refuses to argue against the explicit censorship of the bill. There are no votes in screen spanking.
The silliness of events conceals something more ominous. The Howard Government has deflected what should be a debate about human rights and freedoms into one of obligations, turning the issue of free speech into one of national identity. The freedom for citizens to see films that encourage sexual or political diversity is promoted as being somehow 'un-Australian.' A 'true blue' Aussie, or so the argument goes, has an obligation to rid the screen of anything other than straight vanilla sex and traditional conservative politics.
Can it be an accident that most of the films banned, censored or cut recently are those valued by political and sexual libertarians as well as many gays and feminists? This spills over into the production industry - the majority of Australian movies are noticeably bland and silent on major political issues which might involve representations of sex or violence.
It is as hypocritical for the legislators to persist in the claim that all adult Australians may 'see, read and listen whatever they choose', as it is for politicians to pretend our classification laws are designed to protect community values by safeguarding the sensibilities of the 'reasonable adult'. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that our politicians believe their voters to be neither reasonable nor mature.
Thanks to Andrew Jacobowicz, Kath Albury, David McKnight & Patrick Crogan.
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