Friday, April 27, 2012

For Shame


That's the official reason for wanting to trim a 2 minute segment from Steve McQueen's critically acclaimed "Shame", a movie about sex addiction which could have thrown some light on why a senior legal counsel, a lieutenant colonel, or a school principal would want to surf online for puerile gratification. Academy Award winner for Best Picture "Platoon" was also not shown in Singapore initially because Oliver Stone objected to his film being abbreviated by the censor's scissors, the part where Charlie Sheen inhales smoke from a shotgun barrel. That was at the height of the government anti-drugs campaign.

Curiously, the "prolonged and explicit threesome sex sequence" is significantly shorter than the 9 minute horrific rape scene in "Reversible", and full frontal nudity in "Lust, Caution" was screened without cuts. Has the censorship board reverted to prudish standards?

Movie critic Roger Ebert tells us the American Psychiatric Association in 1987 defined sex addiction as a mental disorder involving "distress about a pattern of repeated sexual conquests … involving a succession of people who exist only as things to be used."  Like a good reviewer, he leaves out the spoilers, and we are still in the dark about the offensive parts. Others with less scruples write that the protagonist walks about his bedroom starkers (an illegal act in Singapore, don't try it in your HDB flat) with his plumbing equipment in full high definition glory, kisses a bearded biker, and then directs him to the subject of mutual interest. Ah, that kind of movie!

Wanna suck face? It's legal.
At least the Japanese are more honest when condemning the popular all-girl AKB48 band members for seductively passing bite-sized candy mouth-to-mouth in an advertisement. "The commercial may encourage homosexuality," complained a Tokyo broadcasting watchdog. The snipped scene in "Shame" also has two girls "sucking face", to borrow the quaint terminology from "On Golden Pond," as in the Henry Fonda line, "Wanna dance or would you rather just suck face?"

So why don't the self appointed custodians of public morality come right out and call a spade a spade? Are they afraid to offend their more liberal minded government officials who might accept that the next Singapore beauty queen could be born a man? For the record, the organisers of Miss Singapore Universe have indicated that they intend to abide by the new ruling set by the Miss Universe organisation to allow transgender women to participate in the pageant. When a country is run like a corporation, it's only the money that counts: tv coverage, tourist arrivals, corporate sponsorships, etc, etc.

Looks like the country is going to the dogs, and before long, we may have to issue an apology to Sun Xu.

8 comments:

  1. For years, the Playboy magazine was banned. At least, there were limp reasons proferred in the banning of chewing gums, but in this day and age where internet access is rampant, we dont get our share of looking at beautiful naked women.

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  2. Nanny state. We don't want to interfere, but we do want to intervene. Sounds like the Republicans.

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  3. If a man watched a lesbian scene, can he be turned into a lesbian ? Ditto for a woman who watched a gay scene. Just ask MDA this simple question ?

    Eric Khoo's "Be With Me" DVD at Esplanade Library is labelled "Matured Sexual Theme" even though the only sexual act is a lesbian couple kissing.

    At the same library, one of the acclaimed detective series "Closer" DVD is classified as "Homosexual Content" even though it contained only one episode involving the murder of a homosexual man.

    This is exactly how paranoid our authorities can be and if their argument is correct, then even more explicit gay content from the Net could have easily turned our PM into a gay man if he accidentally "stumbled" into a gay website.

    What is the exact purpose of classification when all its intended purposes can be easily circumvented by access from the Net ? Is our Govt not merely trying to put up an act of being a guardian of morality ?

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    Replies
    1. I've always had this notion that guys find two girls kissing hot, and girls find two guys kissing hot.
      Must have spent too much time on fanfiction.net...

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  4. We're already a country full of 'running dogs'. Despite MIW doing such a lousy job, 60% of people still voted for them.

    Who to blame for all the problems now?

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  5. The Men of the Pro Alien Party:
    Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.

    Men who despise you,
    enslave you,
    who regiment your lives,
    tell you what to do,
    what to think and what to feel;
    who drill you,
    diet you,
    treat you like cattle,
    use you as cannon fodder.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IvPIWzQcUY

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  6. Why do people always refer to "the 60% who voted for them"? The power of suggestion,if repeated, particularly by the mainstream media obviouly works so that even critics of the government repeat it. Recall what the former NMP Professor Straughan said before the 2011 GE. She said, with justification, that the 100,000 new citizens would vote for the PAP for obvious reasons. Take that into account and the percentage that voted for the PAP is closer to 50%.New citizens are therefore needed to keep them in power.

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  7. Not sure if anything was cut. but the rape scene in Girl with Dragon Tattoo was kept.

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