Comments on: Family values

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 15:22:24 +0000

Thanks, Paul. For reasons that are unlikely to become clear again at the moment, Aussie rules was my high school fencing team's second sport. Great fun even, or perhaps especially, when I broke my nose in a sideline play. FWIW, people from Berlin often assert to have recently beaten Poland. The result doesn't always stick, and I find it's best to wait a while.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 15:06:51 +0000

By: paul lawson

paul lawson — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 23:15:21 +0000

Doug, entirely sufficient. I watched a number of their matches and recall that they went poignantly close to going further. The US soccer team is up to standard. It is the national government and the exercise of its assumed imperium that is not. As a diversion, until 2008, may I commend Australian Rules football to you. There is a team in Berlin, called, of course, ‘The Crocodiles’. They assert that they recently beat Poland. The on field ‘sledging’ (Australian for ‘trash talk’) would have been fascinating.

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 13:34:50 +0000

“Though one notes only US women can play to any standard.”—Paul L. Duly noted. Quarter finals in men’s World Cup 2002. Not sufficient. (Since 2000, the US men’s team is 6-1-1 against arch-rival Mexico. Also clearly not sufficient.)

By: paul lawson

paul lawson — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 02:36:01 +0000

More Mencken, Merrill,(from the antipodean glass house) courtesy of the excellent James Wolcott. “The average theologian…disseminates his blather, not innocently, like a philosopher, but maliciously, like a politician. In a well-organized world he would be on the stone-pile, but in the world as it exists we are asked to listen to him, not only politely, but even reverently, with our mouths open.” Substitute political scientist,seer, for theologian, or thin skinned, ‘septic’ abroad, if you will. On soccer, we agree. Though one notes only US women can play to any standard. On the Tour De Lance: hhmmm, the Marion Jones of cycling? On the Olympics, do a per capita, congratulate New Zealand, and emigrate. Zudders are very civilized, as well as athletic, and their environ is remarkably beautiful. On movies: decades ago, one wrote a piece about Culver City lighting plans A, B & C, in reference to Americans abroad finding the reality of Europe alarmingly contra to what they had ‘learned’ on domestic television. The experienced German was not like the ‘reel’ German. Orange alert. Glad you ‘picked’ on Peter Faiman for his ‘Crocodile Dundee’. He also helmed the Olympic Games opening ceremony in 2000. (And succeeded me for the Australian Labor Party campaign launch, in turn to be succeeded by Baz Luhrmann.) So I have grounds for agreeing with you about ZDF Mainz On snark: first refuge etc. But try to revive TMFTML. On the substantive point: 52% of you are a laughing stock. For four more years. Live with it. Especially abroad. We have no choice, but to laugh. (Albeit pissing ourselves about your imperious incompetence.) And must attempt to circumvent. Good luck with your drug company and copyright hegemonics. And if anyone wants reference to the antipodean glass house less dated than Doug’s 1986 citation,Quiggin is excellent for general trends, and crikey.com.au is a daily tonic. We are every bit as silly as Doug’s lot, but our collective noun would not be “an arrogance of…” Crtics of the USA ‘lurk’ everywhere, Doug, in the free world. “First we take Brentwood, then…Eatsward roll the wagons. Liberate the blue cities.” Orange alert. Nominate the ‘Elk’ for 2008. S/he could hardly be worse.

By: cloquet

cloquet — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 03:03:13 +0000

It must be the penis. Frontal female nudity is common in Hollywood pictures, but not so male frontal nudity. The only time I remember seeing a penis was in the movie “The Piano.”

By: Jackmormon

Jackmormon — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 00:20:16 +0000

Michael wrote…one example of a provocative image that’s become much less so as a result of its cultural associations – and so it is with the Underground posters, provided you recognise the allusion. I don’t think it’s necessary to recognize the allusion or the painting to be insulated from the shock value. The painting technique itself (or the old-fashioned urinal) will probably be enough to make your average viewer think: “Oh, that’s art.” Benjamin’s concept of old technology’s aura, and all that. A lot of the images from older paintings would cross across quite differently to the average viewer if they were represented in high-definition digital prints. The US person who wanted the fresco whited out didn’t recognize it as a painting. I think that’s the more interesting detail here. The letter-writer understood the naked boy as an element in film rather than as a painting, and judged the image by cinematographic rather than painterly standards. Okay, sorry, I’ll stop.

By: cloquet

cloquet — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:08:13 +0000

There’s some exciting stuff, nudity-wise, on public TV. Much more graphic than a frescoe.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:40:45 +0000

There’s something I’m not clear on. Is “paint-boxing out” something a digital effect, or does it mean literally painting over the frescos? In this case, the former – given that the alternative would be to reassemble the cast, reconstruct the set (sans contentious painting) and reshoot the scene! Mind you, this was indeed done back in 1945, when the visibility of Margaret Lockwood’s cleavage in The Wicked Lady proved too much for the film’s US distributor, and potential American receipts from what was the biggest domestic hit of the year (still the tenth biggest hit in British screen history if measured by seat occupation as opposed to cash revenues) were such that it was deemed worth some major reshoots.

By: vernaculo

vernaculo — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:35:17 +0000

dan hardie- You forgot to mention The Acts of The Apostles in the New Testament whose latter half is essentially the virulently anti-Semitic tale of Saul/Paul of Tarsus and his adventures in Mediterraneum. – As far as the bowdlerizing of images goes, there’s a similar smugness in most of the reactions here. Those silly Puritans. The way people were deriding fundamentalists two years ago. Those Puritans run the world now, bubba. They have an empire, and it’s expanding on human lives. They run the world at least as much as shareholders can be said to “run” a corporation. They may be nuts, they may be dull-witted, they may be hypocritical and vicious and easily misled but as a bloc of political power they have your, and your childrens’, fate in their hands. Of course their argument would be that dull-witted doesn’t count when you’re possessed by the Spirit. My own bent would be to trace the origin of this anti-sexual nonsense. It seems to be a viral expression of social control, a self-replicating mechanism and, because sexual identity is so central to most of us, powerfully coercive. Sexual guilt is established before there are sexual feelings. Children grow into it. It’s not about sex, it’s about harnessing the next generation to the institutions that already exist. Bowing to sexual prudery is obeisance, worship, a sign of belonging. It’s about social control, and it works very well. Not particularly laughable if you ask me, considering how much real power it generates.

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:52:06 +0000

Dan, I’m not arguing that kids should be ‘protected’ from Shakespeare, I’m sorry if it came across like that. I greatly enjoyed “The Merchant of Venice” at school, but then we discussed and acted it out. I don’t think it’s suitable for young children (say under 10 or 12), not that they’d want to see it, really. My point was of a general “there’s a tree, but this is the wood” sort. I don’t believe in censorship, just that the victory for Antonio at the end is far more objectionable to me than something in the background which you clearly have to be looking for. So the people getting upset are doing so for the wrong reason and missing the ‘elephant in the room’ or whatever the phrase is.

By: Walt Pohl

Walt Pohl — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:36:08 +0000

There’s something I’m not clear on. Is “paint-boxing out” something a digital effect, or does it mean literally painting over the frescos?

By: Jim E

Jim E — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:31:12 +0000

Give it a rest Doug! No, it’s you who need the rest, Chris. There isn’t any point about this puerile post save the one Doug explained. Thanks for reminding me why Crooked Timber isn’t worth logging onto anymore.

By: George

George — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 17:46:52 +0000

This seems an especially silly installment of a very old debate, one that won’t be solved in this comment thread. But I’d just like to point out that plenty of sexually explicit movies do get released in the puritanical US. Recent examples: The Dreamers and Y Tu Mama Tambien. But those films showed only in a few big-city theaters, and neither will ever end up on broadcast TV. So the problem here seems to be either (a) the filmmakers need to get a new US distributor, or (b) they are unwilling to live with the trade-offs. If you want to go mass-market, you have to live with mass-market taste.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 17:30:13 +0000

Of course I don’t pretend to understand at all why censors find a joyously consensual vanilla love scene between a happily married couple a cause for more restrictions than a violent murder. In the case of the late James Ferman, who controlled British film censorship between 1975 and 1998, he didn’t – he was constantly trying to relax restrictions on consensual sex (even if unsimulated), at least partly because he wanted to persuade his fellow European censors to get tougher on violence. Unfortunately, he kept running up against the police, Customs and the Home Office – and rumour has it that his departure, although billed as “retirement”, wasn’t entirely voluntary, since his decision to pass a number of films that were unarguably hardcore porn (i.e. there was no possibility of mounting a defence on aesthetic or contextual grounds, as had been the case with other censorship milestones such as Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses or explicit but authentic sex education videos) shortly after the Blair government was first elected in 1997 was followed by his relatively sudden departure from office. Ironically, only three years later the British Board of Film Classification was forced to relax its guidelines on consensual sex after losing a judicial review, thus achieving by fiat the situation Ferman was trying to reach voluntarily.