Everything Also Complain

From ‘Same theme, different takes’, article by Boon Chan, 23 Feb 2011, ST Life!

…The Oscar nominated American drama The Kids are All Right…(about a lesbian couple raising two children) was given a R21 rating and a one-print release restriction by the Media Development Authority’s (MDA) Board of Film Censors (BFC).

The Hong Kong Film, All About Love, (two bisexual lovers deciding whether not to start a family together) was rated R21 with no further conditions.

…According to the (film classification) guidelines…’Films should not promote or normalise a homosexual lifestyle. However, non-exploitative and non explicit depictions of sexual activity between two persons of the same gender may be considered R21′. The Kids Are All Right has overstepped the boundaries because it portrayed the two lesbians and their children as a normal family.

…The consumer advisory for Kids was ‘homosexual theme’ and that for Love was ‘homosexual content’. According to MDA, ‘homosexual content’ means only certain portions of the film contain homosexual elements, while ‘homosexual theme’ means a large portion, or the entire film, contains homosexual elements.

…The BFC’s decision to allow Kids to screen  in Singapore on one print has been viewed as a step backward by some and a step forward by others.

(Dr Soh Poh Choong): Allowing the film to be shown is already being very open. Even if it’s restricted to one theatre, it does not make a difference as people will find ways to go and watch it.

…(Joanna Koh-Hoe): We believe children are a gift and heritage, and thrive best in a home where both mother and father are committed to raising them with love, attention and care.

Sideways, female version

If the BFC hadn’t made a fuss over a film seemingly having ‘large portions’, if not made up ‘entirely of homosexuality’ hence the frustratingly patronising choice of words, nobody would have guessed, looking at the poster above, that this small film would have the potential to wreck havoc on the very fundamentals of our family structure. In fact, in this age of 3D, robots in disguise and fighting pandas, chances are that few would have bothered to catch it at all, especially if it were sneaked out with a PG instead of a steamy R21 rating. Now that you’ve given it an official forbidden fruit status, it’ll be a daily sellout in that single restricted cinema, and those who can’t catch it will download it online anyway. Thanks for nothing, BFC, for depriving mature arthouse fans of tickets and tickling the fancy of dirty old uncles hoping to see some auntie on auntie lezbo action when they’re likely to walk out cold, disappointed and wish they’d had been to Yangtze instead.

So let me get this straight: Brokeback Mountain, with its erotic tent humping and wet manly snuggles, got off the  one-print hook because 1) Only bits and pieces of it were about gay sex, and 2) It didn’t have a happy ending. Which suggests that the only way Kids could get a wider screening is for the film producers to sell to Singaporeans an alternate ending, where the moral of the story aligns with our conventional value systems, i.e Mum breaks up with er..Mum to start life afresh with an actual man. Kids rejoice that they have a father! With the BFC’s painfully clumsy handling of moral boundaries, one just has to ask how much of ‘content’ would actually qualify a film meeting the criteria of  a ‘homosexual theme’ advisory. If you have say, 10 scenes of gays kissing and 11 scenes of violent knocking around or swearing, does that mean the film is not really about gay sex? Can the people at BFC even tell the difference between the vague ‘homosexual elements’ and, say, ‘love’? If two gay characters stare deeply and knowingly in each others’ eyes in a scene, does that make our censors grip the edges of their seats with bated breath,  palms sweaty and fingers itching to pull out the celluloid snipper like a teenager fiddling with his little manhood encountering porn for the very first time?

Nobody will ever agree on gay parenting, just like nobody can never be on the same page about adopted children, polygamous families, or single parent families, ‘themes’ which can easily pass off as PG in movies here.  How is a single-parent family any less deleterious than one having two fathers or mothers? How many families do you know where Daddy’s flying most of the time and Ah-Boy is usually in the care of Mom and Sis/BFF/Grandma, essentially making it a same-sex parenthood anyway? In fact, how harmful is seeing gay parents peck each other on the cheek compared to R21 Saw movies (not one-print editions mind you) where cheeks are imaginatively ripped apart? It seems that the BFC’s stand on allowable sexuality is this, it has to be between a man and a woman (preferably married), no matter how gratuitous or degrading it is, even if whips, handcuffs, slapping and bruising are involved. But not a loving same-sex couple treating each other with respect and honour, even if there’s no nudity and no physical intimacy beyond patting each other on the back or sharing the same wine glass.  Not cool, Singapore. Totally not cool at all.

Filed under: 2011, Censors, Film, Gay stuff, Parenting, Sex | Tagged: censors, Film, Gay stuff, homosexuality, R21 movies, Sex | 1 Comment »