Censorship: a matter of opinion

Published on February 2, 2008

 I can think of all sorts of examples and I'm sure readers can too, but what is judged indecent or obscene by one person can be perfectly acceptable to another. And this difference is often explained by the different standards from one country to the next.

When the Thai movie "Mae Bia" was showing in theatres, my curiosity was piqued by the scene where the female protagonist arrives at her traditional Thai house by the river. There, she changed into the kind of traditional garb worn by women in the old days - a sarong and a long piece of material that wrapped around her buttocks. The costume may have been age-old, but the way she was dressed was startlingly modern, the sarong wrapped so low that her breasts nearly overflowed.

Now, I know that this wasn't the way that women of yesteryear dressed. But I also know that the film netted millions in ticket sales and the actress became a hot star overnight.

I was also shocked by a scene in 2006's Hollywood blockbuster "Babel". In the scene where the Japanese girl took off her knickers and spread her legs revealing all to the teenage boys, absolutely nothing was left to the moviegoer's imagination.

In stark contrast, if you tune into True Movies with its high content of Asian movies, you'll find that any weapons featured in scenes tend to be blurred. In that case, it needs imagination to know what type of weapon is being used.

What standards are being applied here?

An interesting development on this is a recent report in the US concerning "NYPD Blue", the Emmy Award-winning television police drama set in New York. Last week, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered a $1.4-million (Bt43.9-million) fine be levied against 52 ABC Television Network stations over their broadcast of an episode in 2003. ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Co.

The fine is for a scene where a boy surprises a woman as she prepares to take a shower. It depicted "multiple, close-up views" of the woman's "nude buttocks", Agence France-Presse reported.

The FCC defines a programme as indecent if it "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities" in a "patently offensive way" and is aired between the hours of 6am and 10pm. The scene in question fell into that category because "it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs - specifically an adult woman's buttocks", said the commission.

The commission rejected the network's countering argument that "the buttocks are not a sexual organ".

Hmm, see? Determining what scenes are fit to be shown in public and what aren't is a matter of subjective opinion. I'd say that was an objective fact.

Comments can be sent to e_nang@yahoo.com.

by e-nang

The Nation