Controversy? What is the Melbourne International Film Festival without controversy? In fact, who is Bruce LaBruce without controversy?
The profanely gay Canadian filmmaker has suffered the wrath of the Film Classification Board, which has refused classification of his latest sleaze epic LA Zombie. The board requested a copy of the film when it became aware of “wound penetration” and “implied sex with corpses” in the film. The board members watched it, popped their monocles, then banned it to suppress the constant threat of a scourge of necrophilia.
It’s the first ban since 2003, when Larry Clark received the official finger wag for Ken Park. That film saw an attempted underground screening led by loveable silver vixen and noted anti-censorship campaigner Margaret Pomeranz, but the Morality Police shut it down.
That LaBruce has whipped off some confronting material is no surprise to anyone aware of his work. I actually got to speak to him when he visited as part of Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2003, plugging The Raspberry Reich, his hilarious and very pornographic satire of upstart revolutionary groups (see: Symbionese Liberation Army).
He told me he often has to submit two versions of his films — the explicit one and the clean one — with each release, even though the graphic sex scenes and the savagely witty storylines in his films work concurrently in context.
LaBruce said in a media release at the start of filming LA Zombie, “Not unpretentiously, I consider myself not so much a p-rnographer, as an artist who works in porn”, and he’s not unpretentiously correct.
This unfortunate news comes on the back of news that the Suicide Girls alt-porn franchise has released “the first reality horror movie”. It’s called Suicide Girls Must Die! (and hopefully will be as trashy and entertaining as Troma’s Surf Nazis Must Die! but we doubt it). The “reality” bit is that apparently these tattooed honeys who hate their daddies were unaware that the producers were fucking with them as they presumably disrobed and pretended to be lesbians in a remote (but sexy) cabin.
So, filming supposedly-alternative ladies with br-ast implants actually getting terrorised in the woods is fine with everyone. But a presumably cheeky zombie satire featuring consenting actors poking their docks in rubber cement is a crime. I wonder if it would make a difference if the fake wounds were on women? Or if it was a giant knife repeatedly bludgeoning the wound, instead of a giant wang?
Australia, you’re standing in it (it being a quagmire of hypocrisy and puritanical censorship laced with subtle homophobia).
LOL – “the constant threat of a scourge of necrophilia.” gave me a laugh
It does make for an entertaining report, but seriously this doesn’t seem like the film to be making a stand over censorship.
As a gay man the fact that it involves gay zombie porn is irrelevant, and I think you’re pretty quick on the ‘homophobia’ call. I guess I’m now an old fuddy duddy, but if you need to use schlock horror, violence and porn to make art then I kind of doubt you’re making art at all.
I can’t see this being an issue of freedom of expression, or of any genuine artistic creativity being suppressed, or any genuine political statement for that matter. It’s shameless shock generation material that (apparently) crosses the line to being unacceptable for public showings. I’m fairly comfortable letting the be-monocled ones making that call. Get over it and move on to something actually worth fighting over.
The Bruce LaBruce films I’ve seen have all been stunningly bad. The best I could say about them was that they occasionally managed to be sexy, but still crap. I doubt his new film will be any different, so this is no great artistic loss if it doesn’t come to Australia.
But this is still an offensive decision. I can’t think of any reason why blatantly silly gay zombie porn should be considered more harmful than any other kind of porn. This film has it’s own website, where you can easily see it for the cheerful trash it is (and order a dvd of it while you’re there). Why are Melbourne Film Festival patrons being told they should not have the right to view this? When censorship leads to any art (even trash art) being banned, despite the fact that it harms no-one, then for me it’s gone too far. We’re not talking about child porn here, or material likely to inspire copy-cat violence. There is no suggestion that it poses a danger to society. But it crosses certain lines of taste, and is banned, and most people think this is okay because the film would have only appealed to a small group of people anyway. Not a good thing. Now if I want to see this I’ll have to order this film from overseas, just like a bunch of other films that can’t be screened here legally (but you’re still legally free to own your own copy). Caligula, John Water’s Pink Flamingos (only legal here in a slightly cropped form), Salo…
The level of public interest in this banning would of course have been bigger if it’d been a straight film. Just think back to Baise-Moi (that wasn’t exactly considered to be a high-quality film either).
The question isn’t is it art. The question should be whether there’s sufficient justification to prevent Australian adults from watching it, and there doesn’t seem to be any at all. It’s the same issue with R-rated video games. Most of them certainly aren’t art, and adults in a free society should be allowed to play them.
Thankfully Conroy hasn’t censored our internet yet – otherwise I might even have been prevented from viewing the LA Zombie website, and confirming how non-dangerous this film is and how wrong our censors are in this decision.
And can I just mention one censorship fact I love – I asked the classification folks why Pink Flamingos is not legally able to be shown in Australia in it’s full form – their response mentioned 3 scenes that broke the rules and must be cut – and the deliciously funny part is that those 3 scenes did not include the one of Divine & the dog poo. Turns out that scene was fine! I’m sure John Waters would be pleased.
@ Andrew
Choose your battles, son.