[Newspoetry] MPAA, Always Looking Out For Us

[Bill Wendling]

I am so pissed that I live in this stupid, repressed society which
creates something like the MPAA to "save" us from a director's artistic
vision. That scraping sound you hear at night is Stanley Kubrick spinning
in his grave...

  
	   MPAA shuts 'Eyes' for 65 secs
	   Orgy scene altered for R rating
	    

	   By TODD MCCARTHY, July 12, 1999


	   "Eyes Wide Shut" will be seen by the
	   American public just as Stanley Kubrick
	   finished it before his death in March - with
	   the exception of 65 seconds of sexual
	   material that the Motion Picture Assn. of
	   America insisted undergo a "digital
	   adjustment" before it would issue an R
	   rating, according to the film's exec
	   producer, Jan Harlan.

	   In an extraordinary gesture immediately
	   following the film's first screening for
	   some Los Angeles critics on Thursday,
	   Harlan, who was Kubrick's
	   brother-in-law, asked the group to stay for
	   a few moments while he explained and
	   showed the alterations the MPAA had
	   demanded. Sequence in question is a
	   large-scale orgy scene in which Tom
	   Cruise's caped and masked character
	   walks from room to room through an
	   enormous mansion observing the
	   depraved activities of the elite guests.

	   Sequence as seen by the critics during the
	   unspooling of the feature showed various
	   nude couples engaged in what could
	   politely be described as vigorous
	   copulation, although always artfully
	   arranged so as not to reveal any genitalia -
	   in other words, standard softcore
	   simulation.

	   Afterward, Harlan presented the sequence
	   in the form that will be seen by U.S.
	   audiences, in which digitally created
	   human figures - caped and hooded
	   individuals, stationary nude women - have
	   been strategically imposed in front of the
	   actors so as to obscure the offending
	   action; it's the newfangled, digital version
	   of the black bar historically used by
	   newspapers and magazines to blot out
	   censorable elements of photos they still
	   wished to run.

	   No shots were actually eliminated or
	   abbreviated, and you can still tell what's
	   going on, but viewers just can't see it so
	   clearly; it's like having tall men in hats
	   sitting in front of you and still trying to get a
	   glimpse of what's onscreen.

	   Watching the two versions back-to-back
	   provides a vivid insight into the MPAA's
	   do's and don'ts: Nudity and pretend sex is
	   OK, but visible thrusting, and naked and
	   active crotch-to-crotch contact is not, even
	   if nothing private is on view.

	   Difference in impact between the two
	   versions is negligible, and actually seeing
	   what the MPAA considers NC-17-worthy
	   makes the org's nit-picking seem absurd,
	   especially given the gruesomely graphic
	   violence to which it routinely applies R
	   ratings.

-- 
|| Bill Wendling			wendling at ganymede.isdn.uiuc.edu