I am against
all most forms of censorship. Especially the kind that relate to the arts, whose many forms I happen to love. I am confident that most people will agree with me (to an extent) that censorship hinders the creative process of artists to produce art and erm... kitsch alike. However, not to be ignorant, I acknowledge a society's need for censorship which is to protect those people who either can be harmed or simply do not want to be exposed to certain offensive material which art can produce from time to time. So an ideal alternative to censorship would be classification so that artists can give a heads-up to those who prefer to stay away from art that is to their distaste.
The Maldives had always opted for censorship which annoyed me after a little incident in 2005. A friend and I wanted to check out his newly acquired credit card so we ordered two films from
Amazon.com. In hindsight it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but nevertheless we received a notification letter from the
Post Office exactly 3 weeks later. We went there to be informed that our films would be handed over the Film Censor Board for examination. Feeling helpless we consented and eagerly waited for our call from the Board. About 2 weeks later we received the call and were informed that one of the movies we submitted was to quote "banned from entrance into and exhibition in the Maldives" citing objectionable content while the other film barely escaped with an 18+ certification. We argued that the banned movie had nothing offensive to the current local culture and also pointed out the fact that the same title was even playing on Cable TV that week. The harder we argued, the more apparent it became... it was impossible to ask for an appeal so we just shipped the movie to a Singaporean friend who later sneaked back with it (awesome system eh?) At this point you might be wondering had I, in my infinite ignorance, imported softcore pornography. No, the titles were:
Aladdin (
Disney Platinum Edition) and (Rated G for general in 2006)
Mummy / Mummy Returns (
Collector's Edition) (Rated 18+ and 15+ respectively in 2006)
For this reason I was pleasantly surprised when I heard (in early 2006) that the Board had revised its criteria for evaluation and now opts for classification instead of censorship. They now called themselves the
National Bureau of Classification to reflect that change. I decided that I would call them up and inquire about the newer supposedly laxed standards that the organization had just adopted only to find out (through a series of telephone discussions with an executive) that in practice, they were still exercising censorship. Their drastic makeover only consisted of copying movies into hard disks, editing and ultimately burning it into amateurish optical disks because they were unable to tape over the offending material like they did with the VHS tape. As I mentioned before, they have laxed their "Ban" criteria; titles with depictions of kissing (not intimate) and sex (no female frontal nudity) are no longer exported out as if it were pornography. This I suppose is an improvement but still is neither good enough nor does it comply with the standards they initialled boasted.
There are additional problems I find with this organization. One is that the NBC is unwittingly resorting to piracy with their current method of censorship. I did bring this issue up with the executive I mentioned earlier but he was sure that they were not violating any international copyright laws citing the
British Board of Film Classifications' similar methodology. I had to remind him that, unlike Britain, Maldives does not have distributors of film-related intellectual property (who, in this case, would have the legal rights to modify the product to fit local customs and tastes). In the end he just blamed their incompetence on the lack of a proper regulatory framework and asked me to provide sample policies which they can possibly adopt in the future. (WTF?)
My other problem is that their "film classification" guideline seems to be extremely biased towards nudity by completely disregarding both context and subtlety of usage. Scenes depicting nudity even outside of sexual situations are excised without any consideration to the plot or any other aspect of the film. They do this, claiming to maintain their rationale of protecting families and children, while remaining completely oblivious to the adverse effects of exposure to violence. They have rated nearly 3,000 films till date and its highly unlikely that you will find a single movie or scene either banned or excised due to graphic violence from their extensive
database which even maintains lists of excised scenes with time frames. Here are my case studies:
Sin City (2 scenes removed depicting nudity and sexuality, violence is acknowledged but left out. This movie has excessive violent depictions even compared to Western features).
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Once again acknowledged but left out. Contains excessive violence including blood/gore although presented in a comical fashion).
Crash (Banned due to extreme graphic depictions of sex while violence is acknowledged though not attributed to their rating decision. This 1994 David Cronenberg film contains a fictional fetish where the characters are turned on by - automobile violence).
This hypocrisy does not end here. It extends to their stance on depictions of religious figures in film media. Movies such as
Ben-Hur,
Passion of the Christ and the
Ten Commandments are all banned due to portrayal of Jesus and Moses while
Bruce Almighty is left without a single cut even though it depicts Morgan Freeman as God Himself. It is important to note that countries like Malaysia initially banned the movie then allowed it to run heavily edited. (Not that I am supporting Malaysian censor policies).
Great work cutting out every butt and booby under the guise of "classification", guys. After all, its established
scientific fact that nudity and sexuality are much more detrimental to a child's mental well-being rather than a scene of decapitation or disembowelment which will leave them dreaming about butterflies and bumblebees. While you are at it, may I suggest you change the last initial in your organization's name back to "Censorship" so that people like me will shut up once and for all.
Labels: Censorship, Maldives, National Bureau of Classification
