This Post Has Not Been Rated

Several people I know at a local cafe have decided to start a film club.  You may have heard of communities where there is no place buy fresh fruits and vegetables referred to as a "food desert". Could the same concept be drawn when it comes to the arts, can a town be a "cultural desert"?

Like the food desert, a cultural desert is a question economics. As big box stores and online merchandising have further dominated huge swaths of commerce, the small shops have folded. As an example it's next to impossible to sell office supplies profitably if there is a Staples franchise only a few miles away. Once every town had a book store and music shop but they have disappeared because of the distributional advantages and the economies of scale a business on the internet has. When the shops that brought the casual foot traffic to main street closed the other businesses found it harder to stay open. Here's the beginning of a downward spiral.

The revival of many small town main streets has depended on arts and culture as a cornerstone of redevelopment. Those towns lucky enough not to have demolished their old movie theaters have discovered there is still a market for live performances and classic movies.  Let's say I want to see the film Casablanca, I can stream it online and watch it at home. But occasionally I would rather see it in a movie theater with a group of people -even if it isn't convenient and costs more than watching it at home. People are social animals and watching a favorite movie alone is a lot like having a great glass of wine by yourself. The quality of the experience is enhanced by having someone to share it with.

Back to the film club.  The town the cafe is in lost both its old theaters over three decades ago. Within in 15 miles there is about forty screens but only one screen is dedicated to classic, foreign and independent movies. Not quite a desert but I think the club members would really enjoy sharing a favorite or obscure movie with their friends.  I know the owner of the cafe would like to see all of us buy a refreshment and a snack at every club meeting.  

The film club had a chance to talk about what films to pick. I suggested This Film Has Not Been Rated a documentary by Kirby Dick. It examines how films are rated by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The MPAA actually has a secret board of "ordinary" people who decide what the guide lines are for each rating. It's curious to see what separates an R rated film from a NC-17 rating. The film also explains how and why the NC-17 rating has become a commercial kiss of death and something to be avoided at any cost.

A couple of people were a little uncomfortable with that choice. The question of when does describing pornography become pornography came up. And though this film is funny, thought provoking and not particularly graphic -still there was a real hesitation to include it. I always thought of it as a film about censorship and who has the right to control what we see.

Then again what is pornography? Somewhere beyond the romantic and the erotic is fifty shades of grayness, that any place along this shadowy spectrum somebody will say that's too much and someone else will disagree and want more.  Nudity and sex have always had an undercurrent of anxiety attached to it.

From past history and anthropology classes it was surprising to see what sexual act or what part of the body was consider obscene at any given time or in any given culture. One poet had a line where she said "a woman without mystery is like a night without stars".  Later she elaborated how there are some parts of our bodies and our minds, that by choice, we should only be shared with people we are totally intimate with.  So over time and across cultures some part of a woman's body has always been deemed sacred, protected or taboo. 

The poet, she thought it was frightening to have a world were nothing is sacred, protected or taboo.  I can see why women have the same reaction to pornography -not only does it make a woman's body a commodity but it always seems to be pushing the boundaries further and further leaving nothing sacred -or at least covered and mysterious. 

In one anthropology class there was a lecture on the Venus of Wllendorf. It's a small statue of a very corporal female figure that over 35,000 years old.  There isn't one Venus but several from that time period. Either carved out of ivory or carved into limestone almost all of the women depicted are large and very curvy -maybe not only representing fertility but also that culture's image of the idea woman. In a group of hunter-gathers where it was either feast or famine  the possibility of a couple of pounds of body fat was an extreme and coveted luxury.

In class I wondered if the Venus of Willendorf was just as likely an object of sexual arousal as it was one of primitive worship?  That caused a real buzz in the class. The Professor thought the idea had merit and after the lecture had a separate discussion about it.    

There is no way of knowing in any detail what people 35,000 years ago thought was right or wrong, erotic or distasteful, sacred or profane. The trap of seeing their world through our perspective is always there. Still as times and customs change I believe people have a core of consistent and common experiences. One time I was reading a translation of a 4,000 year old cruciform clay tablet. It was an agreement to sell a plot of farmland. The new owner would pay the former owner over time and the payments would not be based on a set amount of silver but instead the payments in silver would change year to year relative to the price of barley.  In short it was an adjustable rate mortgage.  Ancient and modern societies might share more than we think.

In some old magazine there is a one panel cartoon where a jungle witchdoctor is standing over a bag of fertilizer and looking at a crowd of disappointed tourists. The witchdoctor says "it's a fertility rite -what did you expect?".  Some of the old Pagan fertility rites were rather randy and tawdry ceremonies.  Here you would have an R-rated celebration of sex that was part of the local religion.   

What needs to be censored is a troubling question. Pornography is a word taken from the Greek language and means dirty pictures. I have always felt violence was more pornographic than sex and nudity. It upsetting to see entertainment where a human being can shot, burned or torn apart in a hundred gruesome ways but happy naked people are obscene and the final images carefully edited to match the right rating for the movie's target audience.   

The movie This Film Has Not Been Rated was made in 2006. It's beginning to look a little dated because the internet is changing how films get distributed. The internet and unrated DVDs are becoming an end run around the MPAA and the movie theaters. Over thirty years ago the VCR made pornography partially respectable because you could watch it at home instead of going to a seedy X-rated movie house. I'm trying to imagine the future where there will be even fewer gatekeepers of morality. Maybe in the end all we really have is ourselves and a small circle friends that really keeps us from becoming twisted and depraved.

In future postings I will mention any movie that incites the film club into having an orgy -but I really doubt that's going to happen.

                               Next meeting I'll ask if we could put Lenny on the movie list.

            And two clips from the real Lenny Bruce please don't listen if you are easily offended.