Ifs Your Religious Freedom
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2 COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM BURTNETT/ILLUSTRATION BY VIC TAYLOR September/October, 1981 audience. Their laughter seems to be in the Cantonese dialect. His Being the story of my visit to performance over, he goes to his room, strips off his makeup, and the Maryland Censorship Board slips into something more comfortable. In Occidental films it is usually the female who does that, and even preachers know what the and of lessons of love on a code communicates. I "gird my loins"—the King James Version of facing up to responsibility—and vow that, come Hades or high tide, park bench. I will do my duty as visiting professor of censorship. Quickly, the plot thickens. The clown, clad now in baggy andy is dandy, but sex won't rot your teeth." trousers and T-shirt, slicks back his hair, dabs on after-shave lotion, 14,0 I saw the sign in the projectionist's booth of the Maryland and enters a bedroom. He tiptoes to a bed. On it is a recumbent Board of Censors. Past tense. After 65 years of protecting the female, covered, it appears, with only a sheet. He reaches for the morals of Marylanders, the board expired on June 30 when the state sheet, and visions of X-rated sugarplums dance in my head. senate refused to renew its mandate. "That's his mother," a disembodied voice informs me from I wondered whether the sign was the projectionist's silent protest behind a desk lamp. "She died just before you came in. The clown against the decisions made by the censors outside his booth. In any had tried to earn money to save her life. She had great hopes for her case, Candy of one type wasn't dandy to the board; they refused son and taught him always to be a good boy and remember his their Seal of Approval to the Erotic Adventures of Candy and Candy responsibility to society." Goes to Hollywood, among other films. So much for visions of X-rated sugarplums. Still, Maryland moviegoers hardly languished for lack of sexual Having renewed his vows to his mother, the clown goes for a themes under the board's stewardship. During their last year of walk. He sits on a park bench beside a lithesome lass with almond work, the board licensed more than 500 films, including such eyes and complexion. He speaks to her. She speaks to him. We nonclassics as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Charlie and the learn she is blind. He tells her of his mother's death, but, in the best Hooker, Dance of the Drunk Mantis, Emmanuelle in Tokyo, The circus tradition, informs her that the show must go on. "Some say Furious Monk From Shao-lin, Gas Pump Girls, Intimate Confes- life is like a mirror," he philosophizes. "You smile, get smile back. sions of a Chinese Courtesan, Itchy Fingers, Naughty Girls on the Not true." Loose, Unidentified Flying Odd Ball, and Yum Yum Girls. "He even drops tears," the subtitle informs us. During the same period, however, scores of full-length We learn that the young woman is trying to earn money for an pornographic films shown in the District of Columbia weren't even operation to restore her eyesight. "Her optic nerve is out of work," submitted to the Board of Censors for showing in Maryland, and we are told. She fumbles in her purse and pulls out a wad of paper fourteen hundred peep shows were removed from the market. money worthy of Daddy Warbucks. "Will you count my money for Though LIBERTY is a magazine for adults (lacking, however, the me?" she asks her new acquaintance. He does, and tells her she is hedonistic philosophy generally communicated under that cate- still ten thousand Chinese dollars short. He returns the money. (I'm gory, and having center spreads that reveal nothing more than the thankful she didn't pull that stunt on a park bench in Washington. shape of church-state affairs), I'd just as soon eschew the imagery D. C . !) many banned titles convey. As the clown gazes soulfully at her, another caption rhapsodizes, Humanity does have more than teeth to rot. "She butiful." Yes, butiful. Suddenly I realize where functional On a rainy June day I sat with the board in one of its last sessions, illiterates go when they are gratuitously graduated after flunking to view The Clown, a Chinese film with subtitles and subtleties their ABCs; they get work writing grammatical pornography for equally incomprehensible to the Occidental mind. Little did I expect Chinese film subtitles. that it would contain one of the hottest love scenes to be seen on any Now comes the big sex scene, right there on the park bench. I can screen this year, a variation on the celebrated oscillating-fingers hear deep breathing behind me. The censors are on heavy duty. I'm ploy. And certainly no editor, whatever his views on censorship, hardly able to breathe at all. The clown's lips approach the girl's would have passed some of the captions. ear, stopping a mere half-meter away. "I will earn the money for [NOTICE: The following film review may offend some readers. you," he murmurs. "The poor should have feeling for the poor." In the spirit of full disclosure, I recommend it only for mature We see a close-up of his eyes. They look like a cross between Eddie readers. Even Nicholas von Hoffman rated it R, and Art Buchwald Cantor's when he talked about Ida, and Al Jolson's when he sang refused to read it at all.] "Mammy." (Younger readers may think in terms of John Travolta The Maryland Censorship Board meets at One South Calvert and Robert Redford.) Street in offices that appear to have been rejected for viewing by the The camera moves discreetly to her shapely hand. Gently she Baltimore Board of Janitors. Just after 11:00 A.M. I slipped into the places it on his. Minds desensitized by Flyntlike porno can easily darkened theater on the eighth floor. Thanks to a Baltimore miss the delicate charm of Oriental erotica. His fingers—watch his policeman bent on censoring violations of the city's bluenose fingers. Like a blade of grass caressed by a spring breeze, they begin driving code, with whom I had carried on a polite but unintellectual to quiver. A gentle G-rated quiver. Tension builds as the quiver conversation, I was late. graduates to a PG-rated twitch, and the twitch, in turn, to a At the back, on a platform just below the projection booth, three full-blown R-rated oscillation that carries its own sonic boing. We gray metal desks stood end to end. Behind them, in high-back are well into the next scene before I am rational enough to recognize swivel chairs, sat the three reigning matriarchs of the Censorship that I have been subjected to the centuries-old Chinese oscillating- Board. At the moment they appeared to be simply three amorphous finger ploy. First Amendment or no First Amendment, I understand presences, peering (I assumed) over hooded desk lamps and why a Censorship Board is needed in Maryland, indeed, why one formidable tablets of legal-sized yellow paper. I groped my way to a should be mandatory in every state exhibiting Chinese films. To wooden chair just in front of them. For some incongruous reason the expose sex-satiated American youth to the erotica inherent in a setting reminded me of a midforties scene in the inquisitorial subtle finger movement would be unconscionable. Next they would chambers of a Big Town D.A. All the scene lacked were the curls of learn of the Chinese toe twitch, which no refined Mandarin will cigarette smoke from behind the lamps and a gravelly voiced even permit his children to see. And then, they would experiment presence reading me my First Amendment rights. with the Chinese Communist refinement of the Korean earlobe It is the clown who short-circuits my compulsion to place my one-allowed call to my attorney. In the Barnum tradition of lugubrious poignancy, he is cavorting before an appreciative Roland R. Hegstad is the editor of LIBERTY. LIBERTY (ISSN 0024-20551 IS PUBLISHED BIMONTHLY AND COPYRIGHTED® 1981 BY THE REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING ASSN., 6856 EASTERN AVE., NW, WASH., D.C. 20012. SECOND-CLASS POSTAGE PAID AT WASH.. D.C. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE 54.25 PER YEAR. PRICE MAY VARY WHERE NATIONAL CURRENCIES ARE DIFFERENT. VOL. 76. Na 5. SEP..00T.. 1981. POSTMASTER: SEND FORM 3579 TO SAME ADDRESS. 3 LIBERTY wiggle or the Vietnamese eyebrow hitch—which, in its most Instead of prosecuting violations under the Maryland State Board virulent strain, decimated whole battalions of American fighting of Censors Film Licensing Statute at $100 each, the state now will men. have to act under the Maryland State Obscenity Statute, which Duty calls me back to the screen. The clown hires out as a process requires hearings, pretrial hearings, motions, and even sparring partner to earn money for the operation. He earns $50 Hong years of litigation. Either Marylanders will be putting out millions Kong dollars for each punch he can absorb as the partner for a of dollars a year to keep out obscene films, or there will be no ponderous but hard-swinging heavyweight. Thwack! Thump! prosecutions, they say. They estimate the cost of the average Crump! Smash! Crunch! Our hero yo-yo's, ketchup spewing from process at $10,000. If the court levied even moderate fines for his mouth, eyes swelling to slits, face puffing into grotesqueness.