Freedom, Sex & Power
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W RECK: graduate journal of art history, visual art, and theory Volume 2, number 1 (2008) Freedom, Sex & Power:1 Film/Video Regulation in Ontario By Taryn Sirove, Ph.D. Candidate, Queen’s University P h o t o c o u r t e s y o f J o h n P o r t e r . Fig. 1. The Ontario Film and Video Appreciation Society (OFVAS) presenting its brief at public hearings on a new film classification law held at Queen’s Park, Toronto, Ontario, December 4-5, 1984. L-R: David Poole (CFMDC), Anna Gronau (The Funnel), Cyndra MacDowell (CARO). Photo by John Porter. “Ontario is getting out of the film censorship business,” announced the headline of the December 10, 2004 Toronto Star.2 This, after Glad Day Bookshop, a small retailer specializing in queer literature and videotapes, won a decisive legal battle against the Ontario Film Review Board (OFRB).3 Glad Day Bookshop appealed its previous conviction for illegally distributing the sexually-explicit video, Descent, by “renowned” American filmmaker, Steven Scarborough.4 The bookshop called upon the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms to overturn a provincial regulation—the Theatres Act—which required that all videos and films be either approved by the OFRB, be partially censored, or altogether banned. Despite Glad Day Bookshop’s successful legal challenge to the Act and the OFRB, the Star headline was totally erroneous; as of today, the OFRB has retained its powers for the prior restraint and banning of film and video in Ontario. In this essay, I map a number of interventions and contests around the regulation of video and film from the 1980s until the present. In addition to considering Page 31 Wreck 2, no. 1 (2008) provincial legal contests, I examine Film and video screenings in small the changing definitions of art houses had, until then, received pornography in the Criminal Code of little scrutiny, as the Board focused Canada which provide the discursive on monitoring mainstream titles logic informing censorship policy at screened in large, public theatres. the provincial level. Further, I outline Upon Brown’s appointment, n e g o t i a t i o n s t o i m p l e m e n t independent film and video were also exemptions to the OFRB review required to undergo a Board review. process (if a film is deemed ‘art’), to For the first time in Ontario’s history, better understand, by way of contrast, these materials were subject to “prior extant definitions of pornography. restraint”, the legal term denoting a Moreover, I interrogate the extent of ban on publication. t h e O n t a r i o g o v e r n m e n t ’ s This shift in policy prompted many bureaucratic powers to censor. grassroots acts of resistance in the I argue against a notion of the law arts community, including the as a univocal authority by considering Canadian Images Film Festival held the law, instead, as a system of in Peterborough in March of 1981. “governmentality” in the Foucauldian The organizers screened Al Razutis’s sense, in which social agents act out film, A Message From Our Sponsor d i s c u r s i v e c o n t e s t s i n t h e (1979), without submitting it for arrangement of pornography as an review by the Censor Board. Shortly object of knowledge; and, I regard after charges were laid against censorship as a persistent form of festival organizers, the Ontario Film (de)legitimation, thereby troubling a and Video Appreciation Society r i g h t s - b a s e d , l i b e r t a r i a n (OFVAS), a lobby group, took u n d e r s t a n d i n g w h i c h h o l d s advantage of the newly declared censorship to be simply wrong and Constitution Act (1982) to challenge thus eliminable.5 I argue that the Ontario Board of Censors (OCB), censorship, as an omission made by arguing that the Board’s authority those in judicial and executive under the Theatres Act to censor or positions, is an exercise of power as ban films and videos was entirely defined within Foucault’s “art of discretionary and in violation of government,” and that resistances to freedom of expression, under section censorship in both the street and in 2 (b) of the Charter of Rights and the courts can constitute meaningful Freedoms (fig. 1).7 According to social change. OFVAS member David Poole, the Governmental film censorship first society “was formed on the weekend became possible in Ontario in 1911 that the Constitution was declared”, with the drafting of the Theatres and in order to fight one of the first legal Cinematographers Act and the contests based on the guarantee of the appointment of the provincial Board freedom of speech.8 The vague of Censors.6 Surprisingly, however, guidelines under which the OCB the Theatres Act was not enforced administered its operations were until 1981 when the then- clarified as a result of this case and conservative government appointed a written into the Theatres Act. Also new chair, Mary Brown, to the Board. the OCB changed its name to the Page 32 Freedom, Sex & Power Ontario Film Review Board (OFRB). and capable of resistance so that Unfortunately, however, this only “faced with a relationship of power, a cloaked the powers it retained to cut whole field of responses, reactions, and ban video and film, and the results, and possible inventions may subsequent enabling legislation, Bill open up.”15 82, An Act to Amend the Ontario Even aside from the development of Theatres Act, actually expanded the the Charter, I argue that law possesses Board’s reach to include the an enabling and productive potential, classification of all home video (fig. as it provides the opportunity for the 2).9 declaring of rights by social agents in With the passing of Bill 82, opinion debates that can result in real that was once fragmented quickly discursive changes in law. The unified, and artists, curators, and art “contact point” between the law and institutions across Ontario mobilized social agents who articulate their to organize the “Ontario Open rights is not univocal. Rather, it is a Screenings.” Dissenters screened process that flows back and forth videos in several locations across the between government and social province from April 21-27, 1985, agents. The history of film censorship without pre-approval from the Ontario in Ontario, and the accompanying Film Review Board, thereby debates in academic, artist, and contravening the Theatres Act.10 Law activist circles, supports the argument professor Brenda Cossman referred to that social agents should be these events as the “largest group civil considered vital links in the formation disobedience Ontario history.”11 Since of power, instead of remaining most provinces throughout the rest of external to it. Canada, some with similar censor In a interview, Glad Day Bookstore boards and some without, looked to manager Toshiya Kuwabara declared Ontario’s classifications to inform that the bookstore is planning to their own regulation of video and film, follow the spirit of the appeal court’s Ontario was a crucial site for debate ruling, rather than adhere to the new and contest of existing censorship regulations under the Film laws.12 Classification Act.16 In this way, These sorts of censorship laws nest Kuwabara, as a social agent, is in the larger system of law, itself a exercising a certain amount of agency system of governmentality where to interpret the law and its effects government is a “‘contact point’ where the law is a function of the where techniques of domination—or state, and, as Danny Lacombe power—and techniques of the self describes, the state “is an institutional ‘interact.’”13 For Foucault, subjects complex that conditions and is are shaped and constituted by power conditioned by the balance of social enacted over them.14 He explains that forces in society. Any distinction for power to function, “‘the other’ (the between institutional power and the one over whom power is exercised) power of social agents must be [needs to] be thoroughly recognized rejected.”17 and maintained to the very end as a It seems an obvious point, but it is person who acts,” and is therefore free important to note that citizens, Page 33 Wreck 2, no. 1 (2008) including members of the Ontario induction of the Charter of Rights Government who are subject to the and Freedoms into the constitution law, have the option to disobey the has allowed for successful legal law (facing, of course, all the challenges to the law itself based on potential consequences of that in/ fundamental freedoms, as in Glad action).18 Kuwabara has decided to Day’s case. Although rights discourse contravene the new Theatres Act and in law-writing will never eradicate conduct his business in consistency injustice or create a truly egalitarian with what he interprets as the spirit of society, it gives voice to the the law. I do not mean to trivialize the declaration of what groups very real constraining techniques of characterize as their rights, which in the law’s enforcement, but to turn constitutes subjectivities via such investigate the skirmishes between articulations. government and social agents that An example of the use of the law to attest to the incompleteness of the enact a discursive change in legal and law’s ability to regulate action. The popular knowledge occurred in 1988, P h o t o c o u r t e s y o f J o h n P o r t e r .