Organ Grinder:
News for Pervy Little Monkeys

Will somebody please tell me where I've been for the last 30 years? I don't know about you, but lately I'm having a really hard time maintaining a life as a happy-go-lucky boozehound. I keep getting sucked into these shockingly earnest conversations about terrorism and civil liberties and Conrad Black's weird sexual proclivities (namely, schtupping Barbara Amiel.) In the interest of expanding the horizons of my idle cocktail chatter, I've been reading. A lot.

Hollywood v. Hardcore (NYU Press, 2000) is a detailed account of the history of so-called "voluntary" self-censorship in Hollywood, and how the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system, as adopted by the major studio conglomerates "saved" Hollywood by ghettoizing adult films… both the dirty kind, and those made for mature audiences. The book, by Jon Lewis, draws a logistical arc through several fascinating vector points: The birth of film, The Hays Commission, McCarthyism, Big Media Conglomeration, the MPAA, and the Nixon-era Supreme Court decisions on pornography.

In a series of anecdotes, Lewis details the legal decisions that struck down formative rulings on obscenity, particularly the ones that protected unpopular ideas from the bullying of the moral majority. As Justice William Brennan declared: "All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion - have the full protection [of this court]." Those criteria were attacked in a series of legal maneuvers that would make a Quebecois contortionist blush. When the curtain fell, the all-important legal definition of obscenity relied on local "community standards" which were, generously speaking, indistinct. As Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked about his definition of hardcore "…I know it when I see it."

And so it was that the power to determine what was 'dirty' returned to the hairy palms of local and state law enforcement. Before you could say "injunction", down came the truncheon that crippled an unprecedented box office boom for low budget independent films. Two of those films were ranked in Variety's 1973 end-of-the-year box-office review at seventh and eleventh. Those films were The Devil in Miss Jones and Deep Throat, respectively. Interesting figures, considering that those titles were banned for the last six months of that year.

After 1973, theatre owners and employees "bore the brunt of local censorship at a cost of revenue, jail time, and the constant anxiety and headache of dealing with informal, extralegal censorship activity." The studios kept their hands clean by strict adherence to the (often arbitrary) decisions of the MPAA board. Today, directors are often contractually obliged to deliver a product that garners an MPAA rating. Those films that do not or will not submit to the MPAA's "voluntary" code are doomed to almost certain financial failure. Such films have limited economic potential for a number of reasons, including ineligibility for much of the lucrative "home box office" market of video, cable, and pay-per-view. This has direct repercussions on indie films like Todd Solondz's Happiness and David Cronenberg's Crash, both prizewinners at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, both rated NC-17, both gagged and sodomized (without consent) by interference at the hands of the major studios.

Everybody, grab your partner, round and round: Happiness was produced by October, which is owned by Universal, who pulled their name and financial backing at a crucial time. Crash was produced by Fine Line, who are owned by Time Warner Turner… you see where this is going? Ted Turner personally sabotaged the release of Crash. The corporations that own movie studios have a lot to lose through public boycotts of their various holdings. The personalities that lead such corporations have a lot to lose in the eyes of the public, and more importantly, in the eyes of their shareholders. Bow to your partner, Do-Si-Do.

A sinister parallel in Canada is Conrad Black's media monopoly. The government doesn't even have to get involved in censorship when Hollinger, Inc. controls 60 of Canada's 106 daily newspapers, (14 out of 16 in BC!) "The press doesn't tell us what to think, but it is stunningly successful at telling us what to think about," reminds Robert Hackett, co-director of NewsWatch Canada.

My point is this: Internal corporate censorship is far more effective than that of any government, unburdened as it is by that pesky Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Think about that when right-wing papers start suggesting that the sacrifice of your civil liberties is a worthwhile donation to the War on Whatever. Of course, the majority of Canadians aren't using theirs anyway…all those little liberties, stacked in the garage like so many back issues of Playboy. I think I'll hang on to mine for the time being. Who knows? They might be worth something.

This just in from Salon.com dated Oct. 23:

"Top Internet companies Tuesday announced their support for a Web site rating system to keep children away from Internet pornography and other controversial sites.
The Internet leaders, which include AOL Time Warner, Yahoo and Microsoft Network, hope that the system will show lawmakers that self-regulation can work, heading off more laws restricting Internet content.

"The overwhelming response demonstrates the value of a voluntary self-labeling system that is about choice -- not censorship -- on the Internet," said Mary Lou Kenny, North American director of the Internet Content Rating Association."

Sound Familiar?