censored
Andrew Worsdale
THE Publications Control Board has banned a movie already flighted several times in South Africa and, for the first time ever, a poster for a film.
Caligula, produced in 1980 by Bob Guccione of Penthouse magazine and directed by Tinto Brass, tells the story of the decadent Roman whose rule was characterised by violence and sexual abuse.
The film drew the talents of people like Malcolm McDowell, Sir John Gielgud, Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole, but was roundly lambasted partly because Guccione recut the film, inserting 40 minutes of sex scenes.
Initially banned in South Africa, Caligula did play with special permission at the Weekly Mail Film Festival in 1993, for a week in 1995 at Cape Town’s Labia under the same conditions, and at Johannesburg’s Seven Arts last year for six weeks.
But such showings seem to have escaped the censors, who used the 1974 Publications Act to ban Caligula last month, after the Labia resubmitted the film for approval.
“Caligula was notorious for his cruelty and vices but the explicit and violent depiction, especially the sexual violence, for example the rape of Olivia and Proculis, the bloody castration scene with a dog licking up the blood and eating same is totally nauseating,” the board’s ruling concludes.
“The film is riddled with lengthy and explicit scenes of rape, masturbation, oral sex and ejaculation (showing penetration), cunnilingus, fellatio, voyeurism, necrophilia, homosexuality, full frontal nudity, close-ups of genitals (male and female), a female urinating while another fondles her, plus murder and torture.
“All this is dehumanising, degrading, decadent and the depiction of debauchery in such gross detail, revelling in the sexual aspects, renders the film as being pornographic.”
The board’s chairman, Braam Coetzee, says his censors did not know that the film had already been played, but adds: “Queer things happen in this country nowadays.”
The board has also decided to ban the poster for the film Female Perversions – a poster Coetzee “personally” found “beautiful”.
The independent art movie – which did get the board’s approval, with an age 18 restriction – is about a high-powered attorney (played by British actress Tilda Swinton) who dumps her boyfriend for a woman psychiatrist. Described by overseas critics as a “decidedly off-beat, psychological drama about sexual roles, gender issues and identity in modern society”, the film is based on Louise J Kaplan’s learned but obscure Freudian feminist treatise exploring the complex issues of female sexuality.
Its poster shows a woman tied up while other women try to clasp her – which offended the board because of its “suggestions of bondage and lesbianism,” Coetzee says. “The committee found that because posters are blatantly displayed it was undesirable. You can’t put an age restriction on a poster.”
Distributor Ster-Kinekor is now submitting a toned-down version of the poster, relocating the film’s title to obscure the poster’s one visible nipple.
The board, meanwhile, is due next week to face another assault on its sensitivities – watching Mira Nair’s latest film, Kama Sutra, scripted by South African Helena Kriel.
The board’s Indian equivalent recently demanded that 14 minutes be cut from the film. Nair took legal action, saving 12 of the 14 minutes.