Two amazingly retrograde examples of working censorship took place last week: one in Greece and the other in England. In the first, the state-appointed Greek National Broadcast Council — the equivalent of our Broadcasting Complaints Commission — imposed a hefty €100 000 fine (R700 000) on a television channel for having shown two men kissing in a prime time soapie, Close My Eyes. The council president, Yiannis Laskarides, described the scene as ‘idiosyncratic outside the bounds of normal human relationshipsâ€.
The producers fell foul of Greek broadcast rules in that they showed the kiss in an early evening slot and not after the 11pm ‘watershed†where ‘adult themed†material is allowed.
That this took place in Greece has a certain irony. At the height of its intellectual and political civilisation, ancient Grecian social mores accepted homosexuality as nothing particularly out of the ordinary. A vehement critic of the decision, Paul Sofianos, editor of a gay magazine, didn’t go that far back. He called the council members ‘reactionaries†with ‘their heads stuck in the 19th centuryâ€.
I find the ruling particularly interesting in that in a play of mine, Gentlemen, first produced in 1972, a kiss between two men was passed by the then and just as supposedly reactionary Publications and Entertainments Control Board — the infamous ‘Mr Blue Penâ€, Jannie Kruger, was its chairperson at the time. The play was about two predatory homosexuals who get extra kicks by making spiteful fun of and belittling the rather guileless ‘rent boys†they pay for sexual gratification.
I remember the first night of the play at the Labia Theatre in Cape Town, and to which a committee of the board had required official tickets. Towards the end of the play a certain Mrs Theron, wife of the then Cape administrator, and a particularly narrow-minded member of the board, stormed out of the auditorium, her face set in rigid indignation. The male-to-male ‘kiss†had just taken place. For her it must have been the final straw in a wholly degenerate exercise.
I expected the worst, a total banning of the play, or at the best some heavy pruning, and was quite amazed to receive a hand-delivered letter the next afternoon, from Kruger, himself. All he had done was slap an 18 age restriction on the play. The only excision ordered was of the word ‘Jesus, where used an expletiveâ€.
It seems strange that 31 years on a European country of great history and maturity still finds itself shocked by what was no more than a mild kiss between two men. What depraving effect it was believed this would have on a mainly adult audience, is hard to imagine. The censors of South Africa of the 1960s and 1970s were supposed to have represented about as far right and bible-bashing as anyone could be. By contrast with Laskarides’s lot they seem like raging left liberals. Rest well, Jannie Kruger. Perhaps you weren’t all that bad.
As bizarre an incidence of censorship came about in England last week, made worse by its adaptation of runway political correctness — PC is the linchpin of a paralysing new form of censorship. In response to pressure from some lunatic PC lobby, the British Red Cross has removed any reference to Christianity or the nativity in this year’s Christmas cards, which it sells to raise funds. This on the grounds that any open celebration of the religious connotations of Christmas might ‘give offence†to members of other religions.
Have you ever heard of such timid, coy, plain old industrial strength bum-sucking? It’s not that the Red Cross is selling its Christmas cards in Iraq or Syria where, it could be argued, they might cause a touch more than offence from the fundamentalist mullahs. Red Cross Christmas cards are sold in places like the Puttenham High Street, in little sweet shops in villages, by schoolkids going door to door. What sort of cowardly wankers made the decision, and worse, what brand of archly hypocritical PC proponents advised them to. Is anything deserves a place in Private Eye’s Pseuds Hall of Fame, this one does.
I’m finishing this week by giving some advance publicity for the something very special coming up in the first edition of the Mail & Guardian after Christmas — to be published on December 31. This will be in the form of an insert called Not The Mail & Guardian — please take note of that ‘Not”. I’ve been appointed collector, compiler, copy-taster and general factotum for this.
I’m not admitting where all the material comes from, except an under the blanket excuse that a good deal came from the editorial ‘spikes” —material not published originally on grounds of legal advice, utter lack of journalistic principles or plain good taste. So look forward to stories about the new Meisiemag resistance group, amazing new claims by a South African forensic scientist about the Lockerbie air disaster, how men will be able to be pregnant, a special guest column from a certain former Independent Newspapers columnist, lots more to startle, amaze and enrage. Not The Mail & Guardian comes out on December 31.