(Bolding is mine)
So, yeah, it looks like a propaganda label was slapped on it, and you can argue about the legitimacy of that. But perhaps the claim that it was banned might be a little bit of self promotion? In the last quote, note how the speaker admits the distribution was limited – but apparently not squashed – yet goes along with the language and the impression that it was banned.
The OP asked for “movies that, legally, absolutely CANNOT be shown in the US?” The documentary Titicut Follies could not be shown 1967-1992 because of a court decision that it violated the privacy of the inmates shown; Superstar cannot be shown because of copyright violations. What don’t you understand?
This has been commonly alleged. Others claim that the U.S. government “tried” to ban it. But I have yet to find any specific information about what government body, under what legal authority, and when. Frankly, I don’t believe the hype.
IANAL, but I believe that the only sense in which the “matter is left to individual communities” is that local prosecutors can charge exhibitors or video stores with obscenity.
Maryland was the last state to have a Board of Censors, and it was abolished in 1981.
No offence intended, Dogface, but this comes across as a little smug. I understand that the OP is asking about nationwide US bans, so the issue of central censorship is relevant. However, the above statements of yours make it seem as though censorship is perfectly fine as long as it doesn’t originate from the Feds.
It was the remake I was referring to, the one that couldn’t find a distributor. I think Kubrick’s version had fewer troubles because
A) Kubrick changed the story to be far less sexually explicit
B) Kubrick is God.
C) Whilst attitudes regarding morality, sex, violence etc. have become increasingly liberal, attitudes towards pedophilia has gone the complete opposite direction. Indeed, it seems like any movie that attempts to “humanize” pedophiles (L.I.E., Happiness, and the aforementioned Lolita) gets an automatic NC-17.
(Not that I’m defending pedophilia, mind you. I hate child molesters like everyone else. But when it becomes a total witchhunt, and anti-pedo protestors torch the office of a PAEDIATRICIAN because they thought the two words were synonymous, well…it’s hard to sit back and say nothing.)
Antonius, part of the problem is the common connotation of the term “banned” – usually that there is something in the movie that some entity with power has decided is dangerous from a politico-ideological angle. And of course, the “in the USA” bit that others have addressed (though I will not join in the insinuation that any place that does it differently from us must be 'fascist").
And for The Tin Drum, please see Walloon’s post above. ONE idiot DA/Police Chief team on ONE city in Oklahoma does not a pattern make, specially if the courts throw out the case. Now, I know that many will say there should not have been a case even attempted to begin with, but the US system just works reactively.
BTW, AFAIK in the USA it’s indeed only legally “censorship” if it’s a public entity doing, and has the effect of making you prosecutable for publishing/viewing the material, not if it forces you to do so less profitably. So the Tin Drum case would have been censorship, but the MPAA ratings are not considered so – it’s an industry cartel controlling aspects of film distribution and marketing, and can drive you out of the market, but you do NOT go to jail for showing a non-rated movie.
Since the MPAA, not being an arm of the state, cannot have me arrested, fined and jailed, were I to produce, say, a version of DeSade’s Julliette, I’d much rather be able make it, never submit it to MPAA, and take the risk of self-distributing to the art house market or direct-video-sales channel, than be obligated to submit it to an entity with the powers of the Government behind it who will have the studio shut down and impounded.
Is this the version starring Jeremy Irons? If so, I remember the controversy. There wasn’t an effort to outlaw it, per se, but because of the theme, the film couldn’t find a major studio to release it. This was during a period when little boys were being suspended from school for kissing little girls – there was a bit of hysteria about anything that could be remotely classified as sexual harassment. I don’t think the movie would have as much of a problem today now that cooler heads have prevailed.
> Indeed, it seems like any movie that attempts to “humanize”
> pedophiles (L.I.E., Happiness, and the aforementioned Lolita)
> gets an automatic NC-17.
Lolita was rated R. L.I.E. was rated NC-17, but there’s a video version rated R. I don’t know what changes were made to reduce the film to an R, but it’s unlikely to be that they changed the fact that the film was about a pedophile. That would essentially require throwing out the film and starting over. It’s more likely that there was some language and some explicit sex cut out. Happiness apparently only has a NC-17 version.
Can someone provide a better cite? I have a hard time believing “the Justice Department” would “restrict distribution” of a movie. For one, even if the government did engage in such practices, why would the Justice Department be the one to do it? Secondly, is there such a thing as the government officially labelling something “propeganda”? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Thirdly, how could the government limit the distribution of a film? What, are they threatening video stores that attempt to sell or rent the film?
Finally, this reeks of “My words are dangerous to the government! They’re repressing me!”, a position which almost invariably turns out to be bogus.
Motion pictures, like other media, that are imported to the United States are subject to tariffs, depending on the nation of origin and the content of the media. Exemptions are made for media content that is educational in nature, and news media. When the documentary feature Eight Minutes to Midnight: A Portrait of Dr. Helen Caldicott was imported from Canada, the U.S. Customs Service was of the opinion that it was more an advocacy work than educational (although arguably it is both), and said that it was subject to import tarrifs.
From this dispute was born the claim by the filmmakers that Eight Minutes to Minute was the film the Reagan administration tried to prevent you from seeing.
There’s a third class of films which are (in effect) banned in the U.S. They are films (or photos) depicting a woman in sexual bondage while being vaginally, anally or orally penetrated by a man.
Sounds extremely narrow, and it is, WEIRDLY narrow, but outside one exception – Larry Flynt’s Taboo Magazine and online site – you can’t find any imagery like that in the U.S. (though I think there are some European and Asian sources).
Now you can have images of women bound and ahving sex with men that are not explicit.
YOu can have explicit images of women bound and being penetrated by toys.
You can have explicit images of women bound and having sex with one another.
You can have explicit images of men bound and penetrated by women (dunno about men/men images, I suspect not).
Consensuality is not an issue here. A totally consensual portrayal of sexual bondage is just as illegal as a portrayal of rape.
The Taboo exception is because Larry Flynt has the money, lawyers and guts to be willing to be taken to trial over his content. So far, no one is taking him up on it, largely I suspect because the general consensus in the U.S. is that consensual bondage is OK.
In the 70s and early 80s some of the early XXX film contained explicit XXX maletyingupfemaleand having explicit sex with her scenes, but these were subsequently edited out of the films. Some old copies still exist, though.
BTW, the implication in an earlier post was that Traci Lords wasn’t required to provide proof of age when she did porn, which was how she managed to do it underaged. As I understand it, she provided fake documents proving her age to be over 18. The industry did panic and pull all her films from the shelves when she admitted to having been underage when she did porn, but as there were some DAs looking at the possibility of taking people to trial for it, they had good reason to panic. I dont’ think anyone was convicted or even taken to trial, as they did have Lords’ fake documents on hand.
Well, at http://www.lot47.com – the film studio that produced L.I.E., but the link doesn’t work at the moment – they represented Lyne’s version of Lolita as rated NC-17, so maybe they lied. As for L.I.E., I’ve only seen it once in the theater and a couple times on IFC, which labeled it as NC-17 each time. I can’t imagine what they cut to reduce the rating to R, since the violence and language (aside from a few f-words) were barely PG-13 material, and there were NO sex scenes between the boy and the pedophile Marine, not even implied.
Happiness had so many disgusting scenes (the obscene phone caller squirting his semen onto the wall, for example) that it likely would have received an NC-17 anyway, even with the pedophile father parts removed. (Or should that be, “remove pedophile father’s parts?” Sounds logical to me…)
I suspected it was something of this nature. I didn’t want to call their claim that they were banned outright B.S., but it didn’t make much sense to me, given U.S law.
I don’t know much about Caldicott, but if this represents her approach to the truth, I’d be very wary of anything else she has to say. If they can turn a different import tax into a claim they were being banned, they are not on good terms with the truth.
Evil Captor, the key to what you mention about hardcore bondage is that parenthetical “(in effect)”: it is STILL a " local community" issue, but these depictions become “banned in effect” because there have been enough cases in enough places where this depiction has been found “obscene”, to make it unworthwhile for anyone to produce them… except Flynt, known for testing the boundaries of “obscenity” law, and even he will not ship Taboo to some locations where he knows it’s already settled. There’s no specific statute outlawing bound-woman hardcore, or hardcore depictions of simulated rape, or of fisting. Just too many communities where those are considered obscene.
As for Traci Lords: her agent and two porn producers were indicted. They were allowed to argue her false ID as a defense, but eventually they plea-bargained for lesser charges.
Yeah, it’s the Irons version. I remember reading an article discussing the making of the film, and describing the problems the filmmakers had during the production of the film, and comparing them to the problems that Kubrick had (namely that Nabokov’s original script would have come in at 7 hours long). The article was updated and discussed how it would have been impossible to shoot Lyne’s version after the “Child Protection Act” (or whatever it was called) was passed (and then overturned by SCOTUS). The one thing I remember from the article was it saying that during the scenes where Lolita was bouncing up and down on Irons lap, he had to have a board between him and her, so that there could be no physical contact between his crotch and hers. One of the members of the cast (not Irons) stated, that the actress who played Lolita had read the book before she read the script and was rather blase about the whole thing.
