So, I got the DVD I ordered. Fake – a Japanese animation centred around a gay relationship. On the back of the box is this warning:
sigh
You know, from what I’ve heard, there’s nothing more risqué in this movie than two men kissing. Would it be so much to ask that my life not be referred to as an “alternative lifestyle?”
For fuck’s sake, both main characters are police on a narcotics squad – I’ve know there’s some violence in this movie. But the box doesn’t warn against violence. It warns against the love that dare not speak its name (or at least, not without the appropriate disclaimers, apparently). Maybe it should read:
WARNING: Depicts homosexuals in a sympathetic manner. Do not expose to children or open flames. Focus on the Family recommends wholesome, family-friendly viewing such as Cruising and Basic Instinct
or maybe:
WARNING: By viewing this film, you risk bringing fire and brimstone down upon us all. Repent!
I echo that sigh. How popular or accepted does something have to be to stop being labelled “alternative”? As far as I’m concerned, it’s a lifestyle. And it’s not something there should even be a warning about.
Are there ever warnings like “People eat fatty foods in this movie” so no one will watch and say, “Boy, that * does* look good. I’m gonna go get me some deep fried fat.”? I’m sorry. That’s a bad analogy, as most people will agree that eating fatty foods is bad for you. Maybe they should warn against some arbitrary thing that some people hate, like toilet paper being upside-down on the holder, or people mispronouncing “nuclear.”
Here are two versions of what could happen, based on having or not having that label:
No label:
Little Johnny Fundamentalist sees an anime about cops and begs his mother to buy it.
His mother, not seeing a label warning her about scary sodomites, buys it and allows him to watch it.
Little Johnny watches it and his mother finds out that it does in fact contain scary sodomites.
Little Johnny’s mother rallies all of her friends around her cause and the fact that her son’s been irreparably damaged by seeing the scary sodomites.
She gets the store where they got it to stop selling it, period, and perhaps intimidates them into not selling anything with scary sodomites in it to anyone but those over 21 who sign special forms.
Label:
Little Johnny Fundamentalist sees an anime about cops and begs his mother to buy it.
She sees the warning label, shrieks at the poor clerk for a few minutes about how s/he is going to hell for selling that filth, and stomps out the door.
The clerk sells Fake to someone who can properly appreciate it and tells all of his his/her friends about the really crazy lady.
Not that either of these are too likely… I guess my point is that the people who put the label on there may just be trying to defend themselves from wackos, rather than thinking a label like this is necessary for any other reason.
Well, Aeon Flux was aired on MTv with the disclaimer: “WARNING! Contains graphic depictions of extreme behavior.” And the show did have some lesbian action, though I can’t remember any explicit male gay stuff.
Or maybe they were just talking about the blood & violence…
I have no doubt that they put labels like that on there to protect against exactly the kind of scenario you described. But wouldn’t it be nice if at some point, people were to take a moral stand against bigotry, and stop pandering to the fundie wackos?
I strongly suspect that the sorts of people who would get angry over two men kissing in an anime are the sort who – forty years ago – would have written in complaining about the interracial kiss on Star Trek. And forty years from now, they’ll probably look just as stupid as those racist bigots in the Sixties do to us now.
Furthermore, I have to wonder how many extreme-conservative-fundamentalist Christians let their children watch anime to begin with…?
I second that sigh and raise you a YEESH grow up. I thought from your title that it was about BD/SM or something. Shit they want alternative they should be with me this weekend when I go to the BD/SM national conference LOL. Now THERES some alternative stuff for ya!!
I third(or forth or fifth, I lost track) that sigh. If there is explicit sexual conduct(which from the OP doesn’t appear to apply here), warn against that. There shouldn’t be any difference based on the sex of the participants. I do take issue with one comment that Faerie Nuff made:
I’m not gay, but from what I understand it’s not a choice, so I don’t see what “popularity” has to do with anything. I know you probably didn’t mean it this way, but the idea that homosexuality is a choice or “alternative lifestyle” is part of the problem.
There was an episode of “Boston Public” a year or two ago that featured what turned out to be a bisexual character.
“Warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual lifestyles. Viewer discretion is advised.”
When in fact he did not discuss his lifestyle, he defended himself from, among other people, his homophobic/straight supremacist mother. Pit thread ensued, but for reasons similar to this (but not this specifically) I’m sorry to say I am too mentally tired to search for it. It was started by me, in case anyone feels like playing with the search engine.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people dropped their fear of the unknown and replaced it with actual information? Being opposed to something is one thing; being opposed to it without actually knowing what it is is quite another.
What? Ask the fundies to giove up their reason to exist?
I grow so weary of being controversial by my very existence, so dangerous that parents don’t want their children to know that some men have boyfriends and not girlfriends. I mean kids are raised by heterosexuals, surrounded by heterosexuals, and heterosexuality is exalted as the only decent model for human sexual behavior. In the face of all that, how is one DVD going to make some little boy go all Sondheim and Martha Stewart? It’s like just hearign that gay epople exist is going to make some innocent “catch Gay”.
Christ, they should check out the explicit, healthy gay sex scenes in Omaha, The Cat Dancer sometimes. Character A has had a rough day so Character B, whom A is staying with but only sort of knows, give him head (drawn in detail) and there’s even a cum shot. And it’s all perfectly cheerful.
