Diana Wichtel: Ugly movies don't have to be banned

When I was a student, we had to see the film Ulysses in gender-segregated audiences lest we were driven to spontaneous orgy by Molly Bloom's soliloquy. The movie played to packed houses. You can't buy publicity like that.

Our society's self-appointed censors never seem to have figured that out. In the United States in the days before Oprah, the phrase "banned in Boston" was a sure way to get your book on to the bestseller list. The 1959 trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover did more for naughty publications than Hugh Hefner.

Yet, although the effect they produce is seldom the one they're after, the morals campaigners just can't help themselves. Why? I suspect the chance to strut about claiming moral superiority while annoying other adults by telling them what they can and cannot see is some sort of perverse little pleasure all in itself.

It was entirely down to the wowsers that my partner and I found ourselves watching one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Baise-Moi was the big story of the Incredible Film Festival last year.

Initially the film was classified R18 but restricted to film festivals and tertiary institutions. The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards took out an injunction to prevent the film from screening at the festival.

After lengthy legal wranglings and the attendant publicity, the movie ended up with an unrestricted R18 classification and a whole new audience.

For anyone who missed the fuss so helpfully generated by this particular panic, Baise-Moi involved two girls, played by real-life porn stars, who embark on a vengeful rampage of sex, drugs and random murder. Real sex and very possibly real drugs, though I believe the murders were only simulated. It was hard to tell when you are watching with your hands clapped over your eyes.

We nearly walked out, not because we were offended but because we couldn't be bothered. Being repeatedly kicked in the head might get your attention, but it becomes boring in the end.

One translation of baise-moi is "Ef me". It really should have been called "Ef You". The movie reserved most of its contempt for its audience. And it wasn't remotely erotic. Humankind's too, too mortal human flesh has never looked sadder.

The film had political points to make - the reclaiming by women of the sexual upper hand, the masses' addiction to male-dominated mainstream sex 'n' violence culture - but the characters were so unappealing, who cared? The makers should watch The Sopranos to see characters human, likeable, monstrous - who present the viewer with some real moral discomfort.

Still, I'm glad I saw Baise-Moi. It inspired a lot of discussion in our house about how far is too far. But then so did the gorgeously made but equally ugly The Piano Teacher (sick puppy sex, self-mutilation), which ran and ran in mainstream theatres.

Now we're about to go through ordeal by scandalous art-house movie all over again. The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards (couldn't they think of a shorter name?) and Children's Commissioner Roger McClay are after two movies in this year's Incredible Film Festival.

Irreversible starts with a nine-minute anal rape scene. Apparently some audience members at the Cannes film festival needed oxygen.

Then there's Ken Park, a film about teenagers, featuring auto-erotic asphyxiation and suicide. Yikes. Never mind the film, McClay's comments about it should come with a warning for sensitive readers: "If it's got children in it and people jerking off and hanging as if it's something great to do, I just think it's not worth a tin of fish," he was quoted as telling a Sunday newspaper.

If the morals campaigners make enough of a fuss, we could see these movies at a theatre near us some time soon. I may well have to go, if only to annoy those who wish to protect me from myself.

Apart from some momentary discomfort, I'm sure they won't do me any harm. I've never thought the sort of ugliness encountered in movies, television or live broadcasts from Parliament desensitises us to the real thing. On the rare occasion when I've witnessed real-life mayhem, no amount of bad movies made it any less traumatic.

There's always the chance some sicko will be negatively influenced by something, but on that basis we'd have to ban the Bible and the Koran. It's real-life violence that does the damage, as brutal regimes such as the Taleban, where banning is all the rage, demonstrate.

We are seeing some ugly movies lately. Come back Tarantino, all is forgiven. Why is this? It's a pity the debate in this country so often comes down to an erudite "Ban it!"

There's nothing surprising about a new generation of film-makers trying to get under the skins of an audience increasingly immune to the tricks and shock tactics that worked just fine for Psycho. It's about the games film-makers have always played to get our attention. They must love the help they are getting in this from the morals campaigners.

There have to be limits and I think our censors mostly do a pretty good job. They act, as chief censor Bill Hastings so colourfully put it, as "human sewers", filtering out the unjustifiably bad and protecting the young while treating adults as adults. In a free society that's how it should be.