The level of intolerance amongst film censors for anything vaguely sexual gives the impression that film is still a dangerous medium. The fact that music videos get away with the kind of sex charged scenes denied to films would imply that it is not as powerful anymore. The release of Titanic 3D and its censorship by Chinese authorities seems to support this.
The images thrown at the listener of a modern pop song are so quick and numerous that the lyrics fall by the wayside. But often it’s the words that reveal more. In Titanic as the two lead characters are trying to escape the ship, an old man is reciting Psalm 23, ‘even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ when the lead character bursts past him saying, ‘can you walk through the valley a little faster?’ In this one scene the key values of the film are revealed. This new world waits for no one. There is no time for religion or the old ways, we have to be free, and love, and make nude drawings before the whole thing falls apart. The funny thing about the Chinese censorship is that this Titanic attitude isn’t too far from the values of the Cultural Revolution…
To use a musical example, Rihanna’s song, Rude Boy, reveals much more in the lyrics than in the video. The video is just the usual three minutes of a female pop star asserting her freedom to grind up against whatever’s lying around. But all this distracts from the lyrics of the chorus, which actually paints a different picture:
Come here rude boy, boy
Can you get it up
Come here rude boy, boy
Is you big enough
Take it, take it
Baby, baby
Take it, take it
Love me, love me
The ‘love me, love me’ phrase at the end comes as a concession rather than a self-confident statement. What’s really wanted is left to the end. The taboo isn’t in the overtly sexual statements of getting it up and being big enough. The anathema is in wanting to be loved at the end of it all. Admitting something real behind all the imagery.
Who’s Afraid of Kate Winslet?
And that is where the censor’s fear lies: What is really going on? Apparently the Chinese aren’t afraid of the depiction of exposed breasts but that, ‘viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people's viewing.’[1] This is the kind of bland compromising that epitomises Western democracy, I thought better of the Chinese. Everything about this controversy seems to forget that the breasts aren’t really there. They are not real, and I can say this from personal experience. Perhaps groping the theatre air offended some of the women in the audience but I didn’t see them, and by this warped logic that means they weren’t really there.
One of the differences between the music video and the feature film is that where Kate Winslet’s breasts serve as an aspect of the plot, the music video plays with the nature of sexuality itself. Katy Perry spraying cream from her breasts in California Girls doesn’t serve any specific purpose to the song. It used to be that this play on sexuality was more dangerous than the simple depiction of it. Whilst a sex scene in a film will imply much about cultural norms and the like, the music video will openly reference them. Take the shock caused by Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ video depicting a black Jesus. Nothing too sexual is actually seen, but the implied imagery was too much for some audiences to handle.
Now it’s the real thing that is so dangerous. Having exhausted all the images and definitions of sexuality it is the simple image of a woman’s breasts that cause such controversy. Nothing in music right now feels that shocking (Odd Future deserve some amnesty). For the sake of mainstream popularity, rather than getting rid of the controversial lyrics, they’ve just been stripped of all meaning. They don’t shock, they don’t offend and no one tries to reach out at them in a cinema. Now it is not in the least surprising to see kids dancing to Lady Gaga’s Pokerface: “I won't tell you that I love you, Kiss or hug you, Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin’”, or singing along to Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass: “when he gave me that look then the panties comin’ off.”
We all make light of these lyrics, harmless fun no doubt. Maybe that’s why people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian have been launched into stratospheric fame off the back of sex tapes. Everyone’s familiar with the video method and at the end everyone gets to applaud because two people actually screwed in front of your very own eyes. Something real happened and now you can buy their respective perfumes. ‘Find out what it smells like to be Star’ is Paris’ perfume tagline. The Kardashian fragrance ‘captures the many sides of Kim’s personality and glamorous style.’ Who would doubt them?
If there was something to be learnt from Titanic, surely it was that regardless of the endless hype and chatter about an unsinkable ship and its image of opulence, everyone failed to see the iceberg. The real iceberg made from thousands of litres of frozen water. The one thing it had to avoid. But nothing changes in that respect, as one Chinese victim of the Titanic censorship puts it.
"I've been waiting almost 15 years, and not for the 3D icebergs."[2]
[1] http://movieline.com/2012/04/12/kate-winslets-titanic-3d-breasts-banned-in-china/
[2] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2012-04/10/content_15017266.htm
And that is where the censor’s fear lies: What is really going on? Apparently the Chinese aren’t afraid of the depiction of exposed breasts but that, ‘viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people's viewing.’[1] This is the kind of bland compromising that epitomises Western democracy, I thought better of the Chinese. Everything about this controversy seems to forget that the breasts aren’t really there. They are not real, and I can say this from personal experience. Perhaps groping the theatre air offended some of the women in the audience but I didn’t see them, and by this warped logic that means they weren’t really there.
One of the differences between the music video and the feature film is that where Kate Winslet’s breasts serve as an aspect of the plot, the music video plays with the nature of sexuality itself. Katy Perry spraying cream from her breasts in California Girls doesn’t serve any specific purpose to the song. It used to be that this play on sexuality was more dangerous than the simple depiction of it. Whilst a sex scene in a film will imply much about cultural norms and the like, the music video will openly reference them. Take the shock caused by Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ video depicting a black Jesus. Nothing too sexual is actually seen, but the implied imagery was too much for some audiences to handle.
Now it’s the real thing that is so dangerous. Having exhausted all the images and definitions of sexuality it is the simple image of a woman’s breasts that cause such controversy. Nothing in music right now feels that shocking (Odd Future deserve some amnesty). For the sake of mainstream popularity, rather than getting rid of the controversial lyrics, they’ve just been stripped of all meaning. They don’t shock, they don’t offend and no one tries to reach out at them in a cinema. Now it is not in the least surprising to see kids dancing to Lady Gaga’s Pokerface: “I won't tell you that I love you, Kiss or hug you, Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin’”, or singing along to Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass: “when he gave me that look then the panties comin’ off.”
We all make light of these lyrics, harmless fun no doubt. Maybe that’s why people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian have been launched into stratospheric fame off the back of sex tapes. Everyone’s familiar with the video method and at the end everyone gets to applaud because two people actually screwed in front of your very own eyes. Something real happened and now you can buy their respective perfumes. ‘Find out what it smells like to be Star’ is Paris’ perfume tagline. The Kardashian fragrance ‘captures the many sides of Kim’s personality and glamorous style.’ Who would doubt them?
If there was something to be learnt from Titanic, surely it was that regardless of the endless hype and chatter about an unsinkable ship and its image of opulence, everyone failed to see the iceberg. The real iceberg made from thousands of litres of frozen water. The one thing it had to avoid. But nothing changes in that respect, as one Chinese victim of the Titanic censorship puts it.
"I've been waiting almost 15 years, and not for the 3D icebergs."[2]
[1] http://movieline.com/2012/04/12/kate-winslets-titanic-3d-breasts-banned-in-china/
[2] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2012-04/10/content_15017266.htm
