This Poster is Not Yet Plastered

In yet another blow for free speech, the Washington Post is reporting (tip to Green Cine Daily) that the MPAA has given a thumbs down to this poster for Michael Winterbottom's upcoming The Road to Guantanamo:

     "The reason given was that the burlap bag over the
     guy's head was depicting torture, which wasn't
     appropriate for children to see," said Howard Cohen,
     co-president of Roadside Attractions, which is
     distributing the film in North America.

     (...)

     Gayle Osterberg, a spokesperson for the MPAA, said
     its standards for print advertising are particularly
     sensitive.

     "If it's a poster that's hanging in a theater, anyone
     who walks into that theater, regardless of what movie
     they've come to see, will be exposed to it," said
     Osterberg.

The Post article, written by Phillip Kennicott, makes clear the disconnect between the MPAA's mommy-culture and the Bush administration's policy of "all's fair (and legal) in war and war":

     Although Osterberg says that torture is not specifically
     cited in the guidelines governing print materials, the
     proscription against violence, blood and disturbing
     scenes "would probably encompass" it. Thus, the
     MPAA's decision puts it at odds with the U.S.
     government, which has repeatedly defended
     techniques, including hooding prisoners, as not
     legally torture, and not inconsistent with the basic
     American values the MPAA tries to uphold.

     In a 2003 Department of Defense report, hooding
     was given a green light, as not inconsistent with
     the United States' obligations under international
     conventions or U.S. law. The report also approved
     prolonged standing, though stipulated that it "should
     never make the detainee exhausted to the point of
     weakness or collapse." And that it not be "enforced
     by physical restraints."

     Which means that the MPAA required a change in
     the image that removed something not deemed
     torture (hooding) and focused the image on the
     bound hands and extended arms that clearly
     depicts someone forced to stand (or worse, hang)
     under restraint to the point of collapse, which might
     well be torture.

Cue up another edit for Kirby Dick, who's MPAA-expose This Film is Not Yet Rated is set for release from IFC this fall. Dick, whose film has been a sensation at film festivals all year, was still editing (and indeed still doing interviews for) the final theatrical version of the film when I met him at February's True/False Film Festival. One of the points of Kirby's film is that most of the MPAA's members (who are outed by Dick and a private investigator) are Republicans, although the new MPAA head, Dan Glickman, was in Bill Clinton's cabinet.

Whether there are explicit political reasons for censoring Winterbottom's poster or not, the idea that we need to "protect people" from the image above is just one more example of the notion that "we can't handle the truth". Whether it's pictures of coffins with American flags on them or the gruesome operating room footage in the upcoming HBO doc Baghdad ER - there is this notion that we need to protect the public from the idea that war has some ugly consequences. The further implication is that pointing out anything that might make the public weary or queasy about war is an implicit anti-war statement. So the only way to truly respect and support the troops is to make as if the whole operation in Iraq, in Afghanistan and throughout the so-called War on Terror is a fun-filled romp of school building and purple fingers.

One certainly doesn't expect the MPAA, which claims repeatedly that they are not in the censorship business, to stop overnight its campaign to protect us from multiple body thrusts in a simulated sex act or from the unpleasantness of two people of the same sex making out. But when it gets into the business of determining that a burlap sack is an image too graphic for public consumption, particularly in an age when the Abu Ghraib photos are seared onto our consciousness, they're not taking a stand for the children. They're infantilizing a nation.

Or, as Kennicott wraps:

     The small flap over the Guantanamo movie poster
     mirrors, in many ways, the larger issue of how the
     subject, and the image of torture, circulates within
     American culture. American newspapers, which for
     years now have held extraordinarily graphic images
     of the Abu Ghraib abuses, have kept to standards
     of taste that make many, if not most, of the images
     unprintable. Yet many of those images circulate
     freely outside the United States, where they
     continue to inflame opinion against the U.S. and its
     foreign policy.

     As the photos from Abu Ghraib began to trickle out,
     and with new revelations about the extent and
     seriousness of prisoner abuse, the importance of
     images to frame the torture debate has grown.
     Without seeing those images, it can be difficult to
     build a visceral case against the Bush
     administration's substantial relaxing of rules
     regulating torture. Advocates for full disclosure,
     including many voices on the Internet, have
     argued that the consequences of an American
     drift toward acceptance or indifference to torture
     are so profound that there should be exceptions
     to the usual standards of taste. Which is essentially
     the argument Cohen made to the MPAA.

     They listened, said Cohen. "But they just didn't want
     the head with a bag on it."

Comments

[Agnes Varnum]

Well said AJ. You've nicely articulated an argument that has been roiling around in my head since I read the following in the May 14 NYT, "Senior Army officials have scaled back their planned participation in an advance screening of a documentary about an Army Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad out of concern that its grim medical scenes could demoralize soldiers and their families and negatively affect public opinion about the war, Army officials said Friday."

Ya' think people might be against the war if they saw what was happening? They are already having trouble recruiting and many soldiers are leaving at the first opportunity. Might that be a clue to reconsider? No, instead we hide what really goes on so the public will support it and the boys will keep signing up. So sad.

[AJ Schnack]

Additionally, the public can be made to feel that all they need to do in time of war is stick a "support our troops" ribbon on their car. There need be no sacrifice made. This is both unrealistic and unfair. If our cause is just then we can accept the horrors. Only when one fears that the cause is not honorable must one make the public feel that it is clean and without errors.

[Adam Jeppson]

I really appreciated your last comment there, AJ. It is always good to remember that if I believe in something, I believe in it all, not just the good stuff.

More generally speaking, however, sometimes "hiding" the horrors can be justified when those being shielded are not capable of digesting accurately the information being depicted. Also, we better make sure we are depicting accurately that which we are showing.

Back to what you were saying: in the case you were talking at (in your comment), I agree that we shouldn't be spared the horrors (or the good). Unfortunately, it is so difficult to portray something as complex as this war with unbias and completeness.

Thanks for the great post!

[AJ Schnack]

Hey Adam,

Thanks for the comment. I have to say though that I disagree that we need to shield people if they are not "capable of digesting accurately the information being depicted". I don't think that that is the role of government at all. While there are certainly things to keep secret for strategic or protective reasons (where we are placing our troops, when or where the president is traveling, etc.), issues related to both casualties and wrongdoings cannot be kept secret or minimized. If we are to determine that if some Americans may not understand, therefore we must keep everyone in the dark - that is, as far as I'm concerned, the end of our democracy.

We should most certainly be told when things are going well. But it's in no one's best interest to constantly be told that the situation is rosy, if in fact the situation is troubled or, worse, dire.

Thanks again for writing!

[Adam Jeppson]

I feel a little sheepish because I think my comment came out wrong. In respect to the war and such things that are national, state, community, etc. interest, you shouldn't really filter this stuff out because you're right, everyone has that right to know.

I was actually talking more generally in regards to what the original article hinted at, the protecting of children. I really believe that children should be shielded from certain things at certain times (or at least be filtered). Obviously that is up to parents, which is where the regulation should lie mostly, not the government.

[Adam Jeppson]

One more thing, then I'll shut up. Thanks for the great doc Gigantic, very well done!

[AJ Schnack]

No, you don't have to shut up. I get what you mean about children and, yeah, I do think that there are considerations in that regard. They don't need to know all the world's troubles. But yeah, you're right about that being the responsibility of parents - a child could just as easily walk past a newspaper stand or a television while the news is on as look at a movie poster. And as noted in the Wash Post article, there are horror film posters that are more suggestive and frightening than the poster that they banned. That Silent Hill poster freaked me out.

Thanks for the kind words about Gigantic and feel free to speak up any time.

AJ