Dumbing down the 18 and above.

I saw this letter to the Editor of The Star and was gobsmacked reading it!

Censorship lax because of lack of understanding of language

I AGREE with Celeste of Ampang (The Star, Feb 12) that the quality of censorship provided by the censorship board has deteriorated to alarming levels.

It is evident now that many censors have a poor command of the English language or are unaware of societal norms and standards.

This could be due to the fact that most censors are retired officers of the administrative and diplomatic service who have little knowledge and understanding of movies. For the benefit of society at large, the board should recruit more members from the mass media, educationists, writers and film producers.

I recently saw the movie, Rambo 4 in a local cineplex and was astounded when I distinctly heard the words, “f**k off” twice, and the words “pain in the a**e” and “b*****d.”

These words should never have been let through and it is clear that the censor was either sleeping on the job, or worse, did not feel that these are swear words that are not used in polite conversation.

The movie was justifiably given an 18SG rating, but this should not have meant allowing extremely violent scenes through. For example, one scene showed an arrow shot by Rambo piercing the skull of a Myanmar soldier and exiting through his forehead. Another showed Rambo blowing away a whole truckload of soldiers with a machine gun with liberal doses of blood spewing all over the screen.

These scenes should have been censored, as they are extremely violent.

It is hoped that only censors who have a superior knowledge of English be allowed to censor English movies and the same should also apply to Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil and Hindi movies.

ENGLISH MOVIE FAN
Kuala Lumpur

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? This person CANNOT be a movie fan! A true movie fan will not allow his or her movies to be treated with such atrocity.

I don’t think movies should be censored at all. At most, censorship should be minimal! These people don’t understand that things that get snipped off are usually the most important parts of a movie. Yes they are provoking, offensive and even disgusting…but it is these very attributes that solidifies the premise of a film. It is this reason why international movie industries are so big and ours, still stagnant….churning out expensive laughable slapsticks at best.

This is also precisely the reason why many people get all too excited about an accidentally uncut nude scene and subsequently forget an entire story. The truth is, all the systematic and overzealous censorships all these years have effectively dumb down our audience and movie goers.

How on earth are you going to develop a thinking society if you’re going to cut off any remotely offensive thing from the screen? What are you kidding me…..do people get corrupted by every single thing they see on the big screen or television? Only if they are between the age of 2-8 maybe. This is probably the reason why I find so many teenagers so stupid these days…is it because they’re watching too many stupid, thought un-provoking shows on tv?

Take the show F-word on the Food Channel for instance. I mean, I don’t even understand why they allowed it to be showed here in the first place. It’s one hour of beeping if you’re into that sort of aural stimulation. Why bother? Perhaps Malaysia is the only place on earth where Gordon Ramsey is not a rude motherfucking genius….

I applaud the categorisation of movies into U, 18-SG-18-SX and so on. The thing is though, if you’ve acknowledged the fact that we’re 18 and above, give us a damn break and don’t dumb us down. For your information, piracy doesn’t thrive on cheap price alone, them pirates don’t censor.

Since it’s a movie centred post, here’s my best Breakfast at Tiffany picture. Should have taken me grey jumper off hehehe.