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Loading ...Uproar after Italian TV edits ‘Brokeback Mountain’
12.10.2008 1:58pm EST
(Rome) Gay rights groups charged Wednesday that Italy’s state television censored Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” when it aired the Oscar-winning movie by cutting scenes of gay sex.
Activists protested that RAI TV would never have dropped similar scenes had they involved a heterosexual couple, and politicians called for the incident to be discussed in parliament. RAI said it had aired the cut version by mistake.“Brokeback Mountain” is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start an affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in the 1960s. The 2005 movie won three Oscars, including the best director award for Lee, as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
RAI’s second channel aired the film late Monday cutting out a sex scene and a sequence showing a kiss between the lead characters, played by the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
“I don’t believe it was an oversight, I believe it was preventive censorship,” said gay rights advocate and former lawmaker Vladimir Luxuria. In an interview with La Repubblica daily, Luxuria said cutting the key scenes was “like showing the Mona Lisa without its head.”
RAI said in a statement the film had arrived from the distributor already cut so that it could be shown in prime time. When it was decided to air it late at night, no one checked for the uncut version, it said. RAI pledged to show the complete movie soon.
Some commentators and politicians were not satisfied, saying the cuts would not have been justified even if the film had been aired earlier.
“It is grotesque that RAI censored scenes that have the same content as those seen in most prime-time movies,” Benedetto Della Vedova, a conservative lawmaker, was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Luigi Vimercati, a center-left lawmaker, told Corriere he would take up the issue in parliament.
In overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, skimpily dressed women are a fixture on many TV programs, while scenes of sex and violence in movies are generally left untouched.
Massimo Gramellini, a top commentator for La Stampa daily, wrote in a front-page editorial: “I would like to understand why a kiss between two gays … should offend our sensibilities more than scenes of heterosexual sex or bloodthirsty violence.”
So why do we put up with it? Why do we subsidize church activity by paying higher taxes to make up for their exemption?
the comments are indeed funny, but we need action:
-Call your local bishop and declare war. I’ve called mine at home and in Maine where I visit often. Tell them we are watching, we are working to take away their tax exempt status and tell them to stay out of politics. Then you can add a little humor..it is usually a woman that answers the phone “how do you sleep at night working for a drag queen gay cult that demonizes women? Don’t you know they HATE what is between your legs?”
-Then call or write all your representatives, asking them to sponsor legislation taking away tax exempt status. You can ask your state reps to impose a state “evil” tax and to force municipalities to levy property taxes. Federal reps should sponsor legislation to direct the IRS to tax churches’ income and wealth.
-Write letters to editors. I’m the local athiest around here…I go to parties and people say “nice to meet our local athiest”. Be out there and be proud that your are right in working to end religion’s domination.
-Talk to your friends and neighbors. Tell them tithing is murder! They financially support a killing machine. I just got one neighbor to stop tithing and stop paying $300 extra/month for her priests health care. Make them get jobs like the rest of us.
Complaining won’t do it..get out there and help push religion to its grave.
I can’t wait…what an auction they’ll have when the RCC goes bankrupt!
ROFLMQAO @ Zeta!
Why do y’all think the konstipated konservative kristianist PAGAN FERTILITY KULTS are EVER going to change?
Might as well p**s on a forest fire.
They’re not going to change. They ARE going to go away … at least the Roman “church” is … in another generation.
The average age of a US Roman priest is 59; the Los Angeles archdiocese recently ordained ONE man to replace the TWENTY-some-odd who died or retired.
Do the math.
I remember visiting St. Peter’s in Rome (I wanted to see the Pietá) … the guard charged with barring skimpily clad tourists, after undressing an attractive young women with his eyes for a NUMBER of minutes, licked his lips, pointed to her skirt, and leered,
“TOO SHORT!”
That pretty much sums up the Roman “church,” in Italy, at least.
The Irish-American clergy, OTOH, would have taken one look, made the sign of the cross, and reached for the whiskey bottle .
Cheers,
Bud Burgoon-Clark
San Diego CA USA
Jake and Heath were too old for the Catholic church to condone their gay sex. Once you get pubic hair, they stop being interested in you.
The self-hating closet queens in the catholic church will no doubt appoint another Pope Pompous to fill the vacancy.
I have to concur with Peter & Ginelle’s comments. At least the Nazi Pope we have now is old, so unless he lives to be 110 we won’t have to deal with him as long as we had to put up with John Paul II. Maybe the next pope will be better.
We can alays hope…
Any time, Peter-Nicholas. We need to fight this together.
Right on, Ginelle, you’ve finished my comment beautifully!
Sounds like the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican have underhandedly gotten themselves some more free air time. Gee, what else can they get for free, like not paying taxes, not accepting full responsibility and offering a truly serious apology for all the damage done by their pedophile priests. Must be very nice to sit in judgement in their gold guilded palaces, spewing venom of hate while millions of people around the world are suffering from disease and starvation.
As a gay Italian-American I cannot
help but think that the Vatican had
a hand in this! They will not cease trying to have us all live in the 11th century again.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Any amount of gratuitous sex between heterosexual people and an endless tream of sickening violence is fine… but sexual expression or love between people of the same gender is somehow just too offensive. Utterly absurd.