[Reader-list] Naeem Mohaiemen did not deserve an answer

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Ten days back, Naeem Mohaiemen posted a question "Is There Nothing You would Censor". It was pertinent to the then ongoing discussion about "freedoms".
   
  No one answered him. None of the leading lights of this "intellectual community" thought the question deserved an answer.
   
  The bunch of 'La La Land" hypocrites did not have the moral courage to answer.
   
  Kshmendra Kaul
   
  PS:
  Dear Naeem
   
  It might upset you that the likes of me should be using your posting to make a point. You might ignore it, but if I receive a sharp retort from you, I will understand. 
   
  KK 
   
   
   
  

Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com> wrote:
  The question was asked repeatedly on Sarai list recently, "are there
films whose screenings you would stop"?

Could it be, that even now, there are certain lines to be drawn? Read on....


Already Under Fire, a Producer Is Going Further
By MICHAEL CIEPLY/NYT
Published: June 25, 2007

...Having already provoked parents, women's groups and the ratings
board with explicit ads for the coming torture movie ''Captivity,''
Mr. Solomon and his After Dark Films now intend to introduce the film,
set for release July 13, with a party that may set a new standard for
the politically incorrect.

...But the warren of live torture rooms is a must. As Mr. Solomon
envisions it, individuals in torture gear will wander through the West
Hollywood club Privilege grabbing partygoers. All of which is a
prelude to an undisclosed main event that, he warned last week over
slices of pizza a few doors from his company's new offices on the
Sunset Strip, is ''probably not legal.'' "'The women's groups
definitely will love it,'' Mr. Solomon hinted. ''I call it my personal
little tribute to them.''

Mr. Solomon, a fast-talking 35-year-old, and his genre-film company
were barely noticed until outrage at the ''Captivity'' billboards --
which chronicled a young woman's torment, with frames titled
''Abduction,'' ''Confinement,'' ''Torture,'' ''Termination'' -- led to
a rare censure by the Motion Picture Association of America this
spring.

When the association's ratings board suspended its process for a month
as a punitive measure, ''Captivity'' missed its May release date and
was bumped to June 22. But Bob Weinstein and his Dimension Films
wanted that date for their competing horror film ''1408,'' and he
persuaded Mr. Solomon to swap for Friday, July 13. Mr. Solomon quickly
called that Friday ''Captivity Day.''

...These added explicit torture , including a so-called ''milkshake''
scene that involves body parts and a blender, to a picture that was
largely psychological in its thrust when After Dark acquired the
rights to it.

Government to Take a Hard Look at Horror
By MICHAEL CIEPLY/NYT
Published: March 24, 2007


...Earlier this week, After Dark and Lionsgate scrambled to contain
the public-relations damage after a Los Angeles Times columnist quoted
several young students objecting to an especially gruesome billboard
for ''Captivity'' near their middle school. After Dark, which is
expected to release the film on May 18 with Lionsgate, quickly agreed
to pull part of its ad campaign.

....Horror aficionados date the genre's current flourishing to October
2004. The first of Lionsgate's ''Saw'' movies, about a demonically
inventive serial killer, opened to a surprisingly strong $18 million
on its first weekend, though it lacked an expensive cast or a
pedigreed filmmaker. Sequels, imitators and close cousins soon
followed.

...Fox Atomic, a division formed by Fox Searchlight to cultivate the
late-teenage and early-adult audience, on March 6 placed an ad for its
film ''The Hills Have Eyes 2'' with an evening showing of
''Dodgeball,'' rated PG-13, on FX. The ad identified ''Hills,'' about
National Guard trainees brutally murdered by mutants, as being not yet
rated, though film association guidelines call for the disclosure of
ratings in ads, and the company had accepted an R rating the day
before. John Hegeman, Fox Atomic's chief operating officer, said the R
rating was missing because it takes about two days to alter a
television spot

....official sites for R-rated fare -- deal with
Bloody-disgusting.com, Arrow in the Head (joblo.com/arrow),
Fangoria.com, or any of another dozen such Web sites.
(Bloody-disgusting, for example, includes chat forums that address
such questions as: ''Can anyone suggest a good torture-esk
movie?'')...The operators of several such sites said they had no way
of knowing how many of their visitors were under 17, but believed the
numbers were substantial. ''The horror site skews a little more toward
the younger ones,'' said Berge Garabedian, founder of the Joblo.com
film site and its associated Arrow in the Head horror section, which
this week carried a banner ad for an unrated DVD of ''Sublime,'' about
gruesome murder in a hospital, from Warner Home Video. Mr. Garabedian
said he tried to block visitors under 15 from discussion boards in
order to eliminate ''a lot of MySpace craziness,'' but thought a
considerable share of his Arrow in the Head visitors to be in the
13-to-18-year-old age range.

....Experian Simmons Research found that 12 percent of respondents
between the ages of 12 and 17 reported watching ''Saw II'' in
theaters, while 12 percent said they had seen the film on DVD, and 26
percent reported viewing any horror in theaters. In its 2004 report,
the Federal Trade Commission said that in 36 percent of their
attempts, its underage ''mystery shoppers'' were able to buy a movie
ticket without an age check in theaters, down somewhat from about half
in 2000. Meanwhile 81 percent of the young buyers obtained R-rated
DVDs without a check.
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