Given the extensive EWS dialogue, I just wanted to alert list members to
the NYTimes
piece below, and to the fact that Alan Dershowitz has a commentary on the
rating
board in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. (While I'm on my
shameless
plugging kick: Look for Thomas Doherty's piece on the Hitchcock centennial
in next week's
Chronicle.) My own thought as I saw EWS and the superimposed bodies in the
orgy scene
was just, who does the MPAA think it's protecting? There are plenty of
potentially
disturbing sights and concepts in the movie (which I found to be both
fascinating and,
I confess--call me superficial--a little goofy). But a little anatomy more
or less
certainly didn't seem to be the issue. I've found helpful the contributions
to the
list about allusions, and how they both do and don't assist us in getting a
grip on this
strange picture. And as a one-time Nassau County police reporter for
Newsday, I couldn't
help but wonder, after seeing EWS, if I shouldn't have spent more time
lurking around Glen
Cove! I guess, covering Hempstead drug feuds and Long Island Rail Road
accidents, I missed
the big orgy story.
____________
Critics Assail Ratings Board Over 'Eyes
Wide Shut'
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
HOLLYWOOD -- The New York Film Critics Circle has joined
Los Angeles critics in attacking the Motion Picture
Association of
America for requiring that Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" be
altered
to qualify for its R rating.
A statement by the New York group, signed by 28 members and
issued
Monday night, said the association's ratings board was "out of
control"
and had "become a punitive and restrictive force, effectively
trampling the
freedom of American filmmakers." The association said the board
"had
created its own zone of knee-jerk Puritanism."
At issue was the insistence by the board that a scene of a sexual
orgy
warranted an NC-17 rating, which would have meant that no one
under
17 would be admitted. For the film to receive an R rating --
requiring that
anyone under 17 be accompanied by an adult -- 65 seconds of the
movie were digitally altered. Essentially, shrouded digital
figures were
placed in front of couples engaged in sex, partly blocking the
audience's
view.. . . . .
___________________________________
Alexander C. Kafka
Assistant Editor, Opinion/Point of View
The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd St., N.W., Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20037
202/466-1777
Fax: 202/452-1033
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