Newsgroups: rec.arts.cinema
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!mit-eddie!thakur
From: Steve Baumgarten <baumgart@esquire.dpw.com>
Subject: Re: `Flamingo' flap tickles producer pink
Message-ID: <1990Jul13.041039.25122@eddie.mit.edu>
Followup-To: rec.arts.cinema
Sender: thakur@eddie.mit.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Reply-To: Steve Baumgarten <baumgart@esquire.dpw.com>
Organization: Davis Polk & Wardwell
References: <24878.26948a05@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1990Jul6.104902.5993@eddie.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 04:10:39 GMT
Approved: thakur@zerkalo.harvard.edu
Lines: 58


In article <24878.26948a05@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, bryan@kuhub writes:
>In article <1990Jul6.104902.5993@eddie.mit.edu>, john@semi.harris.com (John M. Blasik) writes:
>...
>> MBI sent a 14-year-old girl into American Video Network at 2053
>> American Blvd. to rent the movie after the complaint.  They showed it
>> to Orange Circuit Judge Bernard Muszynski who ruled it could be
>> obscene.  The MBI then showed it to the grand jury, which indicted the
>> store owner Steve Zlatkiss on two charges.  The most serious was a
>> felony, distribution of obscene material to minors.
>...
>> "MBI ought to use tax dollars to fight real crime, because we have
>> plenty of it," said Jane Gerhadt, a store owner
>
>I guess I don't understand why the people who were offended to begin
>with didn't complain to the store rather than to MBI.  I'm no great
>champion of free enterprise, but it seems like the best place to hit a
>store would be some kind of boycott rather than a bunch of stupid
>legal action.

Complaining to the store doesn't get the film suppressed, which is
their ultimate goal.  Even chains like Blockbusters allow their stores
quite a bit of leeway in deciding which films to carry.

>I'm also betting that they won't get far with the case.  If the Miller
>v. California standards hold, the prosecution will have a hard time
>proving _PF_ is obscene when MOMA owns a copy of it.

It may have more to do with the fact that the film has been out for so
long, and no one has raised this issue until now.  Obscenity tests are
based on "community standards", which makes a certain amount of sense,
since what's appropriate for Times Square almost certainly isn't
appropriate for Anytown, USA.

Certainly with the recent flap about the Mapplethorpe exhibition, the
fact that a museum owns or displays a work of art does not necessarily
entitle that work to extra protection.  Which is why certain museums
went to great lengths to keep the most explicit works in a separate,
"X-rated" area.  The profoundly ironic parallel to those little
curtains you see in video stores didn't faze museum management in the
least; what do they care that they are tacitly admitting that the
works on display are porn... being almost entirely publicly funded,
they're just hoping that things will blow over soon.

Last, the coda to all this is, as always, that by raising the issue in
the first place, MBI is certainly going to get more people to see PF
this year than in possibly the rest of the decade had they just let
things be.  Why these folks can't learn from experience is a mystery;
with the results of the recent assault on 2 Live Crew still fresh in
their minds (double platinum album and climbing), you'd think that
they would make the connection between attempted suppression and a
tremendous surge in popularity.

--
   Steve Baumgarten             | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
   Davis Polk & Wardwell        |  remember, we were way ahead of you."
   baumgart@esquire.dpw.com     | 
   cmcl2!esquire!baumgart       |                           - David Letterman
