Books, Arts & Manners: T.G.I.F.

Thank God it’s fall. Late summer films, traditionally, are the pits. Add to that the inanity of the “obscenity” ruling handed down by the Nine Old Men, and the attendant rush to ban everything in sight (below the waist, at least), and, well, it’s not been very pleasant either seeing or thinking about the movies these last weeks.

Far be it from me, a film nut and a First Amendment semi-absolutist, to call for censoring anything in the movies, though part of the purpose of film criticism is to advise readers who, presumably, respect the critic’s taste what repels him. Start this month with Dillinger, which is no more violent than Bonnie and Clyde, but whose gratuitous slaughter nauseated me. It’s an old, tired, ultimately boring ploy, which I’ll eschew here, to observe that what remains OK on screen after the Supreme Court dictum filters down —obnoxious violence—was originally considered obscene (from the Latin obscenus, meaning repulsive), and that our tolerance of it, while we simultaneously carry on like French whores about sex on screen, says something, maybe even something revealing, about our values.

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David Brudnoy

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Thank God it’s fall. Late summer films, traditionally, are the pits. Add to that the inanity of the “obscenity” ruling handed down by the Nine Old Men, and the attendant rush to ban everything in sight (below the waist, at least), and, well, it’s not been very pleasant either seeing or thinking about the movies these last weeks.

Far be it from me, a film nut and a First Amendment semi-absolutist, to call for censoring anything in the movies, though part of the purpose of film criticism is to advise readers who, presumably, respect the critic’s taste what repels him. Start this month with Dillinger, which is no more violent than Bonnie and Clyde, but whose gratuitous slaughter nauseated me. It’s an old, tired, ultimately boring ploy, which I’ll eschew here, to observe that what remains OK on screen after the Supreme Court dictum filters down —obnoxious violence—was originally considered obscene (from the Latin obscenus, meaning repulsive), and that our tolerance of it, while we simultaneously carry on like French whores about sex on screen, says something, maybe even something revealing, about our values.