through a screen DARKLY

ireland s film censor may bar certain cinema and video releases but that doesn t mean you can t, quite legally, watch them in the privacy of your own living room. And it s all thanks to the EU.
Since 1991, The Irish Film Censor has denied cinema and video releases to eight films. However, subscribers to Sky Movies have already seen five of these: Paul Verhoeven s Showgirls, Robert Rodriguez From Dusk To Dawn, Abel Ferraras The Bad Lieutenant and Dangerous Game, and Ken Russell s Whore. Of the other three banned films here UFP, Last Consequences and Natural Born Killers the latter, since it was granted a cinema release in Britain, will also likely show up soon on the satellite channel.
So how come these forbidden fruits are getting past the censor and into Irish living rooms? We don t have anything to do with censorship of television, a spokesperson for the Film Censor s office commented. I know RTE do their own censorship. The only thing we do here is film or video. It s nothing to do with us.
The official body responsible for monitoring the tube is the Department Of Arts, Culture And The Gaeltacht. This area s covered by an EU Directive called Television Without Frontiers which was amended as recently as June, explains Diarmuid MacDaibhaid of their press and information office. This Directive specifically prohibits the broadcasting of material that would be injurious to the physical, mental or moral well-being, specifically of minors. With the case of Sky Movies, it would be incumbent on the member state where the relevant station is established, in this case the UK, to ensure this.
So, in the case of the movie channels, our film and video censorship laws are being overridden and undermined by the English ones?
I suppose that would be one media interpretation, commented Mr. MacDaibhaid. Basically, it s a matter for the relevant country where the station is established and this station (Sky) complies with the Directive. The Department Of Justice deal with the actual cinemas rather than broadcasting. The Directive does go into detail on thresholds and watershed times. Certain films can only be shown after the nine o clock news and so on.
Nevertheless, Television Without Frontiers ensures that you can watch what you want on TV so long as the EU approves it. But this begs the (admittedly facetious) question: if you set the timer to record From Dusk Til Dawn off the Movie Channel, and then watch it on tape when you come home from the pub, are you violating Irish censorship as well as European copyright laws?
Either way, the Directive inadvertently ensures that free trade also means free speech. According to the EU: Cross-border broadcasting is encouraged by the Directive because it helps overcome the legal obstacles which sometimes stand in the way. If the single market is to evolve towards a political union, it is vital that citizens should be able to acquire an awareness of the history, culture and way of life of their neighbours. Television is the best medium there is for this purpose.
Lest this begins to look like free advertising space for Rupert Murdoch, it s worth pointing out that as well as blockbusters and quality arthouse films, the movie channels also broadcast an awful lot of dross: airbrushed titty-flicks like The Red Shoe Diaries, low-rent spicy thrillers with titles like Virtual Desire, and a whole slew of TV movie-standard fluff, starring cast-offs from Beverly Hills 90210 and Knots Landing. Also, subscriptions aren t cheap. Bear in mind the sheer exploitation involved in charging customers through the nose for the latest pay-per-view Tyson fight after they ve forked out for the privilege of Sky Sports. Gone are the rites of passage days when we d sit up til 4am to watch Ali fight Spinks through a haze of shash in the two-channelled 70s.
However, there is some kind of poetic justice in the fact that, while you can t go to see Showgirls in the Multiplex, you can have it beamed into your own home. For a price. According to their press office, Cablelink alone service 36,000 households in Dublin, Galway and Waterford with the movie channels. One could conservatively multiply that by four in order to get an idea of just how many people Television Without Frontiers provides with a loophole through which to view forbidden flicks. In this light, the opinions of the Film Censor would appear to be becoming irrelevant.
These statistics might in some way account for the general apathy that greets the banning of even a mainstream movie like Natural Born Killers. Why kick up a fuss about not being able to see it in the Savoy or rent it from Xtra-Vision when you ll be getting it via satellite anyway?
To the benefit of film buffs, when it comes to judging the moral values of works by directors like Abel Ferrara, Ken Russell and Oliver Stone, the EU and the Irish censor would appear to disagree. n