Film censorship: speak no blowjobs

The movie Good Will Hunting [1] was recently shown in Singapore rated PG. Two scenes had been cut, to protect our fragile young minds -- and this is in a society that wants its people to be resilient and robust. If they had not been cut, the film would have been rated R(A) which would mean that under-21's would not have been permitted to enter the cinema.

I thought the cuts were so silly and prudish that I am going to do something about it. A few movie-goers had written to the press to protest, which efforts I won't duplicate, but instead, I am going to describe here the cut scenes. I know many under-21's access Yawning Bread. All the better! See what damage it inflicts on you to read this!

The remarkable thing is that the cuts were dialogue scenes. They involved someone sitting about and telling jokes. No clothes were removed, no skin was to be seen. No kissing, tonguing, smooching -- all of which, by the way (if opposite-sex), would probably have been left uncut. Instead, the mere dialogue was considered subversive of our morals.

With the help of a reader who pointed me to the URL for the movie's script -- thank you -- I give you the excised segments.

The first of these was the joke Skylar told Will Hunting's friends in a bar: 

There's an old couple in bed. Mary and Paddy. And they wake up on the morning their. . .fiftieth anniversary. And Mary looks over and gazes adoringly at Paddy, she's like, "Aw, Jesus, Paddy. You're such a good lookin' feller. I love you. I want to give you a little present. Anything your little heart desires, I'm going to give it to ya'. What would you like?" And Paddy's like, "Aw, gee, Mary, that's a very sweet offer. Now, in fifty years, there's one thing that's been missing. And uh. . .I would like you to give me a blow job. I would like that." And Mary's like, "All right." She takes her teeth out, puts them in the glass, and she gives him a blow job. And afterwards, Paddy's like, "Ah, geez, now THAT's what I've been missin'. That was the most beautiful, Earth-shatterin' thing ever. Beautiful Mary, I love ya'! Is there anything that I can do for you?" And Mary looks up at him and she goes, "Give us a kiss!"

The other injury the censors did to the film was a joke that Will Hunting told Sean, in one of their therapy sessions.

You know, I was on this plane once. And I'm sitting there and uh. . . the captain gets on, he does his whole, you know, we'll be cruisin' at 35,000 feet. But then he puts the mic down n forgets to turn it off. And so he turns to the co-pilot n he's like, "you know, all I could use right now is a fuckin' blow job and a cup of coffee." So the stewardess fuckin' goes bombin' up from the back of the plane to tell him that the microphone's still on. N this guy in the back of the plane is like, "Hey, hon, don't forget the coffee!"

All it takes to understand the two jokes is the concept of a blowjob (and cunnilingus) [2]. Our censors somehow believe that our under-21's should be protected from such a notion. I can bet you that virtually all the teenagers reading Yawning Bread know what a blowjob is. Some of them, first hand too.

Once again, we have this idea that sex is a subject that young minds cannot handle, least of all sex in something other than a missionary position, e.g. blowjob. Nobody bothers to ask if they know about it anyway, and the only people ending up looking rather stupid in the whole affair, may well be the dour censors themselves.

But the thing I am truly annoyed about is how as a result of Singapore's censorship system, even adults are denied the full version of the movie. We are all being treated like children. This is because of some strange rules in the system, which the government pretends is rather liberal, but which I will show is political passing-the-buck.

The rules allow a film distributor to request the censorship board to censor a film to any of three standards: G, PG and R(A). If a film is R(A), it is restricted to those 21 years and older. A film distributor may not have two versions of the same film, in other words, Good Will Hunting could not have been shown as a PG version and a R(A) version at the same time.

Why not has never been made clear.

In addition, only downtown cinemas may screen R(A) movies. Suburban cinemas may not. This is to protect the "homeliness" of the residential suburbs, never mind if suburban cinema foyers all too often have Ah Bengs and Ah Hueys loitering around.

Hemmed in by these rules, distributors often ask for a film to be censored to the PG level. They believe that they can get wider cinema distribution (not restricted to downtown theatres), and wider reach (not restricted to 21 and above).

Whenever there is any protest by the public that a film has been mutilated, the censorship board tends to reply, "but, but ... the distributor asked for it to be censored." This may be true in its final detail, but the fact is that the system has been configured such that other options have been made impossible. The government configured the rules, yet when faced with irate movie-goers, they like to pass the responsibility to the 'commercial interests'.

As far as I am concerned, the day cannot come fast enough when we can purchase movies through the internet. Pay with your credit card and get it downloaded from the original distributor, be it in the US, Europe or anywhere else in the world. Then, blowing away our censors would be the ultimate blowjob.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

1. Good Will Hunting, written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, directed by Gus van Sant.
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2. In case any reader has not come across these terms before due to the zealous efforts of Singapore censors, cunnilingus = using the mouth and tongue to give pleasure to a woman's genitals; blowjob = sucking someone's cock.
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Addenda

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