Porabrokers

Beat The

Film Censors

From Vijen Dr A Kumar

in Lautoka

Fiji’s film censors are waging a losing battle against a flood of semi-pornographic films and others depicting “explicit” scenes of violence. Theatre owners con tinue importing them despite the censors’ scissors. Film fanatics pack theatres to see these films, even though cuts by censors often give a disjointed version of usually pretentious plots.

Much in vogue are karate films which virtually show nothing but 90 minutes of gore and mayhem with little that could pass as a story. Likewise, films showing frontal female nudity and sex scenes attract huge crowds. One such film, Cherry, Harry and Raquel, ran for more than a week at a Lautoka theatre.

Politicians and religious leaders have been hitting out at these films, blaming them for poisoning the minds of youth through the glorification of violence and de pravity. The police say that the high increase in the national crime rate is due to films which portray sophisticated techniques of committing crime.

A veteran detective told me that thieves and burglars these days not only used special burglary kits but organised their crime well. They “cased” the place they planned to rob, had get-away cars with dare-devil drivers and, in some cases, used speedboats to cover their tracks.

All said and done, films provide the only cheap form of entertain ment for a vast majority of the people. Probably the greatest film fanatic is the bored Indian sub urban wife who seldom misses an Indian film.

Indian films are a different kettle of fish from the usual Eng lish fare. They uphold traditional Indian standards of morality and never portray explicit sex scenes or excessive violence. Even kiss ing is taboo. But virtually all In dian films, which may run from two to three and a half hours, are purely escapist in theme and have little relation to reality.

And yet, they are the biggest money makers. One top film ran at the same theatre for six weeks.

All Indian movies basically have a love story as their theme inter spersed with numerous songs and dances which can be utterly bor ing to the uninitiated.

They draw their biggest crowds at matinees. Schoolgirls and their beaux will cut classes to meet clandestinely in a dark corner of the theatre. They form liaisons which result in expulsion from the school and early marriages forced by outraged parents.

Housewives have been known to pawn their valuables to mer chants in the town to pay for a few hours’ fun watching the silver screen. A woman colleague tells me that wives would sometimes

tell lies to their husbands and ask for money to go to the hospital or a shop and then sneak into a theatre.

Besides the legitimate films screened in theatres, Fiji has its own little illicit trade in porn flicks. A few small groups exist in Suva and Lautoka which have private viewing at homes or at secret meeting places.

These are usually 8 mm films which are imported from Ameri ca, Hong Kong and European countries. Travellers from Fiji often bring them in without much problem because of an easy cus toms entry system. Others come in spools of magnetic tape or in hollows cut out in thick books sent as parcel post.

The dictum that forbidden fruits are sweet is probably res ponsible for attracting so much attention to such filth. I remem ber reading an article in an American magazine reporting that theatres there which specialised in screening pornographic films had to close after a year or two.

The reason? The audience finally just got bored. Perhaps Fiji should experiment with the idea.