Guess which image got the MPAA stamp of approval to be part of a movie marketing campaign?

     

HINT: It wasn’t the documentary about prisoner abuse in a US military gulag.
I’m wandering into Wilfred’s beat here, but this kind of crap drives me nuts.

MPAA Rates Poster an F
Documentary Ad’s Image of Guantanamo Prisoner Abuse Deemed Inappropriate

The distributors of the film, directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, submitted the poster to the MPAA, which must approve publicity materials for the films it rates, on April 24. It was rejected the next day.

“The reason given was that the burlap bag over the guy’s head was depicting torture, which wasn’t appropriate for children to see,” said Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, which is distributing the film in North America. The film will open on June 23, advertised by another poster, approved by the MPAA, which shows only a pair of shackled hands and arms.

Gayle Osterberg, a spokesperson for the MPAA, said its standards for print advertising are particularly sensitive.

“If it’s a poster that’s hanging in a theater, anyone who walks into that theater, regardless of what movie they’ve come to see, will be exposed to it,” said Osterberg. While she wouldn’t comment on the particular reason for the poster’s rejection, and while MPAA guidelines for what is acceptable in advertising aren’t made public, she did list some of the things that are not allowed: “depictions of violence, blood, people in jeopardy, drugs, nudity, profanity, people in frightening situations, disturbing or frightening scenes.”

Yup, look away America, only FUN depictions of the threat of violence are allowed in OUR public spaces.

“This is a film with a serious purpose, and this is the subject of the film itself, and the marketing materials were appropriate to the subject,” he said. And, he added, horror flicks and slasher movies are often advertised with images far more suggestive of graphic violence. He cited a poster for the film “Hard Candy,” about Internet predators, which showed a small child framed by a bear trap. His argument is supported by advertisements for last year’s horror flick “Hostel,” which left little doubt about the blood, gore and decapitation that audiences could expect.

“When you look at standards for horror movies, their standards are not consistent,” he said. “What is implied in horror movie posters is way worse than what’s in this movie.”

Although Osterberg says that torture is not specifically cited in the guidelines governing print materials, the proscription against violence, blood and disturbing scenes “would probably encompass” it. Thus, the MPAA’s decision puts it at odds with the U.S. government, which has repeatedly defended techniques, including hooding prisoners, as not legally torture, and not inconsistent with the basic American values the MPAA tries to uphold.

In a 2003 Department of Defense report, hooding was given a green light, as not inconsistent with the United States’ obligations under international conventions or U.S. law. The report also approved prolonged standing, though stipulated that it “should never make the detainee exhausted to the point of weakness or collapse.” And that it not be “enforced by physical restraints.”

Which means that the MPAA required a change in the image that removed something not deemed torture (hooding) and focused the image on the bound hands and extended arms that clearly depicts someone forced to stand (or worse, hang) under restraint to the point of collapse, which might well be torture.

Ah, hypocrisy, the fuel on which American public life runs. In other movie news, rife with a twisted sense of irony:

Strategic Retreat?
HBO Says Army Brass Initially Rallied Around ‘Baghdad ER,’ But Soldiers Are Mostly MIA at Screening in Washington

HBO executives say that top Army officials expressed enthusiasm for the documentary in March, but that the Pentagon’s support has waned. They believe the military is troubled by the film’s unflinching look at the consequences of the war on American soldiers, and that it might diminish public support.

The documentary, shot over 2 1/2 months in mid-2005, contains graphic and disturbing footage of soldiers reeling from their wounds — in some cases, dying of them — as Army medical personnel try to save them. The film illustrates the compassion and dedication of the staff of the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. But it also has many gruesome images, such as shots of soldiers’ amputated limbs being dumped into trash bags, and pools of blood and viscera being mopped from a busy operating room floor. At one point, an Army chaplain, reciting last rites for a soldier, calls all the violence “senseless.”

“Maybe people [at the Pentagon] feel the truth will discourage people” from backing the war, Sheila Nevins, president of HBO’s documentary unit, said after the invitation-only screening. “The film certainly tells you what could happen in a war, but it’s also about the heroism, courage and dedication of our troops.

“I can’t quite figure out their reaction. I was hoping this audience would be covered in green.”

Yet another sign of how deeply UNserious Americans are. We love military parades and aerial flyovers and the pomp and circumstance of celebrating the military, but far too many of us refuse to look closely at what it is we ask warriors to do for us, what we ask them and their families to sacrifice for us. How can we proclaim we “support the troops” when we won’t look at what has happened to them? One has to ask these questions, because I fear the politicians and brass are right: Americans only support wars when we can pretend about what they are like. Blood, chipped bone and viscera are too REAL for us. We have, throughout our history, celebrated wars as a lark, as some wonderful rite of passage, when instead they should be approached with seriousness, with a sense of gravity and an understanding of the price we will be demanding others pay.

Give us our blood with movie magic, NOT with sticky, black, screaming reality.

More shrill criticism from Liberal Street Fighter

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