Board explains play ban

Joseph A Borg

Feb 23rd 2009, 10:41

This is a misrepresentation!

The alleged material Ms Friggieri is talking about is either in conversation or alluded. Should we even ban the conversations between actors in a play?!

These are words, nothing but words and words shouldn't be banned. Should we ban parts of the bible? The old testament has plenty of censorable material to a civil society.

Joe Xuereb

Feb 21st 2009, 06:23

@ Igalea. A commentator on another thread insisted that art is a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Likewise you are saying a trip to the theatre, cinema, reading a book should be entertaining. This is fine for passing the time. Serious 'art' is much more than marking time being entertained. It makes you think and broadens the mind. It has always been so.
'Art' in Malta tends towards the anodyne, soothing, relisgious (and slips up mightily when it is gory - not so much the beheading but more so the martyrdom with entrails all over the floor at the Fine Arts Museum in South Street). Theatre in Malta, asentertainment as you so sweetly put it, it reduced to the lever of tijatrin. Pantos are for Christmas. The rest of the year I want serious. I only have one life and I want to experience it.
Aidan, thank you for a level-headed contribution. Now you I can connect to.

rlongo

Feb 18th 2009, 16:57

J.I.Camilleri: "And the Classification Board is there to warn me in advance"....exactly that's the whole point.
It should give out out warnings not bans!!!!
It's up to the individual then to decide if he/she wants to watch whatever has been given a rating.
Censorship for an adult population belongs in Iran and other religious/political dictatorships , not in a free state.

Aidan Zammit Lupi

Feb 18th 2009, 16:26

@J.J.Camilleri
You said it: The classification board is there to warn you, not ban the play. Those who do not want to be subjected to this play simple needn't go. It is not being performed before an involuntary audience.

At first sight one might think that there is too much fuss about this matter, but beware. A successful banning will be a dangerous precedent for other limitations of freedom of expression in Malta. The whole concept of this censorship board is outrageous. The play is fiction. People on the stage are acting. No one is being hurt.

Practically all the objections are towards things the actors SAY. Based on the reasoning of Mrs Friggieri, most films depicting the holocaust such as "Shindler's List" and "La Vita E' Bella" should be banned. Could it be that the members of the board feel much more annoyed just because the play is a Maltese production? " Do they really think that watching a play will change an adult's morals? And even if it were so, who are they to decide? The theatre-going public generally comes from the more-educated and open-minded part of society, and can surely choose for itself.

Ramon Casha

Feb 18th 2009, 16:23

@J.I.Camilleri:

I'd like to know what level of force the playwright and production company used to drag you into the theatre, and whether violence was used on your person when they strapped you into the seat and propped your eyes open.

lgalea

Feb 18th 2009, 16:15

In all honesty I cannot understand what people find entertaining in seeing people running after each other with dildos and performing other sexual fantasies and insulting the memories of murdered persons.

Franco Farrugia

Feb 18th 2009, 15:45

I do not expect anyone to lord it over me and to prohibit me from watching whatever I like. The members of the Board have no right to tell me what to watch, and what to read and see. I am an adult, I am an academic, and I have every right to watch Stitched if I choose to do so.

The members of the Board, I am sorry to say, seem to pretend that they have some God-given right to tell us, other adults, that this is ok to watch and the other is not.

Every member of the Board who has an ounce of humility in him or her, should have resigned and nobody should accept to be on that Board. That Board should be defunct!

All I can say is that these members on the Board have some guts, to threaten people with court proceedings for showing a play. Is this Malta in the 21st century?

J.I.Camilleri

Feb 18th 2009, 13:38

This is really stupid: all this rubbish is going to give freedom of expression a bad name! I will defend anybody's freedom of expression with all my strength, but it is difficult to understand those friends who are ready to accept that this author wants to expose himself in front of me, he wants to show me how he indulges himself in his perversions and his fantasies and I am expected to say : "How nice! This is his freedom of expression and he is perfectly entitled to it!" My friends should remember that the author's freedom of expression ends where my freedom starts. He can think these things up, he can write them down, he can even get them printed, but if he wants to present them to me and the rest of the public, then he should know that others may not want to be subjected to the twisted turnings of his mind. And the Classification Board is there to warn me in advance - so in fact I am grateful to them for sparing me some of the filth which I do not want to have splashed into my face!

Nigel Lawrence

Feb 18th 2009, 12:40

To the autors of the play---

Put it on DVD, then the The Film and Stage Classification Gestapo wont be able to reach it.

Ramon Casha

Feb 18th 2009, 10:58

We are not asking for the board's explanations.

We are asking for their resignation.

Marius Zulgis

Feb 18th 2009, 10:46

George Orwell wrote of "thought crime" in his novel "1984". Perhaps it should be re-released under the name of "2009".

Edward Caruana Galizia

Feb 18th 2009, 10:45

"...obscene language but in some cases offended religious sentiment. It included decadent material, shameful and perverted content of a sexual and sadomasochistic nature and even paedophilia"

So did Mercury Fur, and we were still allowed to put it up. I dont see what makes this play any worse. I ve read the play and it is, in fact, not as bad as they are saying.

rene joseph

Feb 18th 2009, 10:39

@Paul Caruana

agreed. This is a shame. If they are really serious about morality and safeguarding what the people are viewing then they should also ban TV programmes and Internet. This is petty and phony.

Paul Caruana

Feb 18th 2009, 10:29

Am I the only one that banning a play, however controversial it may be, with the phrase, "in the interest of public decency and morality ", sends shivers down my spine?

Such a play should be classified to be viewed only by adults, NOT banned outright!