Breaking Hong Kong's taboo

[summertime]

Breaking Hong Kong's taboo

By David Tang

Thursday, November 8, 2007

HONG KONG: Both my wife and I were carefully frisked.

"Any cameras?"

"No."

We looked at each other conspiratorially.

"Any mobile phones with cameras?"

"No," we said in unison, lying spontaneously.

"O.K. Please note: No recording."

We were not crossing the U.S. border. Nor were we about to walk on to a red carpet at the Oscars, or, God forbid, witness a public execution.

In fact, we had popcorn and a couple of hot dogs in our hands.

We were entering our local cinema in Hong Kong to watch Ang Lee's latest film, "Lust, Caution."

I was not sure if all the hoopla, unprecedented for a film in Hong Kong, was really meant to combat piracy, or hype to push the film. It was certainly well known that the film promised sexually explicit content.

Mind you, "Lust, Caution" didn't win any awards at the recent "Porno Oscars" in Las Vegas.

In fact, Lee won a normal Oscar a couple of years ago with "Brokeback Mountain." He is a highly respected director with a versatility that has included films as genteel as Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility."

Lee's international reputation and respectability made it easier for the parochial Hong Kong censorship board to pass his film, even with explicit sex.

The board's approach, it seems, is: If it's well known, it must be all right.

For that matter, no fuss was made in Hong Kong over "Brokeback Mountain," which broached the other Chinese taboo - homosexuality. Mao denied that homosexuality existed, but this film won an Oscar. So it was deemed O.K.

I was curious to see whether the furor was justified. And my wife was eager to be going with her husband to what had been touted as a porno film.

The film was long. After two-and-a-half hours, I felt I had seen "Ben Hur" rather than an uncut version of "Deep Throat."

I liked the main character, a Chinese official who collaborated with the occupying Japanese, played by Tony Leung. We had a few of those bureaucrats in Hong Kong during the war; it was like an Oriental version of Vichy France. Everything stank of duplicity and moral turpitude.

Be that as it may, for Hong Kong to show this film, which may be no big deal in the West, is still exceptional.

Censorship is taken extremely seriously in the territory. In fact, it extends itself to the point of total absurdity in what claims to be a "world city."

Only the other night, I was watching a standard Hollywood movie on cable television. In one of the scenes, there was a Renoir hanging over a fireplace. To my astonishment and amusement, the breasts of the nude in the painting were blocked out.

When censorship extends to paintings, one cannot help feeling that the exercise is a little strange - and strained.

Do we really have a battalion of censors who are required to watch everything - every single sequence that goes on cable (there are over 100 channels) as well as all the non-cable channels (of which there are also umpteen)?

The mind boggles as to why the government is determined to be so puritanical when Hong Kong is well-known for its laissez-faire approach to other matters - certainly to taxation.

So I wondered, are we taxpayers really paying for these busybodies to trawl through endless programs? I've heard that some of them are students doing part-time jobs. They must be laughing.

As I left the cinema, I couldn't help noting a paradox: Sex for viewing at home is censored ferociously, but there is virtual non-interference in the public cinema.

It was the Bard who wrote, "Art made tongue-tied by authority."

Mind you, Ang Lee got away with it, but not Renoir!

David Tang is the founder of China Club, Shanghai Tang and China Tang.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/08/opinion/edtang.php