Seriosuly, YOU try finding a tasteful picture of this man. This was th best I could do.

I don’t know if you followed this particular little saga, but thanks to some of our ridiculously out of date laws regarding obscenity, a man that simply wanted to screen a pointlessly violent, homoerotically pornographic film that was a travesty against god, nature, man and quality cinematography has now become vilified, nay, crucified by “The System.”

It all began back in July, 2010 as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. Richard Moore, the director for MIFF received a letter Classification Australia that Bruce LaBruce (a man that should be granted honourary Australian citizenship for his name alone) “Ed Woodian” film L.A. Zombie was not going to be granted classification.

Things were looking up for intellectual snobs such as myself that like to see real arthouse films, such as animated fox puppets questioning their purpose in life.

It slowly began to get more an more ridiculous though. The MIFF screening director, Richard Wolstencroft, decided to screen it anyway a little over a month later for “a public disobedience freedom of speech event”, all in the name of artistic freedom, not censoring the arts, etc. etc. Let’s not forget that is, politically speaking, hot on the tail of the whole Bill Henson issue of precisely where to draw the line between art and pornography, and this was subject matter that was (IMHO) done much more tastefully than L.A.Zombie. Anyway, Wolstencroft’s great idea was the screen this like some sort of flashmob event, only announcing the details about an hour before the screening so the police wouldn’t have enough time to stop the film from starting, and hopefully create an embarrassing scene when they came to shut it down because “they really hate coming to this sort of thing, they’re embarrassed.”

How could THIS man possibly produce ANYTHING in bad taste?

So rather than waste police resources on actually attending that, police waited until the film festival was well and truly over… and then raided Wolstencroft’s place, hoping to find copies of of L.A.Zombie or  something. Anything really that would be justification for arresting him due to the hornets nest poking he’d done earlier.

Some of you may be asking why this is all being brought back up now, nearly 9 months after the original incident. There are three reasons:

1. The Melbourne International Queer Film Festival is running, and a number of people have asked if there’s any BLaB screenings, as well as the controversy over Bill Henson’s new exhibit and I think a juxtaposition of the two really needs to be thought about;
2. BLaB’s gotten a blanket ban from future exhibition of many of his films in Australia, which is kind of ridiculous because they’re so amazingly atrocious, wanky, and off beat that it’s hard to believe they’d be watched by any of the “impressionable minds” that Classification Australia is charged with protecting from all the world’s troubles;
3. And this is the one I’m really writing about, precisely how the fuck is anything that is purposefully B-grade artistic?

Seriously, watch the clip.

I’m aware that this is just the trailer, but I assure you that the rest of the film is not much better (yeah, I watched it -_-;;).

Here’s the thing, I’m all for not just supporting the arts, but actively fighting for the right of artists to make an artistic statement through their medium if it’s made in a timely manner, has some decent discourse, etc., regardless of how inflammatory it may be. One of the things that upsets me greatly in ‘The Art World’ is this shift away from having technical skill, meaning or impact with your work and simply eliciting an emotion, which is what BLaB seeks to do, and has done, here. The emotions are boredom, horniness and/or revulsion. The film itself has all the technical capability of a highschool media assignment, and has about as much commentary as a toilet paper commercial… only there are fewer cute animals.

It’s not hard to create a political statement in a film, even less so with a film containing homoeroticism, gay issues or zombies. Both versions of Dawn of the Dead have fantastic social commentary. But I’m a Cheerleader, whilst clearly meant as a comedy, managed to get through a number of issues facing gay teens in middle American society and did it on a shoestring budget. Likewise it’s not hard to make material that is normally pornographic something artistic. Again, Bill Henson achieves this wonderfully. His landscapes get me totally hard, y’know? Although in all seriousness, his supposedly pornographic work is about as erotic as Boticelli. Sure you can get something out of it to wank to, but that’s not the point. When you’ve got hardcore pornography as a central theme and plot device, it kind of is.

But at least Bruce LaBruce is being original, right? Gay movies and zombie movies are totally separate domains and have never been mixed before, right? yea-no… Hell, even BLaB says his movie is just porn, although he adds in something about being a pretentious artist. I misquote selectively, you see.

So why is anyone protecting and praising it as art? And why do people want to resurrect it for another film festival?

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