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I haven't lived in Hoboken very long but I've already gotten a taste for some of the good, the bad, and the ugly. File this one somewhere between bad and ugly.
The Hoboken International Film Festival this past week started off with a bit of controversy when a film shown opening night ruffled some feathers. "Postal," directed by Uwe Boll, opens with two terrorists on a suicide mission debating how many virgins they'll receive in Paradise. When they discover it's fewer than promised they give up the mission, but accidentally crash into a World Trade Center-like building after passengers storm the cockpit. You can watch the "offensive" opening sequence of the film here. The only thing I find offensive about this film is the fact that it tries to make up for it's lack of humor with crude jokes. It's just an average/crappy film. It was shown opening night on Pier A park, which is on the Hudson and has beautiful views of Manhattan. The combination of a film including terrorism in sight of New York led to a mayoral boycott and calls for censorship at this week's council meeting from one outraged citizen."The fact that it was shown next to the 9-11 Memorial was completely tasteless," said John Branciforte, who spoke against not only the film, but the festival's organizer, Kenneth Del Vecchio, as well. "Certainly the filmmaker has the right to make the film. But does the city have to support it?" And some members of the council seem to be playing along.Councilwoman Theresa Castellano suggested that [Director of Human Services John] Pope preview all of the films and ban those he felt were inappropriate. "If a film offends some people then it shouldn't be here." That's going to take a lot of work, but I suppose she could begin with a list of films that one Christian group considers "extremely offensive". It includes Dude, Where's My Car?, Schindler's List, The Piano and Michael (rated PG). Unfortunately they stopped updating their list in 2003 but I'm sure we can find plenty of other offended people out there. Borat was offensive to some Kazakhstanis. In response to this article, commenter JAYCUBED calls the Temple of Doom "an awful & offensive film". To date, 32 people have signed a petition to boycott Monster's Ball because it "does not represent African American woman well". This is exhausting work, so maybe Hoboken will have to give Mr Pope a raise for all the extra time he's going to have to put in identifying offensive content.
Of course the city doesn't have to sponsor the festival, but unless they want next year's event to be little more than Baby Einstein tapes on a loop (and even those might offend less sophisticated infants) and the laughing stock of creative communities everywhere, they need to let artists do what they do...creatively test the limits of art and push people outside their comfort zones. If they're not comfortable with that, they should let the festival organizers do their own thing (and I imagine Jersey City has some available venues, too).
The amazing irony of all this is that the government's response to an attack on our freedom is the attempted censorship of politically incorrect/edgy content.
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