Moviegoers in Japan will see fully exposed human reproductive organs in theaters "for the first time ever" later this month, according to Japanese press (insert Pee Wee Herman joke). The film cracking the infamous "mosaic" rule? Kinsey.
Japan's Eirin, the name commonly used for the Administration Commission of Motion Picture Code of Ethics, has traditionally taken a hard line against the display of reproductive organs on celluloid, requiring moviemakers to blot them out of view by using a digital mosaic. Renowned director Nagisa Oshima, who was at the helm for "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence," was involved in a decades long battle with Eirin over the depiction of genitalia in his controversial 1976 flick "In the Realm of the Senses." Oshima claimed the famously revealing movie was art, but Eirin insisted it was pornographic and censors sliced through the movie. Even when given a re-run in Japanese theaters five years ago, Eirin still make adjustments to 15 parts of the movie.
And I love how the next graf in this story places "genitalia" in the active tense, as if they're hardworking actors who have been overlooked and abused, lo these many years, by Japan's heartless film censors.
The closest genitalia have come to being screened publicly in Japan was the briefest of glimpses of a male member that pops up when two football players clash in Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday" in 1999. But, with the Japanese premiere in late August of "Kinsey," local moviegoers will get their first unadulterated glimpse of both male and female reproductive organs.
Oh, genitals. Won't someone other than Oliver Stone please think of the genitals? Link (via Warren Ellis)
