Since you're gone my empty arms have nothing left to hold

Premise and update: they also cut the second tent scene, which means that they only scene they left where they were physically intimate (apart from the motel where there wasn't much to be seen) was the first tent one which was the... rough sex I guess? While of course all the het scenes were there. Sorry for spamming about this but seriously, it's so dumb really.



Italian TV snips trigger Brokeback Mountain of protest
Cuts transformed Ang Lee's gay cowboy romance into a straight tale of friendship when it was broadcast on state TV on Monday*

*God, is that even possible? Well, guess it was...

Italians tuning in to their state TV network this week had a rare chance to see Brokeback Mountain, the tale of true friendship between two straight cowboys.*

* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

At least that was the version of Ang Lee's gay cowboy Oscar-winner that was broadcast by channel Rai Due*: two love scenes between the male protagonists had been excised, cuts which provoked furious accusations from gay-rights groups of censorship driven by creeping homophobia in Italy**.

"The need to change a film about homosexual love into a film about simple male friendship says a lot about the current cultural climate," said Franco Grillini, president of Gaynet***.

* Which also broadcasts Lost and Supernatural and translates 'The Shape of Things to Come' into 'Changing of the Rules', 'Something Nice Back Home' into 'Unforeseen operation' and 'Nighshifter' into 'A Strange Robbery'. See why I never watch it?
** Kind of true.
*** And former Arcigay president who while has a complex of persecution and believes that everyone hates homosexuals, here he does have a point.

La Repubblica* noted that the cuts - involving a kiss between actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and a love scene in a tent - came days after the Vatican attacked a European Union proposal that the United Nations formally condemn discrimination against gays.**

But Rai yesterday claimed the cuts were an honest mistake*** and promised to broadcast the full version of the 2005 film. "Since it went out after the watershed we could have shown the full version but did not have the copy****," said Rai director general Claudio Cappon. The copy broadcast, Rai said, had been supplied by a distributor for use before the watershed.

Opposition senator Luigi Vimercati called the explanation "embarrassing" and said he would demand a parliamentary inquiry.

* My newspaper!!!
** Which I wanted to post about in a specific post, but which has to be the most non-Christian thing I've heard all my life. Nothing to say.
*** Which accidentally included the gay scenes and left the heterosexual scenes. Sure.
**** Seriously? I mean, I have the full copy. Everyone who owns the dvd has it and the national TV doesn't? Are you taking me for an idiot or what? Totally agreeing about the explanation being embarrassing, even if it goes to Parliament I kinda dread that. It'll get ugly.

Critics noted that while the gay love scenes were removed, censors left a heterosexual sex scene in Monday night's version. "Evidently it is not sex which creates fear and pain, but the feelings between two men,*" said Grillini.

* Especially because one moment, they left the... well, let's say rough sex scene but cut the parts where they were really into each other and showed affection. Yeah. Sure.

Today, La Stampa asked in a headline, "Who stole the gay kiss?"; on the other hand, Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by the family of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, dismissed the protest as the work of "the politically correct lobby"*.

* And that makes me want to vomit. Politically correct lobby? You're being politically correct and hypocrite if you cut that stuff. I won't comment on who owns that.

Vladimir Luxuria, a transsexual former member of the Italian parliament, said Rai's explanation was believable*, but said the version aired was like "the Mona Lisa without a head"**. She added, "A work of art deserves respect." Luxuria was last month voted by TV viewers the winner of L'Isola dei Famosi, a celebrity Big Brother contest filmed on a tropical island and broadcast on Rai Due.***

* WTF? Not really.
** Uhm, LOL? Not that I don't agree with the basic concept.
*** In short: one of the must disgusting programs ever broadcast here (note: that made me lose a lot of respect for the person speaking). So, on that same channel, we can get the transsexual winning the Tropical Big Brother while they cut BBM. Sure.

--

And then, some parts of a blog post which was linked on the actual Guardian article which is worthy of getting mentioned. Before this, it says that it's not an explicit movie. And then:

But, all told, it's such a discreet film anyway that it's hardly worth fetching the scissors from the drawer to snip out those shots. To our eyes, the Rai2 cut would surely have resembled an extended Ted & Ralph sketch from The Fast Show, all nods and shrugs and coy sideways glances.

The end kinda make me laugh like nothing else because that was it. And then, just to make things clear:

Rai (Radiotelevisione Italiana) is Italy's state-owned television network, and it has never been shy of curbing or silencing those who don't adhere to its conservative brief. Rai3, remember, was where Sabina Guzzanti's sketch show was originally transmitted in 2003 - only to be pulled after one episode because she lampooned the then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The whole scandal is detailed in her 2005 documentary Viva Zapatero! "Italy ranks 53rd in a worldwide index of media freedom, after Benin, Ghana and Bolivia," Guzzanti says in the film. "Did you hear anything about that in the news? No. But then again, if you had, we would not rank 53rd."

And seriously, she's right. I mean, I love her and she's great and she did get axed way back then (and RaiTre is the liberal one, figure it out). But seriously, 53rd?!!! Well, she has a point.

The case of Brokeback Mountain, while relatively trivial compared with the censorship and threats endured by someone like Guzzanti, proves that she has a point. Aurelio Mancuso, president of the Italian gay rights' group Arcigay, has gone so far as to claim that Rai2's treatment of the film is symbolic of Italy's general homophobia. "We want to know who decided to show Brokeback Mountain ... with such blatant, 1950s-style cuts," he said. "Who had the presumption to think an adult public could not handle the sight of kissing and intimacy between two men?"

Why, because it's SHOCKING! And then, best-conclusion-ever:

It is only to be hoped that Rai2 doesn't get its hands on any other provocative material. If it does, Ang Lee might find his most recent movie Lust, Caution being screened simply as Caution, while Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs would have to be trimmed to 3 Notes. With its long, joyful kissing scene between Sean Penn and James Franco, Gus Van Sant's forthcoming Milk could only go out semi-skimmed. And heaven help the hardcores: the entire back catalogue of Bruce LaBruce would be reduced to a few, subliminal blipverts. Somewhere, Pier Paolo Pasolini is shaking his head ruefully, and muttering whatever the Italian is for "plus ça change".

This guy has said it all. What about some semi-skimmed Milk? Meh, seriously. One would believe in 2008 we'd be over it. *sigh*