I am speaking up in extreme displeasure
of cenorship in Singapore. Recently, I bought a video VCD of my favourite movie ,
THE ICE STORM. To my horror, I realise that
they cut off the most significant portions in the film that are crucial to the whole theme of the movie which is sexuality in the 70s America. I understand the need to cut off
explict sex scenes in movies, but the scenes
that were cut off merely suggested sex, infact there were no actual scenes that exposed flesh explicitly! I know the need to
cut most sex SUGESSTIVE scenes( mind you not even the real thing) at the movies, but to cut in VCD that i paid a good whole 20 bucks for is totally ridiculous. I am also speaking up on the part of the poor director, whose painstaking careful work at directing and cinematography has been happily snipped away with a big pair of scissors by our dearest liberal censorhip board. I shudder at the thought of the producers of this brilliant movie having to watch this censored version, which i'm sure will evoke much pain to this insensitvity.
I speak on the part of the producer's artwork that can be compared to cuting away a portion of painting of an artist.They have no right to do this!
I admit to having a prirated version of THE ICE STORM prior to getting the censored one.
( i got it not because it was cheap but beacause I am considered to be a immature juvenile in my country to watch the show because age is a number.) However as I decided to justify this brilliant show by getting the real copy, horrors are revealed.
I now put down my verdict:
I would rather go the distance to buy an pirated version of THE FULL UNCUT FILM
than buy a real copy of A CENSORED FILM
I know that there are others that will not
agree with me on this as there are many other points to consider such as undesirable
influence to kids,parents, perverts blah blah
blah but I appciate anyone who stops to read my monologue and 2 cents worth on this.
Thank you.
If you want things with explicit sex, you'd be a loser to look for it in Singapore.
VCDs don't have any age limits, because things like porno/extreme violence aren't supposed to be available. We know how easy it is for a person regardless of their age to get hold of VCDs. So to prevent easy accessibility of such material, many VCDs are censored. Want the real thing? Just cross over to JB. Pirated VCDs might be uncut, though not a lot are available in Singapore these days. But there is one place, and it rhymes with "Kim Dim Square".