Cansor's snip at 'Titanic' divides Singapore
Cansor's snip at 'Titanic' divides Singapore
By Jasmina Kuzmanovic
SINGAPORE (AP): Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, economies are melting down, forest fires in Indonesia threaten the region, and planes crash too often for comfort.
But in small and affluent Singapore, the latest frenzy is over censors' deletion of a nude scene from the U.S.-made, global mega-hit Titanic.
An ongoing public debate in the leading Straits Times daily has been raging around the following issue: does the deletion of 14 seconds of film showing Kate Winslet's bare breasts spoil the experience of watching the movie?
Well known for its strict laws on littering, smoking and jaywalking, this rich city-state of three million also takes a serious attitude on the influence of the art and entertainment industry.
All movies coming into Singapore are screened and licensed by the Board of Film Censors (BFC), whether they are intended for public distribution or imported for individual use. In teams of two, censors decide whether to approve, cut, or altogether ban a movie.
Exempted are educational, training, sport, and children's films, as well as U.S. and British movies made prior to 1966.
Known for their respect of law, Singaporeans usually don't make much fuss about daily interventions by the government into what they may see, read and hear.
But the BFC's intervention in Titanic has stirred a rare commotion in this otherwise tranquil society.
Moviegoers did not question the need for the existence of censorship. Instead, they defended the nude scene as "necessary" for the portrayal of a young woman who betrays her class for freedom and love.
"Her nude scene was crucial and conveyed a real sense of the character being able for the first time to let go, do what she wanted and not what was expected of her," said local entertainer Hamish Brown, in a letter that sparkled the debate.
Other letters followed, some struggling to second-guess the censors by discovering an Ibsenian streak in the character played by Winslet.
"Her act of taking off her clothes shows that she is throwing off the shackles society had imposed on her," said another moviegoer in a letter. "That is a definitive moment in her character's development and it should not have been cut."
The BFC said that the cutting allowed the movie to be rated PG, and thus be seen by more people.
The Straits Times earlier this week ran a story on the controversy and interviewed several Singaporeans who support the censors' stand.
One of them, a 32-year-old engineer, Wang Tse Chuan, saw the uncensored version of the movie in London, but thinks his countrymen have not been deprived by the censors' scissors.
"The fact that the film shows Leonardo DiCaprio sketching a nude figure on his canvas tells you that his model wasn't wearing anything. So why kick up all the fuss about something that is so clear?"
Meanwhile late Monday night, at a theater somewhere in the world, Titanic became the biggest moneymaker in movie history, breaking the global box-office record set by Jurassic Park. 20th Century Fox said Tuesday the disaster epic has grossed more than US$919.8 million worldwide, vs. $913.1 million for Jurassic Park. And Titanic did it in just 10 weeks.