Impact (Mar 1972)

12 Even a picture seized, tried, and acquited on an obscenity charge, couldn’t pass the Board despite its recorded legal clearance. nection with the film The Stewardesses (in both cases the prints being exhibited were considerably “hotter”, that is more complete, than the print which passed in Ontario). The respective Attorney General departments of those provinces felt that in fact their Boards had been too lenient and that the picture qualified as obscene entertainment. It was an exceptional occurance, the result apparently of a breakdown in communications between two government departments, but it was the kind of thing all Censor Boards dread, because in essence it calls their whole existence into question. A Censor Board must maintain at least an illusion of ultimate authority in order to function with any value at all, and it can do so only under the current legal setup by somehow coordinating its standards with those of the provincial law enforcement bodies. Certainly in Ontario this is the case. Mr. Silverthorn and the Board are very much aware of the “‘limits of the law” so to speak, perhaps a little too aware. For so concerned are they with avoiding any kind of confrontation with the Morality Squad that they tend to take a censorial attitude far more conservative in some areas than is in fact necessary. There is no doubt that the Board could pass a lot more than it does without in any way incurring the displeasure of the law. But so far it has simply refused to take a chance. The programmes that regularly play on videotape at the Cinema 2000 for example are, as already noted, not under the jurisdiction of the Board but of the police directly. And yet, as a general rule they contain scenes of a sexual explicitness far beyond anything the Board would ever allow. Obviously many things that the police find acceptable in terms of contemporary morality the Board does not. Even a picture like The Sex Life of Romeo and Juliet, seized from the Cinema 2000, tried, and acquitted on an obscenity charge, couldn’t pass the Board despite its recorded legal clearance. Mr. Silverthorn explains the dichotomy of standards in terms of context. In other words the impact of such a picture on a twenty-five inch TV screen (as at Cinema 2000) is bound to be considerably less than it would be on a gigantic movie screen, making any comparison between the two media strictly spurious. To some extent he’s certainly right, and yet at the very least there’s room for conjecture here. In any case the Board’s long standing policy of non-confrontation has worked out very well for it. In its 45 years of existence, there has been only one instance of police intervention with a film already passed and approved by the Board. That of course was the infamous Hieronymous Merkin case of a couple of years ago, an affair which left everyone involved so embarrassedand regretful that it is not likely to be repeated again in this province without some kind of extraordinary provocation. No, in Ontario when a film passes the Censor Board, it’s for all intents and purposes free and clear. Nothing can happen to it from there. And that’s the kind of security distributors appreciate. What they also appreciate is the fact that no decision taken by the Board, whether it concerns cuts or classification or whatever, is totally irrevocable. There are always channels of argument and appeal left open. For though the decision may be arbitrary, the process of its application is anything but. For example, no cuts are made in any film until the distributor has first been informed in writing and has consented to the act of censorship. In the meantime he has the right to appear before the Board,