MOVIES CAN'T APE CENSOR BOARD MONKEYSHINES

As any serious scholar of popular culture knows, God put the lower
primates on this planet for one purpose: to make people look silly.

And what a good job they do. When it comes to metaphors for human
folly, nothing beats a monkey.

If you doubt this, simply try replacing some of the most important
pop-cultural primate metaphors with other animals. King Kong, widely
recognized as a metaphor for unleashed human libido run amuck, would
hardly be recognized as such if, for example, the "beast" was a giant
Labrador retriever chowing down New York City's fleet of garbage
trucks and sprinkling the base of the Empire State Building.

Try Planet Of The Squirrels. Or "Hey, hey, we're the Beavers!/And
people say we beaver around . . ." What about Curious George? Would
his curiosity have nearly the same cautionary value for children if he
were a lake trout? And as for the recent remake of Mighty Joe Young,
one doubts it would have had nearly the same emotional impact if the
overgrown animal in question had been covered in a flaky exoskeletal
crust rather than pillowy tufts of black fur. Not to mention those
cozy scenes with the monkey-loving jungle babe Charlize Theron, which
would have taken on a different tone entirely.

One couldn't help but be reminded of the cultural destiny of simians a
couple of weeks ago when the Ontario Film and Video Review Board
(formerly the less graceful-sounding Ontario Board of Censors) emerged
from a relatively long period of negative-publicity dormancy to
stumble straight into the metaphorical monkey's paw.

The occasion was, of all things, a feature documentary on the history
of American anti-marijuana legislation called Grass, a project
assembled by Toronto filmmaker Ron Mann. Among the movie's many
fleeting archival attractions - including how-dumb-can-you-possibly-get
clips of prominent politicians and other paragons of civic leadership
smoking pot - there was a clip of chimpanzees caught doing the same
thing.

Or, more accurately perhaps, caught for the act of smoking dope, as
one doubts the monkeys were toking up voluntarily.

But that's what caused the members of the OFVRB, or at least the three
who signed their (first) names to the subsequent Grass-related
document, to perk their pens: In this 30-year old footage of monkeys
getting mellow, these guardians of community standards saw
unacceptable evidence of the human capacity for cruelty to animals.

Thus they responded accordingly, or at least according to the manner
in which censors are expected to respond: They demanded the sequence
be excised from Mann's movie.

Three censors. Three signatures. One purpose: Let no evil be seen,
heard or spoken. Particularly as it relates to monkeys.

They were unsuccessful.

On subsequent consideration, after a chorus of oppobrium was heard in
the press concerning such matters, the decision was withdrawn, and
Grass was permitted to reach local screens with its sequence of
toasted monkeys intact.

So far, there has been no hard evidence that the movie has had ill
effect on community standards as a result of the sequence, although
the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo has noted a slight increase in the desire
among its primate population to do little more than eat pork rinds and
watch TV. "Personally," said one Zoo official who asked to remain
nameless, "I think the apes are stoned. But it's hard to tell because
they eat the roaches."

Reeling from the lack of community support for its valiant attempt to
prevent citizens from enduring the spectacle of lab chimps burning a
fatty, the OFVRB turned its protective attentions elsewhere, this time
to the poster (yes, the poster) for the blockbuster Hebrew movie
Yana's Friends, which apparently depicted near-subliminal monkey
business (a.k.a., "hanky panky") going on in the promotional image's
background.

If you looked hard enough, apparently, you could see a couple (human,
not ape) engaged in an act of pawing clearly not related to the
removal of lice.

Appropriately, the poster has been withdrawn from public display, thus
preventing the full-out assault on community standards it might
otherwise have occasioned.

Thus, while the OFVRB proved powerless to intervene on the soiling of
community standards threatened by the stoned monkeys in Grass, it has
prevented all the people passing through the lobby of the single
theatre in the GTA where Yana's Friends is playing from collapsing
into complete turpitude by merely finding themselves within glancing
distance of the film's insidious poster.

Citizens may now make their way safely into the theatre before falling
into the spiritual abyss. Whew.

But let us return for a moment to the matter of monkeys and metaphor.
If there is anything positive to be gleaned from the recent activities
of the OFVRB, it is not just the comfort we can take from knowing
there are anonymous public servants out there who are so fearlessly
concerned with maintaining the fraying moral fabric of the province.

To this we must also add the fact that, once again, the metaphorical
viability of our simian cousins has been proved.

If it weren't for those apes, how would we possibly know how stupid
people are?

Posted by: Allan Wilkinson