It is clear to me that the Bahamas Plays and Films Control Board, with its fascist agenda, is better suited to regulate the film industry in communist Cuba, not a democratic Bahamas.
Thank God for satellite dishes and the Internet that allow Bahamians to see previews of movies playing in theaters in the “real” free world. One such movie preview I saw was “Brokeback Mountain,” a story about two cowboys who fell in love. The movie was said to be a great love story, breaking the stereotype of what people typically expect from cowboys in America’s west.
When I heard last month that the movie had earned four nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, more than any other film, I really wanted to go and see it.
But to my dismay, the censoring Bahamas Plays and Films Control Board had already decided for me that I should not see it. They did not even bother to put an adult rating on the movie – they just decided to ban it.
I spoke to Javaz Turnquest, the chairperson of the Board who said the Board did not ban the movie but rather the distributors in the U.S. simply did not sent it here. Really? Interestingly, the movie was sent and approved last week in Jamaica, the most homophobic country on earth. Brokeback Mountain opened on Friday in a theater in Kingston and another in Montego Bay. So who is Mrs. Turnquest kidding about the movie not being sent here?
Clearly the Bahamas Censorship Board, as they ought to be called, has a twisted sense of morality, banning movies that show love between two people of the same gender but allowing movies that glorify the thug culture and graphic violence where people are shot multiple times as if they are a hunter’s target practice, or decapitated with blood gushing out of their necks. I have seen many such movies with this kind of gory content here.
Amazingly, the supposedly “Christian conscious” Board has allowed the 50 Cent movie, “Get rich or die trying” to be shown here. Ironically, U.S. movie critics have described this flick as the worst gangster rap movie ever. We all know that 50 Cent has been to jail and promotes the selling of drugs and the killing of people in his music.
In fact, when his movie premiered in the U.S. at a Pittsburgh-area theatre, a fight broke out where a 30 year-old man was fatally shot.
50 Cent defended his movie, saying, “I feel for the victim’s family in this situation. However, he callously added, “But you know, these weren’t kids. This was a 30-year-old man who had a dispute with three other guys.”
What does that say about 50 Cent’s values and the Board that approved his movie? It says that gangster rap movies endorsing the gun culture and the wanton killing of people is okay but a movie about same-sex love is not. For the Board’s information homosexuality, just like heterosexuality, is not a crime in the Bahamas. However, the selling of illegal narcotic drugs and murder is. Does the censorship Board naively believe that a movie about gays will make a straight person gay or a movie about straights will make a gay person straight?
American political writer, Noam Chomsky once said, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise (in this case the gays), we don’t believe in it at all.” This is obviously true for people sitting on that censorship Board. They must be reminded that adults have God-given choices about what they can listen to and watch. Taking these choices away is not only tyrannical but also encourages illegality i.e., the black market.
By: Sheryl Minnis in a letter to the Editor of The Bahama Journal
