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Commentary: Censorship's Holy Trinity: Family, religion & state
The Noah of scripture overcame Armageddon to save a new humanity under the word of God
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he Noah of scripture overcame Armageddon to save a new humanity under the word of God. Hollywood's Noah could not overcome censorship boards and the narrow bent of old-world thinking.
Indonesia may be the third-largest democracy, but it is again proving itself far from being a free democracy when it comes to intellectual and creative freedom.
The government-sponsored Film Censorship Board (LSF) jumped on the 'ban' wagon of prohibiting the movie Noah, which was due to be premiered this weekend. A move already taken by several Middle Eastern countries.
The grounds for the ban are dubious ' the LSF citing only that it 'contradicted the holy book'.
But which parts of which 'holy book' are taken as contradicting fact?
Under pressure from religious groups in the US, Paramount Pictures issued an 'explanatory message' to the movie, saying 'the film is inspired by the story of Noah' but does not claim to be a biblical or any other holy book retelling.
The fact that Noah director Darren Aronofsky is a professed atheist probably hasn't gone down well, as if his beliefs should matter anyway.
Noah joins a growing list of movies and artistic performances that have suffered the culture of censorship and bannings in this country.
Internationally acclaimed artist Lady Gaga was not given permission to perform in 2012 because police feared pressure from radical religious groups who threatened to disrupt the concert.
Television station SCTV canceled the airing of ? by Indonesian director Hanung Bramantyo after its offices were mobbed by radicals.
A degree of scrutiny and, very occasionally, banning is necessary in society. When it comes to grotesque violence, bestiality, sexploitation, rape ' all of these should be filtered. Content that incites violence and hatred also has no place in society.
The basis of censorship has been the protection of the trinity: the family, religious belief and the state.
Protecting the integrity of family values and age-appropriate content deserves credence. But ultimately it is up to each individual family to set its own standards in terms of the content to which their children may be exposed.
Everybody always claims to be defending family values or to be against blasphemy. But in actuality, the reason is more political than moral.
In the same way believers should be free to adopt any denominational sect ' Sunni, Shia, Catholic, Protestant and so on ' so they should also have the freedom to interpret their respective faiths.
Hence, if we look at the long list of films that have been banned in Indonesia, they are either politically motivated or just undesirable because they challenge people's views on something.
Indonesian movies such as 1961's Pagar Kawat Berduri (Barbed Wire Fence) and 2001's 8 were prohibited from original screening because they painted former colonialists in a humane light.
The former showed the friendship between Dutch guards and their Indonesian prisoners, while the second centered on a Japanese soldier revered by an Indonesian woman as a savior.
Then there are foreign imports, such as The Year of Living Dangerously, Schindler's List, Long Road to Heaven and Balibo, all of which were banned because they offered alternative interpretations and possibly made Indonesia look bad.
The reasons for Noah's ban in Indonesia reflect the inconsistency of the LSF's work, which leads us to conclude that pressure, not religious or moral grounds, is usually the main motive behind such decisions.
The Passion of the Christ, a much more controversial movie, was shown briefly in cinemas here and even aired on television. Bruce Almighty, which has Morgan Freeman playing God, has been aired numerous times on television.
Even Evan Almighty, a comedic take on the story of Noah with actor Steve Carell in the lead, has been shown on television a number of times.
But we should not be surprised at the eagerness of the LSF to ban movies. After all, rather than a ratings agency, their mind-set is not creative freedom but to censor!
What do we expect from an entity whose origins evolved out of a colonial Dutch commission in 1926 that was tasked with filtering movies that cast Europeans in a negative perception to the enslaved populace of the Dutch East Indies?
Indonesia has not moved away from the conservatism that has shackled even Western societies. Several countries in Europe restricted for several decades screenings of Marlon Brando's The Wild One and Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Those countries ultimately moved away from being dystopian societies. They understood that to be innovative, society must be free to express itself, even against the norm.
The essence of art is not simply in the aesthetics. Art is provocative and contemplative, challenging the conventional wisdom of the day. That is why in Indonesia, the first prisoners of conscience are always writers, journalists and artists, because these people realize that it is their responsibility to make society reflect on itself.
How ironic, then, that as Indonesia goes to the polls in less than two weeks, it is still perpetuating a society that punishes the imagination.
