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I may be going out on a limb here, but I doubt that a bubblegum teen comedy with a title inspired by a Christina Aguilera song would venture so far as acknowledging there is a world beyond Dawson's Creek, much less making any sort of statement, political or otherwise. Two weeks into the conflict, and already we are seeing spooks hiding in cotton candy. It is unnecessary to say that Amanda Bynes flashing the peace sign on a movie poster is not quite the same as the same gesture coming from Susan Sarandon at the Academy Awards ceremony. Yet the current climate has become so pregnant with paranoia that ads for an innocuous teen comedy can be constructed as potentially corrupting to American morale. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised that, in a time when someone gets arrested for wearing a "peace" t-shirt in public, a simple gesture turns a sugary, dimpled TV starlet into a commie pinko bitch. In context, the poster's peace sign amounts to little more than a flippant gesture of youthful attitude in front of overstuffed tradition -- that is, it amounts to nothing. What is interesting (and increasingly disturbing) is not the sign per se, but the loads of meaning that people are hanging on it. The nation is at war, and the act of thinking by one's self is quickly becoming a luxury. The tiniest doubt of whether we should be blowing Iraq apart right now is met with McCarthy-like, knee-jerk hollers as anti-American. Consequently, the possibility of people thinking it unpatriotic for a movie poster to imply that peace may be What a Girl Wants could cost Warners precious movie tickets, and that turns their blood to water. (Just a thought before moving on: recent movies Warners have cranked out sans censoring include the nobleness- of-Civil-War epic Gods and Generals and the violent thriller Cradle 2 the Grave, not to mention such upcoming bloodletters as Terminator 3 and the latest Matrix installment.) This is not the first time world events have dictated the advertising and release dates of pictures: Big Trouble was pushed back after Sept. 11, and Phone Booth was put on hold until long after the snipers were captured. No doubt a lot of sensibility and respect for the victims go into such decisions, but do we really know where tact ends and propagandistic censorship begins? It would be incredibly naive to believe that most of the news we get here has not been airbrushed to death. The war has been far from the quick, in-and-out affair it was originally planned to be -- Gee, who'd have thought Iraqis would mind having their own land invaded? -- and the media as a result throws a blanket over the messiness and ugliness of it to make sure we support the troops, no matter what. It only logically follows that movies, their promotion and distribution, are as controlled by this either-with-us-or-against-us atmosphere as any other part of the media. The latest releases to hit theaters seem designed, rather schizophrenically, to feed on the average moviegoer's need to tune off grim world events with fluff (Head of State, View from the Top) while at the same time satisfying a lynching-mob bloodlust (Tears of the Sun, The Hunted). Warner Bros.' chicken shit decision is financially-minded at heart, but it is the kind of act that sheds light into things by showing what a short distance we are from hysterically suppressing our opinions. Although the removal of the sign may not sound like much, it revels the studio's (and, one could safely assume, the American movie industry's) refusal to even suggest political ideas that are not in synch with the government's.
Whatever one thinks of the decisions of the Bush administration (I loath them), it is hard to commend it on the handling of art. One
of the most shameful examples of this took place when the U.S. State Department refused to issue a Visa for Iranian
filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami for last year's New York Film Festival -- a victory of blinkered vigilantism over artistic truth,
with Kiarostami, one of the four or five greatest filmmakers now working, treated like a criminal because of his nationality.
Along those lines is having a movie ad changed because it might be read as an undesirable political statement. From
there, it is only a matter of time before other gestures, notions and ideas in movies (and everywhere else) are seen
as pro-terrorist signals, and censored ("for our own good," no doubt).
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