I Segreti Di Brokeback Mountain, Without the Sex
Italian gay rights’ group Arcigay on Tuesday criticised the censorship of the award-winning cowboy movie, ‘Brokeback Mountain’, by the country’s state television channel. The movie was shown on Rai2 on Monday without controversial gay sex scenes. The group says it will ask Rai2′s director and Rai2′s president to publicly defend the channel’s decision to censor the movie and has asked Rai to screen it again in its original version. “We want to know who decided to show ‘Brokeback Mountain’ yesterday evening with such blatant, 1950s-style cuts,” said Arcigay’s president, Aurelio Mancuso. [AKI]
Italy is more like Latin America than the rest of Western Europe in many respects (especially now that the Socialists have dragged Spain into the 21st century). You can have all the secretive back alley gay sex you want. But the expectation is you’ll do everyone else the “favor” of not talking about it. It is hypocritical and so very Catholic.
Repeatedly electing that right-wing baffoon, Silvio Berlusconi, certainly hasn’t helped to improve Italy’s image when it comes to social progress either.