http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/item/heaths-gay-kiss-cut/censorship/Heath's Gay Kiss CutNo gay sex please, we’re Italian. The Italian national broadcaster
RAI TV has run into a storm of protests after it aired
Brokeback Mountain sans a key plotline kiss between
Heath Ledger and
Jake Gyllenhaal,
The Telegraph reports. RAI said it aired the cut version by mistake, but gay activists and newspaper editorial writers were outraged nonetheless. In an editorial slapped across the front page of
La Stampa,
Massimo Gramellini said, “I would like to understand why a kiss between two gays…should offend our sensibilities more than scenes of heterosexual sex or bloodthirsty violence.” It’s a question worth asking, especially as Italian TV routinely broadcasts shows featuring stripping housewives and violent and saucy movies are screened uncut.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/3704470/Italian-TV-shows-Brokeback-Mountain-without-gay-scenes.htmlItalian TV shows 'Brokeback Mountain' without gay scenes
Italy's state television censored Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain when it aired the Oscar-winning movie by cutting scenes of gay sex.
Last Updated: 11:04PM GMT 10 Dec 2008
Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, right, in a scene from the film Photo: AP Gay rights activists protested that
RAI TV would never have dropped similar scenes had they involved a heterosexual couple, and politicians called for the incident to be discussed in parliament.
RAI said it had aired the cut version by mistake.
Brokeback Mountain is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start an affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in the 1960s. The 2005 movie won three Oscars, including the best director award for Lee, as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
RAI's second channel aired the film late Monday cutting out a sex scene and a sequence showing a kiss between the lead characters, played by the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
"I don't believe it was an oversight, I believe it was preventive censorship," said gay rights advocate and former lawmaker
Vladimir Luxuria. In an interview with
La Repubblica, Mr Luxuria said cutting the key scenes was "like showing the Mona Lisa without its head".
RAI said in a statement the film had arrived from the distributor already cut so that it could be shown in prime time. When it was decided to air it late at night, no one checked for the uncut version, it said. RAI pledged to show the complete movie soon.
Some commentators and politicians were not satisfied, saying the cuts would not have been justified even if the film had been aired earlier.
"It is grotesque that RAI censored scenes that have the same content as those seen in most prime-time movies,"
Benedetto Della Vedova, a conservative politcian, was quoted as saying by the
Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Luigi Vimercati, a center-left lawmaker, told
Corriere he would take up the issue in parliament.
In overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, skimpily dressed women are a fixture on many TV programs, while scenes of sex and violence in movies are generally left untouched.
Massimo Gramellini, a top commentator for
La Stampa daily, wrote in a front-page editorial: "I would like to understand why a kiss between two gays ... should offend our sensibilities more than scenes of heterosexual sex or bloodthirsty violence."
