Forbidden Milk

I was about to write a post about Gus van Sant's movie. I thought it was kind of softish, but a good initiative of mainstreaming alternative heroes. A sort of low-fat Milk in a genre framework of melodrama. Nancy Goldstein wrote an article on it: highly informative for those who are not so familiar with Harvey Milk and the struggles in Castro district, supporting my suspicions on the cleaninng up of the story but keeping the movie close to the genre specific. And not to mention how Sean Penn could fit the sympathetic direction of a straightened movie about a gay politician. A good-old Holywood style movie for everyone to watch.

I didn't write this post only to see today while reading some Romanian news that a Romanian commission for classifying movies, part of National Centre of Cinematography (CNC) rated Milk with R (or forbidden under 18 in Romania). Andreea Tanase, Cristina Corciovescu, Tudorel Butoi, Oana Stroe and Vladimir Marin, the members of the commission, took this decision because there are some images with a hanged man, fellatio and, most of all, it's propaganda for a specific sexual orientation. I would love to see how they forbid all movies that fit the framework of propaganda for specific sexual orientations, all those lovely romantic comedies and so on (but of course the only sexual orientations that are forbidden are the non-heterosexual one) . We should not forget that we are talking of a state institution here that shows right-in-your-face homophobia with an obscene nonchalance.

The only reaction came from the movie distributor, RoImage: they contested the decision. Fucking great. Goodnight, Romania! I hope I'll never see your ugly face again! The only place where Milk is forbidden for kids under 18.