So, Charles, Just How Do You Define "Public Interest"?

Since Charles McVety is so hot to trot about the film credits censorship clauses in Bill C-10, I thought I'd like to consider McVety's arguments as recorded by the Globe and Mail.

Mr. Rushfelt said the Conservative government proposal to refuse tax credits to productions that are "contrary to public policy" would limit only one avenue of federal funding for objectionable films and television shows.

So "this bill, in our opinion, may not go far enough," he said. "It deals with tax credits more than grants and subsidies as incentives, as we understand it. But it is a start."

(BTW - Rushfeldt is one of McVety's verbal puppets, put forth to make it look like McVety actually has the backing of people who don't think he's a complete loon)

Is anyone else here a little freaked out by the use of the phrase "contrary to public policy" here? "Public Policy" is a phrase that politicians pull out of their ass on a regular basis, and it changes almost as rapidly as the weather in Calgary.

The accusations of censorship are clearly out of line, said Mr. Rushfeldt. "And I would like to suggest to the committee here that maybe there be some investigation of the films that we've paid for over the last - now I don't expect you to go back 40 years - but certainly over the last three or four years, possibly. We need to look at what films did get funding and did they meet standards, if there were any."

Dr. McVety repeatedly pointed to a movie called Young People Fucking - which he referred to as "Young People F-ing" - and another called The Masturbators as examples of pornography that have qualified for the tax credits.

Okay, so there's some movies that McVety and Rushfeldt don't like. Big deal. Who the heck appointed them as the arbiters of "public policy"? They happen to believe that those shows are "bad" or "against the public interest". But, just what does that mean? How would that be decided?

While I certainly have little desire to watch the movies cited as examples, I don't profess to sit in judgment over whether they have any particular merit, either.

However, it really has more to do with McVety's overbearing desire to ram his particular sense of morality down the throats of Canadians:

Breakfast with Scot, released last fall, is about a gay ex-hockey player and his partner caring for a young orphan who displays less-than-masculine tendencies.

"(It) is about an 11-year-old boy who is being raised by a homosexual Toronto Maple Leaf to be a homosexual," said McVety. "... This is not something that the government should be (funding)."

So, the problem here is not that 'Breakfast With Scot' is some kind of "adult movie", but rather the fact that one of the characters happens to be gay?

Toronto-based filmmaker Laurie Lynd said he was "appalled" by McVety's description of his movie.

"The film is a gentle family comedy about self-acceptance and loving your child for whoever he or she is," Lynd said in an interview. He added that losing public financing just before production "could have killed the film completely."

Returning briefly to the IMDB entry on the show, and the plot synopsis in particular:

When 11 year old Scot arrives and they open his duffle bag, inside they find... one pink musical hairbrush, two plastic containers of beads and faux-gold chains, a pink poodle belt, and four pairs of white sock-ettes with lacy fringe at the top... they realize Scot is more out of the closet then they are even though he does not know it yet. A unique boy in an even more unusual situation, Scot throws Ed and Sam's life into complete disarray.

Okay, I get it. With the exception of having GLBT themes, this is a pretty classic style of comedy plot line. Hardly any more offensive than hundreds of other movies out there. So what's McVety's issue here? Nothing more than his ever burgeoning desire to declare anything to do with GLBT folk "off limits" - after all, if you can't see it, it's not there - right?


Of course, when pushed on defining things, McVety can't define what should be suppressed in his ideal world:

McVety would not say how he would define entertainment that is "against public policy," instead listing titles such as The Masturbators and Young People F------.

Perhaps even more amusing is the blatant dishonesty of McVety and his cohorts. Not so long ago, he was bragging about how influential he had been in getting the HarperCon$ to slide this bunch of garbage into Bill C-10. Now that the implications are becoming public knowledge, we find the following:

Dr. McVety backed away from that yesterday.

"We had no discussions about this legislation period. We didn't even know it existed. We didn't know it until The Globe and Mail called us the day after they had put this provision on the front page of their newspaper. We had zero knowledge of it. We had no specific meetings on this," Dr. McVety said.

"All we did, over the years, is we brought this to light: that our government is funding objectionable films."

So, what is it McVety? You either were directly involved in this little charade, or not. (I'm putting money on the former rather than the latter) McVety has bragged before about his connections to Harper's government, and by inference his influence.

The hypocrisy of these loons is astounding at times. Not only do they whine, bitch and bellyache about bodies like the CHRC - which have an actual process wrapped around them, but they then want to hand an astonishing amount of direct control to the whims of whatever politician happens to be sitting in a particular chair. Considering how much they supposedly value "freedom", it seems to me that McVety, and his allies within the HarperCon$, seek to exercise a greater degree of arbitrary control over the rest of us, with even less accountability than the HRC's they campaign against so vocally.

The line between art and obscenity is a fine one indeed - what I don't want to look at, another person might find to be the finest of art. McVety doesn't have a lock on "what's right" here, and without some kind of clear definition, I cannot imagine how the clauses of C-10 can possibly be implemented in a consistent and meaningful way. At best, it places the entire subject at the whim of the minister of the day - a situation that would make it nearly impossible for most media productions to ever qualify. In his zeal to control what we see and hear, McVety would have us become the dull, grey monochrome of Orwell's 1984 - our entertainments limited to the imagination of whatever the minister of the day happened to approve of.