Christopher Hart, an art critic for the Daily Mail, flirts with being an apologist for Islamic violence:
The object of his anger: Danish art-house director Lars von Trier's latest movie, Antichrist, which, judging by the Mail's plot description, probably isn't half as upsetting as most of Quentin Tarantino's or Pedro Almodóvar's fare, or Luis Buñuel's movies, or anything by David Lynch or Pier Paolo Pasolini. I have no way of knowing really — and more to the point, neither does Mr. Hart: he hasn't seen the film. As is so often the case with the censorious and the easily outraged, he feels free to pass judgment on it anyway, and he focuses his rant on the film board rating that declares Antichrist suitable for over-18 British moviegoers only.
Adults, in other words.
That's not nearly good enough for Mr. Hart, who wants somebody, anybody, to officially declare the movie verboten for everyone. The verbal crescendo he builds towards the end is half funny, half scary: We must protect the children (you saw that one coming, didn't you?) — but lo and verily, we must also shield adults from this soul-destroying filth (that he hasn't actually seen).
As soon as it's released on DVD, Antichrist will harm children anyway, deeply and irrevocably. But when did this principle of protecting only children arise anyway? What about harming adults?
Thus sputters and fumes Mr. Hart, an unfortunate little person — not of stature, but of mind — who will only allow others to see an indie film if he can somehow be guaranteed that it doesn't violate his personal sense of decency. And so, believing his delicate good taste to be under assault, he moans,
What on earth does it take for a film to be banned nowadays?
This from a man who apparently kept a straight face when he wrote
I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency.
With broad-minded libertarians as principled as all that, who needs Big Brother?
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