Censorship at the local video store

By Roujin Mozaffarimehr

Last week, I drove over to my local movie rental store with my roommate to rent a movie. We ended up agreeing to rent the independent movie "Kids," a controversial 1995 film starring Chloe Sevigny that focuses on 24 hours in the lives of city kids and their uninhibited approach to sex, drugs and violence.

However, to our dismay, we could not find it anywhere on the shelves.

We walked over to an employee to ask if they had the movie, only to be told that they do not carry it because the store prides itself as "a family rental chain."

We were both confused. Without asking the employee, he proceeded to list a number of movies which certain locations of the store did not carry, including Stanley Kubrick's critically acclaimed "Lolita."

When did other people start deciding that critically acclaimed pieces of important art are "inappropriate" for the general public? Isn't it my job to choose that for myself?

The movie "Kids" was initially rated NC-17 (later changed to R), and despite the controversy the film stirred among critics, Sevigny won an Independent Spirit Award for her role in the daring film, and the New York Times even called the film "a wake-up call to the modern world."

Kubrick's "Lolita" is an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial, yet highly regarded, piece of literature. I started to wonder why such a well-known chain would disregard such films. Does the chain have to adhere to a moral code?

Are the topics of child abuse, drug abuse and sex so foreign and offensive to our society that we cannot allow such discussions to take place freely?

I decided to check out another rental chain and still could not get a copy of "Kids." After doing some research, I found that unless I bought the film from Amazon.com, I really had no chance of ever watching it.

There are 20 copies of "Saw IV" on the shelves of most video stores, so I can watch a serial killer graphically torture someone, but I do not have access to director Larry Clark's message about the lives of city kids?

I know that it's a bit ridiculous to pick at something as trivial as the access to one or two critically acclaimed films, but have we become so apathetic to the problems we face in our society that we would rather watch "Saw IV" because it's easier to watch than a movie that discusses the realities of unprotected sex?

Denying the general public access to information or portrayals of societal issues won't solve our problems. We cannot prohibit an artist's commentary because we do not like it.

Roujin Mozaffarimehr is a senior political science and Italian double major.