Crimes against Art

When I first saw this article about Lars von Trier's Antichrist in The Sunday Times I commented that it should have been in The Mail. And now The Mail speaks out on Antichrist. So, what's the difference between the 2? The Sunday Times bothered to watch the film before saying it should be banned...
Here's the Mail's reasoning for not having to watch it:

You do not need to see Lars von Trier's Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is.

I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I - and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency. But merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-turning, and enough to form a judgment.

The classic, "I'm not your usual call for everything to be banned type," excuse. But of course you do have to watch it to know how revolting it is. The point of the BBFC is surely that very thing - they watch it so we don't have to watch too revolting things, or that we know we are going to be watching revolting things, is Christopher Hart arguing that the BBFC shouldn't have needed to have watched it, they should have just known it should be banned by reading the plot synopsis? The Sunday Times at least makes a wider point about the BBFC:

The nastiness, meanwhile, is so nasty that it leaves one wondering what the British Board of Film Classi­fication (BBFC) thinks it is for. It may not be necessary — I’m agnostic about this — but, as it is there, how come Antichrist got an 18 certificate uncut?

But the board of classification has classified it. It is not the Board of Film Censorship.

Back to The Mail and even after admitting to not having seen it, he goes on as if he had:

Since sex and violence are both intrinsic parts of human experience, art and literature will necessarily contain both. There are few more horrific moments on the English stage than in King Lear, when the Duke of Cornwall gouges out the aged Gloucester's eyes.

I must have seen the scene 20 times and it never fails to appal. But although superficially similar to the atrocities of Lars von Trier's Antichrist, it differs in every significant respect.

Shakespeare is dramatising the tragic universe we inhabit, human evil at its worst, and the hidden moral process by which Cornwall will eventually be punished for his cruelty.

The world of Antichrist, by contrast, is blatantly amoral, without any sense of justice or retribution whatever. Its mingling of sex and violence, the cheapest and nastiest trick in the book, is usually one which the BBFC pounces on in a straight horror film. But here they are blinded by their own cultural snobbery, swallowing the lie that Antichrist is Art.

How does he know this about Antichrist if he hasn't seen it?

The best bit though is this:

If I were to see Antichrist, I don't believe for a moment that it would incite me into copycat violent behaviour or make me a danger to others. But it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.

Isn't that good enough reason to ban it...

The fact that it will give Christopher Hart nightmares is enough to justify banning it in this bizarre world. He doesn't need it banned from cinemas to prevent him being scarred for life, he just has to not watch it, which it seems he has no plans to do anyway - or are The Mail going to force him to review it?

The Sunday Times takes a different take, although it is also wrong. Bryan Appleyard very much seems to be against it, not because of its explicit content, but because it is a bad movie:

Antichrist may be seen as just another movie shocker, concern about which will be seen, in time, as quaint. But I don’t think so. Its sheer badness and the undergraduate cynicism of its director raise this to a different level. Why did Trier shoot those scenes the way he did? Not in the name of art, but to compete, to do something, anything, to stir the jaded sensibilities of an age stunned by screen violence. And the suckers in the art-house crowd fell for it.

Which is one of those arguments that one often hears, that art films can get away with more than simple horror movies because of their pretensions and because the ordinary man in the street won't be watching them anyway. And it is this, that this is just another shocker dressed as art that seems to lead Bryan Appleyard to suggest it should be banned.

This pretension is one that at least leads to some humorous outrage in the article -

Then, just as you think it’s all over, the film contains one final obscenity, which left me insensate with rage. On my way home from the screening, this shot almost prompted me to throw two bottles of wine through the window of Oddbins. I’ll come back to that. ...

I said I would tell you about the final obscenity in that last shot. It was just a dedication of the film to the late Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky is the Shakespeare or Titian of cinema, an artist of the highest order. Trier, at his best, is the Jeffrey Archer. My rage was uncontrollable. But, just in time, I thought, “He’s not worth it,” and the Oddbins window survived another day.

A board that protects us from crimes against art, now there's an interesting idea...