IN NOVEMBER 1996 Westminster Council banned David Cronenberg's film 'Crash', apparently because it deals with the eroticism of car crashes as well as the awkward idea that disability itself might be sexy.
While the rest of Europe can watch "Crash' uncut, it looks as if the more susceptible British will have to be protected from such undesirable notions!
While important in itself, this event is just a symptom of a wider and more dangerous attack on our right to see and read what we like. In the name of protecting the young, violence and sex on TV and video, word and image on the Internet are under sustained surveil. lance.
The call to protect children is of course a clever way of approaching the question. No-one likes our apparently increasingly violent society, everyone wants to protect the young and vulncrable from attack, sexual or otherwise - so, stop images of violence on Ty and video and CD, ban sexual images from the Internet, and all will be solved.
In today's Britain, with widespread poverty, increasing if uncoordinated unrest over a series of issues, environmental as well as eco nomic, the qucstion or censorsmup is again firmly on the agenda. Through the last 17 years the state has been eroding democratic and Diana? or Rory? The heat was on Channel 4 to censor Xmas Day send-up