Malaysia loosening up?

Malaysia loosening up?

I owe the Malaysian film censors an apology.

A while ago, I predicted that the country that banned Babe, Zoolander and Schindler's List, and where the most benign of prime-time sitcoms is subject to much censorship, would have no truck with the latest in teen rebellion movies: Kick-Ass.

But with nary a raised eyebrow in the local media, that expletive-laden work is now playing here, and according to my sources it has been allowed to screen virtually edit-free, albeit with a 17 rating.

Maybe there was some truth to recent reports that local film censors plan to loosen up. And maybe now the local papers and TV will re-think their own position on this issue of swearing.

Cable TV provider Astro is still notoriously gun shy about almost everything; and in one of the biggest English language papers, the review of the film contains the line:

Almost everything in the comic is a blatant p**s-take on superhero comics;

So while 17-year-olds are able to sit through what the MPAA called "more than a hundred instances of the f-word", readers of the local newspapers are deemed too sensitive to be confronted with the phrase "piss-take".

Malaysia is, of course, not alone in struggling to find a balance between differing sensibilities. The UK newspaper The Guardian, the most liberal of all newspapers when it comes to swearing, did some soul-searching of its own recently.

But it is time for Malaysia to give some thought to a more consistent position on this.