A wowseristic affair: History and politics behind the banning of Ken Park, Baise-Moi and other like depravities

When H. G. Wells turned his eye to Australian attitudes towards literature, he found cadres of suspicious citizens keen to inoculate the Australian population against insidious dogmas and dangerous doctrines. 'A barrier of illiterate policemen and officers stands between the tender Australian mind and what they imagine to be subversive literature' (Murray-Smith, 1970, p. 77). In July 2003, the same cadre of Wells' description sought to exert its influence with considerable success in reacting to the US film Ken Park (Larry Clark and Edward Lachman, 2002): it was banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), an order which, if violated, carried with it various penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment. A forced closure of an illegal screening took place at the Balmain Town Hall on 3 July 2003 (Barber, 2003, p. 5). In 2002, the French film Baise-Moi (Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh, 2001), depicting the extravagant and violent reveries of two tormented women, was also withheld from circulation and refused classification for its inordinate reliance on sexually violent themes. One Australian senator described the action as one that 'brought great discredit on Australia and on the issue of freedom of speech for adults in this country' (Schacht, 2002, p. 1558). In both cases, the deliberating body was an unelected one that has gradually become a committee of conservative precept and guidance in regulating films in the Australian public sphere.