Thank You for Smoking

What a god-awful movie. It's not often that I find myself agreeing with Plato about censoring art for its morally objectionable content. But this one counts. It doesn't help that nothing else about it was particularly well done either, except for cutie-pie Adam Brody's 5-minute cameo, so what I remember most is that represents everything in this world that I find repellent...well, everything except for insects and serial killers.

Speaking of serial killers, there's another example to Plato's view that we should censor immoral art: John Wayne Gacy's oil paintings. When I read that the buyer of most of those pieces immediately burned them upon acquisition, I found myself giving a hearty nod of assent: I don't want that stuff on the same plane of existence as me. But one of the problems that Plato's censorship poses is, who gets to decide what art is acceptable? how do you pick your morality police? In the Gacy example, I think the answer is easy: anyone who has the means and inclination should be allowed to destroy those paintings.

Of course, some people might feel the same way about Tennessee Williams' plays, which I generally consider to be gems. But then, those "gems" tend to be the more famous plays. There are others, lesser known, that have to do with cannibalism and shit (Summer and Smoke I think is the one that made it most to the mainstream; but there is at least one other, whose name escapes me, that has the same cannibalism theme, except complicated by more disturbing class/race/sexuality power issues). Even I, the most ardent Williams reader, don't find that much to like in a play like that. Hence the censorship problem.

I just looked up the title: it's a short story called "Desire and the Black Masseur." Unforgettably sick.