Sex: it's not that bad

I watched Troy on telly last week. We get over 100 satellite channels, 4 are in English and one is a music channel that plays a lot of western music, so we don't do too badly. I missed Troy when it first came out and really wanted to catch it. I have read 'The Oddessy' and was curious to see what happened beforehand, without making the effort of reading another heavy book.

I didn't have high expectations (I had been told it was crap) and the movie met my expectations. There was a scene where Briseis (a pretty girl) makes an attempt to kill Achillies (played by a rather buff Brad Pitt) while he slept, he woke up just in time, grabbing her hand, they looked deeply into each others eyes... then it's was morning.

I watched it on 'Dubai One' a channel from United Arab Emirates so wasn't surprised that the sex scenes were cut out. What got me was how the violence was left in. It is ok to show murder, slaughter, decapitation, massacres, a corpse being dragged behind a chariot... but when it gets to any physical expression of love, passion or romance the editing team get out their scissors to save us from the immorality. So if Briseis was not suddenly captivated by the beautiful Achillies and in his bed made war instead making love then we would have got to see the whole bloody thing, but kissing... oh-no-no, that would be wrong.

Silence of the lambs was full length, I didn't remember any love scenes in Natural born killers so I think I was uncut. But basic instinct was properly about 40 minutes long by the time it was acceptable from Arab television, and I watched Something about Mary which showed Mary on a date but no explanation as to how or why her hair was standing on end.

I miss sex and physical expressions of attraction being acceptable, being normal, being a part of adult life. I miss humans being allowed to acknowledge that they are sexual and loving creatures, I miss seeing people holding hands in the street... sorry, I'll rephrase that, I miss seeing couples holding hands in the street (men are very physically affectionate to each other, which is nice, but it is unacceptable for females or a male and a female to cuddle on the streets in the same way as men do) . I miss the feeling of knowing a body is more than the thing that you carry your head around on.

I asked some Sudanese friends what they think about the movie editing. They all watch their films uncut on pirate DVDs sent from the Gulf by their cousins. They seem to think that it is good for the sex and kissing to be cut out because children shouldn't be watching that sort of thing, it might give them ideas. So of course I asked about the violence... apparently children know that it's only a movie and that violence is wrong. I didn't want to push a point too much, they already think I might be doomed to hell, suggesting that sex is a good thing and killing a bad thing will confirm their beliefs... I don't want them to worry about the future of my soul too much.