Italians complain after TV station airs censored version of Brokeback Mountain

Thursday, 11th December 2008

Written by Francesca Cookney

Italian viewers were outraged on Monday night after they tuned in to the network premier of Brokeback Mountain only to discover that it wasn’t quite what they’d heard. A beautiful Oscar winning tale of emotional struggle, there was; gay sex, there was not.

Italy's Rai Due aired not Ang Lee's original but a censored version. The famous love scenes between the two cowboys, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, had been cut, provoking indignation from gay-rights groups across the country, not to mention the rest of the Italian audience who simply wanted to see the proper film.

"The need to change a film about homosexual love into a film about simple male friendship says a lot about the current cultural climate," said Franco Grillini, president of Gaynet, blaming Italy’s undercurrent of homophobia. Rai denied intentionally showing the edited version, claiming that the copy of the film they received was for pre-watershed broadcast and they had been unable to get hold of the full film.

This may be a fair argument, said Vladimir Luxuria, a transsexual former member of the Italian parliament, but "a work of art deserves respect," and to show Brokeback Mountain without its gay love scenes is like "the Mona Lisa without a head".

Not only that but it seems the heterosexual love scenes were not deemed 'unsuitable' enough to be cut. "Evidently it is not sex which creates fear and pain, but the feelings between two men," said Grillini.

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