Year

Country

Home

People

Films

Articles

Store

The University of Maryland created a major controversy in April 2009 when it gave the go-ahead for the screening on its campus of the $10 million Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, a 138-minute porn flick billed by its distributor Digital Playground as a XXX blockbuster.   The film, which was released in September 2008, was being offered free of charge to university campuses across the States in a drive to stimulate positive word-of-mouth.

 The decision to show the film at the Student Union, which was approved by a student programming committee, was considered so controversial that it prompted debate in the Maryland Senate, where Senator Andrew P. Harris recommended refusing funding to any higher education institution screening a XXX-rated film outside of an official academic course.   Harris’s motion was given heavyweight support by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller.   The proceedings were leant a degree of farce, however, by the fact that debate had to be postponed on a number of occasions when young schoolchildren on tours of the State House were spotted in the public gallery.

 While acknowledging that it was not the place of the legislature to be involved in the censorship of motion pictures, Miller stated that the General Assembly would not support the screening of hardcore porn flicks on a campus funded by the taxpayer.

 However, Adam Kissel, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, took the opposing view, despite being unsure whether the threat of the withdrawal of funding constituted a threat to the student committee’s rights under the First Amendment.   Kissel said, ‘I think because of the autonomy that a public university ought to have versus the legislature, the president should not have cancelled the film.’

 Christopher Ruth, a spokesman for Digital Playground, the distributor of the film, expressed astonishment and disappointment at the decision:  ‘Showing a movie like this opens up a discussion, a discourse on sexuality and gender roles, and for them to stifle that discourse from happening is amazing,’

 The film had already been shown at a number of campuses, including the University of California, Los Angeles, where interest was so great that people had to be turned away from the 500-seat campus cinema.  [ADD]

(source: Baltimore Sun)