Apparently, I Am Too Racy to Discuss The Archers

As I was perusing the web one day, surfing if you will, I came across a notice for an upcoming movie blogathon.  For those of you who do not know what a blogathon may be, it is where a gaggle of blogospheric writers (aka, we cyberspace nerds) get together and discuss a certain subject, the certain subject of that particular blogathon.  Well the certain subject for this particular blogathon happened to be the certain cinema of a certain Mr. Michael Powell and and a certain Mr. Emeric Pressburger - collectively known amongst we cinephilia-bound folks in the so-called know, as The Archers.  Well hot damn, this was a thing I just had to get in on, so I quickly dashed off an e-mail to the appropriate parties, clamoring to say that I would love love love to write a piece for this exciting sounding blogathon event, and asking if the oft-forgotten masterpiece Gone to Earth was still available as a subject.  The aforementioned appropriate parties said yes to my rather exuberant pleas and everything looked like it was a definite go for lift-off.  Well, this is where everything fell apart and my mission was effectively scrubbed.

You see, a day after receiving an e-mail saying they were happy to have me aboard (my exuberance must have won them over immediately) I received a second e-mail saying, "After checking out your blog, I think it's a little too racy for the blogathon."  Racy?  Me?  Really?  Okay, perhaps I am not a G-rated site, but to say I am too racy to participate in a blogathon is kind of pushing it.  Saying that they are afraid if their regular crowd were to begin to peruse my site (which they did say later in the aforementioned e-mail) that they would take offense to what was written inside, is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.  Now granted, this may all be in the timing as when those appropriate parties from earlier "checked out my blog" the most recent post was that of one of my Retro Reviews.  It was a review of the 2007 film Teeth.  You know, the movie about a girl with vaginal dentata - the girl with the snapping hoo-hoo.  Well, needless to say, my perverse side may have come out a bit in that review (c'mon, how could it not!?) and this same said perversity would have been the first thing these appropriate parties partook of.  In other words - I was too racy for their kinda crowd.

Now normally I am not as perverse or racy (loose terms indeed) as I was in the writing of my Teeth review, but then again I never really think in those kinds of terms.  I just write.  What others glean from my writing is up to them.  I do not bother to tone down my rhetoric for a G-Rated crowd, nor do I try to up such vulgarities as to pander to the NC-17 crowd.  I simply write, without worries of what is proper or what is not.  Looking back, I suppose I am probably best categorized as R-Rated, or even PG-13 in many places, but certainly not too racy for most.  I try to use words as art, for the touchy crowd or the real world crowd.  I never care if I am using what society deems as an ugly, taboo word or not.  I simply write.  I am certainly not overtly racy for fuck's sake!!  Yeah, that was pandering, but I had to throw that word in to prove that no one is going to become a bad person by reading and/or hearing that word.  Fuck, fuck fuckity fuck.  Okay, really, I am not normally like this.  When I was first dismissed, as it were, from the aforementioned blogathon, I replied with a whole "no hard feelings" attitude, but the more I thought about it, the more am getting pissed off.

Now do not get me wrong, I really have no hard feelings (the cocksure attitude here is merely for playful show) and am still an avid supporter of the site that is hosting the blogathon - and all those associated.  I suppose everyone needs their rules, and I suppose that some are inexplicably put off by something as simple as a four letter word, but still, kinda silly if ya ask me.   Extra silly when you consider that this blogathon that all the hullabaloo is about, is a blogathon on, for their time period, a pretty racy filmmaking team.  The lustful nunnery of Black Narcissus, the debauchery hidden away in Colonel Blimp, the seductive factors of The Red Shoes, the naughtiness of Oh...Rosalinda!!, the sexual concoctions of A Canterbury Tale, the giddy sexuality of Gone to Earth.  I will not even bother to go into Powell's solo pet project Peeping Tom.  Perhaps all this carnal knowledge goes over the heads of the kinds of readers who are offended by the word fuck, but nonetheless, it is all there in the fabulous films of Powell/Pressburger.  C'mon people, Kathleen Byron's lusting, desiring, feral, lasciviousness  Sister Ruth cannot be mistaken for anything but a sniffing animal with wanton instincts of a cat in heat.  Racy?  Nah.  Hell, The Red Shoes is one of the most sensual films to have ever been made.  The idea of willing rape in Gone to Earth, or the leering eyes of Mel Ferrer as the playboy ex-pat officer in Oh...Rosalinda!! are enough to make the term racy seem like suddenly not enough.  And I am too racy for them?  Bah!