Circumlocution

I made another purchase at Best Buy last night that I'm emphatically pleased with. More to come on this later, most likely around 11 or so when MySpace decides to stop being such a dick.

Alongside and independent of said purchase I grabbed one of the last copies of Irreversible off the shelf. I had best-laid plans of making this purchase at some point, but my hand was for all intents and purposes forced when I came across a notation on our "Action Center" that the title was to be pulled because it [quote]did not align with company values[/quote]. Best Buy has pulled three other such titles over the past few weeks for the same reason, and the first few looked to be mindless 70's horror movies/softcore porn so I wasn't too concerned. Titles like Don't Deliver us From Evil don't exactly move me and their disappearance is handled with the same lack of attention as their arrival.

Irreversible, on the other hand, is a very good French film that received many awards and made a lot of top picks from critics with whom I would not feel ashamed aligning myself with. I rented it a few years back and it does have two scenes that are a little disquieting, albeit not entirely cinematically unpropitious. The film is the French Memento, about a man seeking revenge and told backwards. It is unflinching, it is a project that examines human nature and how evil begets evil, and it blends CG into situations that you would not expect CG to be used, doing so in a way that makes the entire film seem like one continuous shot without dulling the brain over time as something like Russian Ark does. The two scenes in question are horrid in the way you would expect a movie about the Holocaust or the Backstreet Boys to be horrid and they are not exploitative by any means. They did still earn a nice little box on the front that states [sic] Warning: This Film Contains Scenes of Graphic Sex and Violence. For Mature Audiences Only, which made me terribly excited to bring it up front so I could purchase it from my co-workers. By one look at the cover and the description on the back this warning seems redundant, and if anything I expect it serves to draw in customers who would be seeking "graphic sex and violence" and who would consequentally be dismayed to learn that the film is, indeed, in French.

The point is: Best Buy is pulling this title because they are uncomfortable with the content and not the context. This is the equivalent of them taking a film preaching the dangers of spousal abuse and removing it from the shelves because it shows a woman getting hit, and not just because it's probably a terrible Lifetime movie. This is what Walmart does. It's a step towards censorship. This film doesn't attempt to market itself to children, it isn't misleading, and it's not a morally decadent film. It seems to me it should be up to the customer if it aligns with their own values, not Best Buy's, and the fact that a movie that is anti-violence and anti-rape is considered in opposition to Best Buy's values... What the hell are their values then? I'm a little concerned. Top that off with the fact that the stores just sold out of their copies of the new Ashley Parker Angel and... Jesus.

On a side note the sole copy of O-Town Solo goodness that I sold to a customer was to a person of about 16-18 years of whom I couldn't distinguish any sort of identifiable... sex. I'm pretty sure it was a male who just happened to be fully-capable of nourishing an infant through the skill of lactation, but regardless of which way the chromosomes fell I was a little dismayed. And amused. And [s]he was damn excited for Ashley Angel, which made it all the more entertaining. I've come to the conclusion that at one point in time the customer's parents had to come to a mutual decision on an important and unique problem in a quick way. I can only hope they're okay with the choice they made.

Lastly: The new Guster leaked. I don't know if the word delicacy applies, but I can't resist the urge to use it. I'm for sure checking these guys out again come Summerfest.