The Post Will Probably Be Banned in Lebanon

It’s like with every passing day, Lebanon descends further into the abyss of backwardness and stupidity.

Last year, Wonder Woman and Justice League caused quite the stir, with outdated laws from the 1950s that no one cared to implement, suddenly becoming a top priority for the Lebanese authorities.

The problem with that though, is that Lebanon is the only one doing it, and not even close to consistently, calling to question the point of these pointless bans, and their negative effects on the state of arts and culture in the tiny country.

The Israel Thing

Apart from backwards religious reasons, the number one reason the General Security in Lebanon bans arts and culture, is when it has to do with Israel. The problem though, is that they sometimes can’t differentiate between Israeli, and Jewish, one of the 18 officially recognized sects in Lebanon.

Steven Spielberg is one of those examples where the GS confuses Israeli and Jewish. In the past, what they used to do is get a black marker and erase his name from posters and billboards on movies he directed or produced, but we still got to see the movie.

The rise in pro-censorship rhetoric, and the need to appease ultra-conservatives ahead of the parliamentary elections, means that Lebanese moviegoers aren’t allowed to see a lot of movies (legally at least).

Other Spielberg Movies Weren’t Banned

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about censorship in Lebanon, is how haphazard and inconsistent it is. If it’s a slow news day for Al Akhbar, they’ll cause a huge fuss about a movie because of a cast member, but that same cast member would have been in several other movies that didn’t register on their radar because they were busy smearing someone with libellous claims of treason, that more often than not are proven as pure works of fiction.

In the past two years, the latest Transformers movie, as well as Jurassic World and other movies, all had Steven Spielberg as an executive producer or director. All of them were shown in Lebanese cinemas though. This begs the question, why is The Post on the chopping block? Is it because it idolizes journalists who stand up to the powers that be when they do wrong, and choose truth and justice over government bullying?

Oscar Buzz Means Lebanon Bans

This isn’t the first Oscar-favorite to get banned in Lebanon recently. Spotlight, which won Best Picture in the 2015 Academy Awards, was also banned. The movie details how journalists broke the scandal of widespread child molestation in the Catholic Church in Boston, and how they attempted to cover it up. Given how many child molesting priests in Lebanon have been let off the hook, like Labaki and others, it’s no surprise this movie was banned, just like the website to support Labaki’s victims was also banned from Lebanon to try and hide the heinous crimes of evil people in positions of religious power.

A movie that stars Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and directed by Spielberg, that chronicles the rise of Washington Post, the paper responsible for keeping the Trump administration and its corruption on its toes, seems to warrant a ban, but stuff like Jurassic Park and other Spielberg flicks, seem to skip the shoddy radar of censorship in Lebanon.

We Will Watch It No Matter What, So Why Ban?

Perhaps the saddest thing about censorship in Lebanon, is how useless it is. Any of us can walk down to Nabil Net and buy it on DVD, or stream it from endless pirated movie streaming websites, if not buy it when it comes out on services like Google Play Movies.

Therefore, the only real loss here is for local distributors who pay to get the movie screening rights, advertise it for months and weeks, then get slapped with a last minute, incoherent ban. The rest of us are gonna still watch it, whether the General Security bans it or not.

Banning is an insult to taxpayers’ intelligence. Why should a bunch of security officials decide what you and me can and cannot watch, listen to or read? All that in the age of the Internet…

Get Your Act Together

If you want to be taken seriously in 2018, either retire the entire censorship bureau, or do your jobs properly. How can several Gal Gadot movies pass, but then Wonder Woman and Justice League don’t? How can all the Spielberg movies pass, but suddenly The Post might not? Inno, shwayyet consistency guys, if you want to be taken seriously…

The Real Loss

Spielberg, big Hollywood Studios and the Israeli government aren’t going to give a fuck if a few thousand Lebanese don’t pay tickets to watch a movie that the detractors think is funding the occupation of Palestine. The movie will still make money, and still break records, so this has zero effect whatsoever on the stated “purpose” of the ban (which is different from boycotting, because people aren’t given a choice, they’re just forced).

The real loss from censorship is against Lebanese filmmakers, who with every passing month, get more and more “red lines” they can’t cross. This is the real tragedy, since Lebanese filmmakers count on their movie showing in Lebanon, given that is their main and often only market. If they mention a sect, or a politician, or Lebanese history, they often get banned, and that’s a movie someone put in a lot of hard work and money to make, only to be banned for stupid reasons, robbing the filmmaker of their livelihood, but also robbing us of a chance to see a topic explored that might help us better understand, cope or heal from the trauma it is trying to cover.

Movies like Reine Mitri’s “In this Land, Lay Graves of Mine” which is a documentary about people displaced during the Lebanese Civil War, is a gem that unfortunately never made it to the theaters. I of course saw it in a private screening with the director herself, and I feel such a movie would have been an amazing addition to Lebanon’s lost collective memory about our devastating civil war. Unfortunately, the GS thought it might “disturb the civil peace”, whatever that means…

Censorship is wrong, no matter what. If you have a cause, then boycotting something you perceive as against it, is definitely game. Banning it by force, is more akin to Saudi’s or Iran’s policies when it comes to subduing their oppressed populations. If anything, the rise in censorship means that the censors know they’re losing the culture war, and that people are overwhelmingly against it, hence the frenzied, incoherent attempt to ban things they don’t understand, or don’t fall into their extremely narrow worldview.

Ministry of Interior Has the Final Say

Let’s hope the Interior Ministry in Lebanon strikes down the recommendation to ban The Post. They have a history of just signing off on those recommendations, but we can’t lose hope in that the ministry will see how futile, unprofessional and backwards these bans are, and instead, work on overhauling the broken censorship system in Lebanon, or ideally, removing it altogether…