If The Aristocrats is testing the boundaries of what people are willing to listen to, then 9 Songs (beginning a one-week run on August 19 at the Ken Cinema) will surely test the limits of what they are willing to watch.
In this new millennium, Americans like to think of themselves as having a society that doesnt censor its artists. And while it is true that we dont have a censor board along the lines of what Chinese filmmakers have to deal with, there is a very real kind of censorship that does exist in America. It comes in the guise of marketplace censorship. Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai describes this as do your films sell. If a network, studio or producer can argue that what an artist is trying to do wont sell, then they have what they consider valid grounds for not making something or not allowing something into a creative work. Its not censorship, oh no. Its just business.
