Sex And The Lost Art Of The 1960s Tit-Fest

I was reading a news story today about the new US lunar satellite that’s been put in place to survey the moon in preparation for the manned lunar missions to come in the next couple of decades.

I reminded me of the film “Moon Zero Two” staring Warren Mitchell, James Olsen and Adrienne Corri.

The movie isn’t a classic, but the sexy performance of Corri is burned into my mind from seeing it on Saturday re-runs as a kid. Very nice. What I didn’t know until I looked her up today is that she is the woman in the country house broken into by the Droogs in A Clockwork Orange.

Both films typify for me the late 1960s and early 1970s ability to depict sex in a way that simply wouldn’t be allowed these days for two reasons.

In the case of Moon Zero Two Corri is there for titillation. And very good at it she is too. The level of blatant chauvinism in the style of the film is quite breathtaking from my memory of it, and unless I’m mixing it up with another film there’s a bit of homophobia at one point too. Don’t get me wrong here it’s an enjoyable film but I get the feeling the current censor would cut it a little and cinema goers would hate it for its depiction of women.

Then there’s A Clockwork Orange. The break-in scene is shocking, sexually explicit and captured in a way that has all the more force because of the quirky way in which Kubrick filmed it.

Would these films or many others reach a release in the form they did if they had to pass in front of today’s censors? I doubt it. I do to agree with many of the checks and balances in place to ensure women are not treated as victims and portrayed as toys for the pleasure of men.

The only problem is that without these films as they exist today the world would be a poorer place overall. At least with the benefit of hindsight we can see their fault as such and learn from them.

It’s a pity that extreme and gratuitous violence isn’t censored as much as nudity these days.