Crucifix masturbation film wins special jury prize at Venice Film Festival

A special jury prize was awarded to Austrian director Ulrich Seidl for his controversial exploration of religion and oppression, “Paradise: Faith."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...-mn-venice-film-awards-20120908,0,36455.story

And a comment on that:

Carroll: A double standard on hurt religious feelings

Did you hear about the movie in which a Catholic woman masturbates with a crucifix?
You didn't? "Paradise: Faith" won a special jury prize at this year's Venice Film Festival.
Suffice it to say this movie about a "self-flagellating Roman Catholic woman married to a paraplegic Muslim," as The New York Times described it, may be as much of a provocation to some Catholics as the anti-Muhammad film by the mysterious "Sam Bacile" is to Muslims.
And in fact some Catholics have complained, including a group in Italy that accused the Austrian director of blasphemy.
Needless to say, however, they didn't riot, light street fires or storm the Austrian embassy. They didn't promise to hunt down the filmmakers and execute them. And not to belabor the obvious, but you can bet that when "Paradise: Faith" is released next year in the U.S., the reaction will be equally tame.
It's not that violent reactions to provocative writings, art or film are unknown outside the Muslim world. Two years ago, a woman used a crowbar to destroy an exhibit at the Loveland Museum/Gallery that critics maintained depicted Jesus in a sex act.
According to an art dealer witness, the woman — who'd come all the way from Montana on her mission — was screaming "How can you desecrate my Lord?" as she wielded her weapon.
But vandals like Kathleen Folden are rare. Most of those disgusted by the Loveland exhibit simply sent e-mails or protested peacefully with signs.
Meanwhile, the artist, Stanford University's Enrique Chagoya, never felt he had to go into hiding for fear of his life. And it almost goes without saying that the U.S. government never felt obliged to intervene by lecturing the artist and museum about religious sensitivities.
Yet when Muslim extremists threaten violence over some real or perceived artistic or cultural slight, the response can be very different. Washington officials not only sometimes validate the grievance but go on to claim — falsely — that they defend religious sensibilities across the board.
Moreover, this hypocrisy is a bipartisan reflex. During the orchestrated riots six years ago over publication of Muhammad caricatures in a Danish newspaper, the Bush administration dutifully declared the cartoons "offensive," expressed sympathy with Muslim indignation and suggested it would feel the same way about cartoons ridiculing any faith.
And as we also know, when a film of California origin enraged Muslims this week, the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement saying it "condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions."
The last part of that statement is rubbish. U.S. diplomats do not make a practice of condemning attempts to offend believers of religions other than Islam. Nor should they. They have enough to do without acting as universal judge of what constitutes an "abuse" of free speech — the label the embassy rushed to apply to the anti-Muhammad video.
U.S. officials should and do of course condemn attempts to persecute believers of any faith, but that is very different. Indeed, the State Department publishes a first-rate report every year on the state of international religious freedom, cataloging the many ways it is violated in scores of nations.
We'll know the world has crossed an important threshold and that Islam no longer harbors millions of believers of brutal and archaic intolerance when U.S. officials no longer feel obliged to adopt a double standard regarding hurt religious feelings.
We'll know that a new dawn has arrived when a 14-minute movie trailer of "almost comically amateurish production values," to quote The New York Times, remains as obscure to the general public as "Paradise: Faith."

http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_21538143/carroll-double-standard-hurt-religious-feelings

---------------------

Can you imagine what would have happened if instead of a crucifix that the woman masturbates with it would have been a "Prophet Mohammad bobblehead, special edition"?

Where are Carl Herrera and Franchise Blade and the Muslim Brigade, condemning this and saying the director of this film is "just as hateful" as the people storming embassies?

The silence is deafening.

 

Not for that butt in the picture.

 

So if some radical Christians were to storm Austrian embassies around the world now because of this film and were to kill an Austrian ambassador...

...how would our resident leftists react?

Let me guess:

They would say "These guys are nutcases, no wonder with the repressed sexuality coming out of the Catholic church".

I doubt they would say...

DOUBLE STANDARD FTW.