In my 'second semester students' classes these last two weeks, we have studied a China Daily article about Video piracy, and the recent closures of Chinese websites offering illegal downloads. We read about the number of arrests made and the enormous profits such companies have made.

In China of course, just about every movie it seems is pirated. To get around this, the video production companies have included special coding to ensure that the cheaper Asian copies can only be viewed in Asia, which is a pain when I find a video that requires me to swap to the coding for Australia. Nowadays I can only watch the 'Chinese editions' on my laptop, so sometimes when I buy a legitimate movie, I can't actually watch it. But back to my point.

Yesterday I purchased a movie, fully knowing it was a pirated copy. I knew this, because despite the thumbs up in the China Daily review of Brokeback Mountain, it is a movie that is not officially welcome in China, and won't be doing the cinema rounds.

Nevertheless, one salesman in Beijing reported that they can't get pirated copies of Brokeback Mountain fast enough. The young people here think it is a great story.

I've read all the reviews, from the 'At last a real gay movie', to the 'what a wonderful love story', to the 'Brokeback Mountain will corrupt the youth of today'.

In China, I often buy movies simply because I haven't seen them before, and often without really knowing what the movie is about. Have you ever tried reading paragraph after paragraph of Chinglish? It gives you a headache.

At home of course, I only bought movies whose story line appealed to me. As far as I know, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, was the first of only two movies that I have watched, simply because of the furore over them. (Brokeback Mountain is the second).

Australia still only has 5 TV stations, and as a kid (without computers and video games), every Easter one was stuck (if one had nothing else to do) with watching passion plays on TV.

So despite not being interested in another rendition of Jesus' death I did watch The Passion of the Christ. That pirate copy took me three weeks to get open, but it was worth it. Who cares about whether the scripture verses were quoted correctly, or if something was not theologically correct. It was an interesting movie.

On that score, it rated better than Lord of the Rings, which I endured during the public holidays in Australia, stuck between a man who finally fell asleep and snored, and a 12 year old boy whose boredom led him to play up. For my part, despite my dire need to visit the WC, I was too afraid to leave off watching the film, in case something 'actually' happened. It was so boring!

Anyway, having read all the reviews about Brokeback Mountain, including the website information and interview with the stars, I sat down last night to watch it.

Well! Did I expect to be shocked by homosexual scenes? Not sure! But I wasn't! Did I think I was going to see some loving tenderness between two men? Probably! But I didn't! They spent more time punching each other out than being lovey dovey! Did I see something really eye opening? You Bet!

What was eye opening was that if these characters had been heterosexual, the movie would have been panned.

I didn't find Brokeback mountain shocking! I didn't find it romantic! I didn't find it interesting! 'Eye opening' would however describe my embarrassed reaction to some of the scenes, particularly the kissing scene at the bottom of the stairs with the wife looking on, and the later confrontation between husband and wife.

My kids often used to laugh at me when I watched TV. Happy Days was their delight, because so often I would jump up and run into another room, or close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and start humming. I tend to identify too much with the characters in a movie. When they find themselves in embarrassing situations, I get really embarrassed.

I found Brokeback Mountain very embarrassing several times, and on one of those two occasions mentioned above, I jumped up from my chair, started singing something or other, and started collecting all the accumulated rubbish in my sitting room and put it in the bin. But I did stay watching it until the end.

So having now watched it, I have to wonder; "Is the Christian lobby still concerned about the film?" If it is it shouldn't be! I can't think of a better movie to keep kids on the straight and narrow!

"Is the gay lobby pleased with the movie?" They shouldn't be! It is more likely to keep young men 'straight'.

Was it a good movie? For all it is worth, I don't think so. It certainly wouldn't have been believable as a 'hetero' movie, and personally I can't imagine such a story happening in the 'precise' way it was filmed.

I must say however, that having spent a couple of days 'on set' so to speak, watching a TV drama series being filmed (many years ago), I do appreciate a little, the technicalities of filming, and from that perspective, found myself a little intrigued with some of the filming process, and I did think the make-up effects were really good.

But beyond that? It had some nice scenery and filled in a few hours of my weekend. And it only cost me US$0.60.

R.P.Bendedek

Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

King's Calendar Social Commentaries may be found at: http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=331

The King's Calendar' is a computer generated mathematical synchronous chronological presentation of the history of Ancient Israel, as principally recorded in the Biblical books of Kings and Chronicles. It sets forth Apologetics for and the results of R.P.BenDedek's discovery of an "artificial chronological scheme" running through the Books of the Bible, Josephus,the Damascus Documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Seder Olam Rabbah. www.kingscalendar.com.