A multi-million dollar tourism campaign was launched in the Brisbane region last week with ‘Give Me Brisbane Any Day’ announced as the new campaign slogan for the city.
For some reason they didn’t adopt my motto, ‘Brisbane: we swear you’ll only see one bikie at a time’ but I’m sure it was a close second.
With recent events that have occurred in my fair city, I believe the slogan needs to be immediately changed to ‘Give me Brisbane Any Gay! Except Those Ones On That Poster Kissing Each Other’. It’s not pithy, but I’m sure you get the general idea.
My slogan refers to the proposed billboard to advertise the upcoming Brisbane Queer Film Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse. A poster, incidentally, which has been deemed too explicit for the city by Brisbane City Council’s lifestyle chairman, Councillor Krista Adams.
“We are mindful of the community’s views and believe that one of the three posters may be seen by many as too confronting,” Cr Adams said of the picture, which is a clear homage to the 1953 movie From Here to Eternity - the year an attitude and action like this would have made sense.
In defending the decision, Cr Adams also said that the decision to ban the billboard was due to “anticipated complaints” from people being “confronted” with a six-foot billboard.
Sadly, that means that Brisbane’s homophobes won’t even get the chance to complain; the opportunity to write a genius letter to the editor about Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve has been cruelly ripped away from them by the Brisbane City Council. I guess nobody wins in this story.
Cr Adams went on to say that the decision wasn’t about her personal attitude, as she has a gay brother. Oh well, my mistake Councillor Adams. I didn’t realise you had a gay brother, that changes everything. Everyone knows you can’t make homophobic decisions if a family member is gay. Please, carry on banning images of same-sex couples kissing on the beach.
Brisbane Powerhouse artistic director Kris Stewart chimed in, saying that there were reservations about the poster as it is a ‘very sexualised image’ and he believes the decision would have been the same if it were of a man and a woman.
Maybe I am cynical, or maybe it is because I live in the world and have a brain, or maybe it’s because I have seen billboards asking ‘Want Longer Lasting Sex?’ or billboards for jeans companies where the images are far more explicit and suggestive, but I happen to highly doubt Mr Stewart’s claim.
If the Powerhouse had put the similar image from Here to Eternity on a billboard to advertise a film festival, would it have been deemed “too confronting”?
I don’t think so.
The image was banned because it might garner complaints - a strange decision in itself - simply because the subjects are the same sex.
Why should people be protected from images like this? As queer people, we exist in the world. As queer people, we are constantly seeing loving heterosexual couples in images and advertisements and billboards and TV and movies and real life that are far, far more sexually explicit than this poster. As queer people, we make movies and enter film festivals and need to advertise the film festivals using beautiful images. As queer people, we don’t deserve to have our stories and photos censored because of a minority of people who might be (wrongly) offended.
This may not seem like a serious issue to many people, but as someone who was once a young lesbian in Queensland, I can tell you that this kind of thoughtless action does have repercussions.
If a gay teenager in Toowoomba, or St George, or anywhere in the state sees the news that Brisbane City Council has decided that people have to be protected from a fairly tame image of two men kissing each other on the beach, how do you imagine they will feel? How are they meant to feel when the people in charge think it is literally “too confronting” for the general public to see a moment of physical expression between two men?
I once delayed my coming out to family for over a year because I heard a relative use the word ‘gay’ negatively. A friend of mine delayed his coming out for six months when a newsagent said ‘yuck’ about a magazine cover of Ellen and Portia.
When I tweeted about this story, I had young people contacting me to say that things like this are the reason they are scared come out.
Small moments can have the biggest impact upon those of us who are hyper-aware that there are a lot of people who don’t want us to be ourselves. When moments like that come from your council, or your government, or your community, it can cause a huge amount of worry and hurt. And it isn’t good enough. The only reason the photo wasn’t used is because it is of two men kissing. It’s about time that the people who might be confronted by such an image are exposed to it, and it’s about time they get over it.
Rebecca Shaw is a Brisbane-based writer and host of the fortnightly comedy podcast Bring a Plate.
