Difficult but important to defend

It might not be a movie we'd jump at the chance to see, but that's beside the point.

University of Iowa students should have the right to choose the films they'll screen at a theater they're supposed to run. It's fair application of free speech rights.

That's just as true for films the student organizers choose because they think they're ridiculous and fun as it is for films chosen because they're groundbreaking and thought-provoking.

If a particular film has the potential to offend audiences, those ticket-buyers can choose not to view it. Audiences always can vote with their pocketbooks - that's the way it's supposed to work in a free and open society.

But students and audiences recently were denied their right to make that decision by UI administrators. It set a poor precedent that has nothing to do with the relative merits of the film.

Concerned administrators asked the student group not to show “Disco Dolls in Hot Skin,” a 1970s pornographic movie scheduled for screening earlier this month at the Bijou Theater. “It is clearly not in the public interest for a public facility at a public institution to be showing a film of this nature,” UI Interim Vice President for Student Services Tom Rocklin wrote in a statement.

Student organizers appropriately had planned on making sure no minors were admitted to the 3D film, which has been described as a “camp classic,” but responded to the request by canceling screenings altogether.

“I don't think Tom Rocklin nor I nor anyone at the Bijou wants to censor it, but you have to pick your battles,” Bijou Executive Director Evan Meaney, a graduate student in cinema, told a Gazette reporter.

Rocklin said it would have been different if the screening was intended to further some educational objective. Meaney said the students would have put up a fight for a more serious film. But the UI student group shouldn't have been put in that position in the first place.

The Bijou is funded by ticket sales and student activity fees. It is run by an autonomous board of directors and does not need UI approval for screening selections. In fact, the group has screened this film before - to a full house in 2007, according to a former programming director.

We haven't seen “Disco Dolls in Hot Skin,” but we can imagine it would be offensive to many. Reviewers have called it everything from campy to tiresome, dull and misogynistic.

Any screenplay purportedly cowritten by Ann Onymous and Mark Thunderbuns would be difficult to defend on artistic merit alone. But that's not the point here. UI leaders still were out of line to stifle the film choice in an operation where students are supposed to make those decisions.

Yes, it's difficult to defend the right to free expression that is silly, crude or objectionable. But in a free society, it's still important.