March 11

Events

1969 - You say "Fellini" and I say "Fellatio" - Federico Fellini's film Satyricon was released on this date. The story is set in first century Rome. Two student friends, Encolpio and Ascilto, argue about ownership of the boy Gitone, who they both love. They divide their belongings and split up. The boy, allowed to choose who he goes with, chooses Ascilto. Only a sudden earthquake saves Encolpio from suicide. We follow Encolpio through a series of adventures, where he is eventually reunited with Ascilto, and which culminates in them helping a man kidnap a hermaphrodite demi-god from a temple. The god dies, and as punishment Encolpio becomes impotent. We then follow them in search of a cure. The film is loosely based on the book Satyricon by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, the "Arbiter of Elegance" in the court of Nero.

1999 - Lo a go or no? - The Australian government faced great pressure on this date to ban the upcoming release of Adrian Lyne's Lolita, despite an R rating for the film by the official Office of Film and Literature Classification. Top officials in the Australian government viewed the film following a demand from "morals campaigners" that the rating be appealed. The Australian Family Alliance's lead candidate for the NSW Upper House, Damien Tudehope, said, "Acted out on the movie screen, this sexual abuse can become a voyeuristic experience for those people who are susceptible to paedophile passions." The Rev Fred Nile MLC, Leader of the Christian Democratic Party said, "The film Lolita offers no social value and can only encourage paedophile behaviour in our nation. This is not something we want to promote in any form. Preventing the release of Lolita would be a moral victory for all those working for the protection of children from all forms of abuse." In an editorial, the SMH observed that no similar campaign has been mounted to ban the original Vladimir Nabokov novel. It added: "Perhaps it is assumed that anything which requires the effort of reading is less likely to harm than the easy allure of what is passively absorbed from the screen. But film has weight and intellectual content, too. Adults are entitled to judge as adults. Even in such a case as Lolita, the arguments in favor of free expression and against suppression of ideas should prevail."

2001 - Mother knows best - Tierney Gearon's photos of her own children on display at the Saatchi gallery in London were confiscated after a raid on the gallery. The pictures showed two naked children (six-year-old Emily and four-year-old Michael) playing on a sun-drenched beach in one and the image of a boy caught having a pee in the snow in another. On this date Gearon denied she was involved in pornography - and expressed astonishment that anyone could think it. The pictures are part of a series of 15 which document her personal family life. Gearon said: "My children are my entire life. My children are beautiful and these are beautiful, innocent pictures. I am immensely proud of my exhibition. I do not accept that I have done anything wrong. My children came to the opening of the exhibition. They were showing people their photographs, smiling, running around and having a great time. They were proud and delighted." The raid was the first on an art gallery since the obscene publications squad seized pictures by John Lennon and others in the late Sixties.

2002 - The natural way would have been more fun - An Ohio mother was convicted on this day of two felony charges stemming from the syringe insemination of her daughter with her husband's semen. Narda Goff was convicted of complicity to sexual battery and child endangering. Her husband, John Goff, was scheduled to go on trial for rape and sexual battery charges the next week. His stepdaughter claims the Goffs concocted a plan to inseminate her with John Goff's semen when she was 16. Narda Goff was unable to have more children and her husband wanted a child. The teen gave birth to a boy in September 1999. DNA tests show John Goff to be the father.