Creative Scotland defends 'simulated sex' film but draws the line at 'real sex'

[ArabellaScott]

Creative Scotland have clawed back 90% of funding for 'Rein', but defended their decision to fund it. An earlier R&D grant was not clawed back, and they've refused to publish the grant application.

"Themes of sex and sexuality have been seen in art throughout history and continue to be visible in contemporary life. It is not Creative Scotland’s role to censor work, nor be the arbiters of cultural taste. However, Creative Scotland does have important responsibilities to the public for the appropriate use of public funding, responsibilities we take extremely seriously.”

...

He said: “Rein was originally supported in the knowledge it would be a challenging, creatively ambitious piece of experimental performance art, with a clear storytelling narrative, strong sexual themes and simulated sexual performance, and would speak to a particular audience rather than the mainstream.
...

"The explicit representation of certain aspects of queer culture and sexuality in Rein had been carefully considered in the approved application and the team was understood to be sensitively addressing the nature of the content.
“However, as became clear in March 2024 when the project team developed new content for their website and publicised that as part of a call-out for participants, one new and significant difference emerged which took the project into unacceptable territory. That was the intention to include real sex, as opposed to performance depicting simulated sex, in the work.

“This represented a significant change to the approved project, moving it from ‘performance’ into actuality, and into a space that was, in Creative Scotland’s view, inappropriate for public funding.”

https://archive.ph/oHl67#selection-1349.0-1427.199

[Hoardasurass]

Ffs have they no shame.

[UtopiaPlanitia]

As soon as you label something as 'Queer' you can be sure that some people will throw money and approbation at it because they see it (and thus themselves) as automatically edgy, cool, or wokier than thou 🤷‍♀️🙄

[anothernamitynamenamechange]

They are ridiculous and the film sounds ridiculous but actually as a general rule I would say making a distinction between "simulated sex" and real sex seems acceptable. On one side of the line you have what could be art (I mean not always or not always good art) and on the other side porn. If you did start saying "no sexual scenes" you would rapidly get into arguments about what sexual was (and rules about actors keeping one foot on the floor at all times). But you need some sort of a line and that sounds like a good one.

But more likely this is an attempt to save face by a body that was too dazzled by the queerness of it all to ask proper questions/do due diligence before assigning funding.