http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-movie0401,0,2728185.story
By Stephen Kiehl | stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com
8:15 PM EDT, April 1, 2009
The student union at the University of Maryland, College Park, will be showing a hard-core pornographic film this weekend, causing some to worry that the university is promoting the degradation of women.
Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge will be shown at midnight Saturday in a campus theater usually home to tamer fare such as independent and foreign films. The distributor of the film, Digital Playground, offered it to the student union for free, so student activities fees are not being used to finance it. A student programming committee voted to screen the film, billed as a "XXX blockbuster."
But the chaplain of the Catholic Student Center at Maryland, the Rev. Kyle Ingels, said screening pornographic films does not lead to a positive atmosphere on campus. "We're trying to promote greater respect on campus of all people and something like a pornographic film is not contributing to the buildup of the human person," Ingels said. "It's degrading to the human person. It really runs counter to our efforts to try to form people to be men and women who will go out and contribute to society."
University officials acknowledge that the film is "not for everyone" but say the idea was to provide students with an alternative to late-night drinking and other dangerous activities. The student union screens a wide variety of films for a wide variety of audiences, they said.
"We thought this would be something fun for the students to do, especially since we're getting close to the end of the semester," said Lisa Cunningham, program coordinator for the Hoff Theater, which is showing the film. "We're a college movie theater and we thought it would bring out the students."
A university spokesman, Lee Tune, said the administration was aware that the film had been scheduled and would not block its screening.
The admission cost of $4 will cover the expense of staffing the film. About 60 advance tickets had been sold as of Wednesday. The 138-minute film, released last fall, was the most expensive hard-core porn film ever made, at $10 million, according to Digital Playground. The story centers on a group of pirates seeking revenge on another pirate.
An R-rated version of the film is also available, but Maryland chose to screen the XXX version because it would generate greater student interest, Cunningham said.
The Hoff Theater's student programming committee, which consists of five to 10 students, depending on who shows up at the meetings, proposes movies to be screened and votes on which will be selected. The vote to show Pirates II was unanimous, said Alex Campbell, a senior and member of the committee.
"We try to get a wide variety of selections for students," Campbell said. "I think there's probably a niche market on campus for this, and we decided we would go in that direction for this particular movie."
The student union asked Planned Parenthood to make a brief presentation on safe sex practices before the film. The organization agreed because it would be a chance to reach a population it doesn't normally have access to, said Dr. Laura Meyers, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. The organization will provide information on abstinence, sexually transmitted infections, condom use and emergency contraception.
But Meyers said Planned Parenthood "does not endorse or support the making or showing of pornography."
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