My friend Philip Huang’s Youtube video titled “Masturbating with the Bible” got banned on Youtube. Youtube also put Philip’s account on a “6-month probation.” Residing in Berkeley, California, Philip is a self-taught and self-styled video artist who makes quite “out there” videos. Some of them are more irreverent and others are usually funny. For me, it’s cool that there are some “out there” Asian Americans making some irreverent works. His last video called “How to Destroy a Bible” is still up:

I gotta give it to Philip for being brave. I wouldn’t be able to post a masturbation video of myself on Youtube. According to his blog, Philip made the masturbation video as a statement against censorship as the Smithsonian pulled David Wojnarowicz’s video from an exhibit due to right wing groups’ pressure. So in protesting against the religious right, Philip wanted to make a point about the bible as an agent of censorship. In the video, the bible literally blocks your view of his penis as he’s masturbating. Read more about the banning on his blog.

Whether I agree with his statement or like what he does is besides the point. I applaud him for making a radical statement quite so freely because it takes some guts to do that.

Here’s another hilarious video called “Cabaret for Commuters” that Philip did:

You never quite know why they pull your video on Youtube. There are racier and more explicit things on Youtube, but as long as no one complains, they will leave the videos up. I remember that for “The People I’ve Slept With” we made a music video called “Crazy Fucked Up Bitch” (directed by Stanley Yung). It was up for a few days, picking up lots of hits and then Youtube pulled it without giving us any reason.

Seriously, the video is not really that racy and you can be the judge. But I believe it was banned because someone complained about it. Thank God for Vimeo, and here it is:

What sucks about Youtube is that they don’t give you any reason why they ban/pull a video. They just do it and you cannot even correspond with them. Or I haven’t been able to even reach them about the issue. In the name of obscenity, popular institutions like Youtube can easily curtail your right of artistic expression.

It’s so un-American… or rather quite American as these examples reflect how uptight Americans are about sexuality. Have we moved past trying Allen Ginsberg’s poetry for obscenity? Apparently not. You’re not as free in America as you think.