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How did the hand gesture with sexual connotation get past the censors?

posted 8 years ago by dlevy1201
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How did the hand gesture with sexual connotation get past the censors?

At 10 minutes 35 seconds into the film there is a scene where the crew of the ship is singing in their sleeping quarters down below. William Ricciardi's character Manuel Silva has a exchange with Fishbone played by Vince Barnett. Like the captain, Mike Mascarenhas, noticed a few minutes earlier Manuel sees the display of photographs of Fishbone and his pretty girlfriend. When Fishbone gestures yes back to Manuel they are "an item" Manuel shows his approval by giving him a wink and positioning his two index fingers together horizontally and side by side lengthwise then touches them together a couple of times, like Dorothy clicking her ruby shoes together, mimicking, in my opinion, the action of sexual intercourse.

I tried to get a screen grab of this particular shot but I am not technologically proficient enough, sorry.

How did the censors allow such a hand gesture?

[–] disinterested_spectator 8 years ago

That hand gesture did not strike me as obscene. Usually, an obscene gesture involves some indication of thrusting or penetration, whereas the two fingers coming together merely suggested a pairing up, which could, of course, involve sex, but in a nicer way. However, let's assume that I am naive and that the gesture in question was obscene. This is a pre-Code movie, made before they really started censoring movies in 1934.

[–] disinterested_spectator 8 years ago

After I posted my comment saying I did not think that the hand gesture in question was necessarily indicating sexual intercourse, I remembered something. In the wedding scene of The Godfather, an old man sings what is clearly a vulgar verse of "Luna Mezzo Mare," in which he brings his two index fingers together several times in succession, followed by even more suggestive gestures. Taking it all together, I believe you are right, that the hand gesture in Tiger Shark was an obscene indication of sexual intercourse.

As I noted above, however, stuff like that was not uncommon in pre-Code movies.