90 MINUTES CLOSER TO BEING DEAD

Movie Reviews from America’s Gilded Age, 1994-2001

By John Ruch

Sex, Drugs and Democracy (1994)

Somewhere along the line, Holland, land of wooden shoes and windmills, became Europe’s Haight-Ashbury.

Perhaps the world’s most liberal society, it tolerates prostitution, pot and gay marriages. Social democrat utopia, baby.

The one thing the documentary “Sex, Drugs and Democracy” makes clear is that this is all very cool. In grainy cinema verite, it dawdles in the novelties of wheelchair-accessible brothels and father-son pot parties.

Pure freedom, they say. And because of it, they’ve got lower rates of crime, drug addiction and teen pregnancy than the US. “Police are really sweet here,” says one man on the street, and it’s hard not to be jealous.

Sounds too good to be true, eh? Though happy to show us sex shows and body piercing, the film deliberately avoids telling us how Holland got this way.

More suspiciously, there are no dissenting voices in the entire film (unless you count one guy who complains about the 60 percent income tax). It’s all eerily positive, like East German newspapers used to be.

In fact, it quickly becomes obvious this is a Mao-flavored propaganda piece.

The comparisons to the US are mostly specious. Of course Holland is more peaceful: It’s got a smaller, more homogenous population (96 percent Dutch). On land 14 times more crowded than the US, the Dutch had to learn to get along, and they’re all similar enough for it to work.

I’m not sure about this “freedom,” either. Euthanasia, pot and abortion are all officially banned, but are tolerated by the authorities. The idea—and it works—is that people won’t indulge as much when it’s not forbidden fruit.

But government tolerance isn’t freedom; it’s tyranny waiting to happen. At least when the US finally let women vote or something, it’s written into law.

I also wonder if there’s freedom for the right wing. The film doesn’t say what would happen if somebody wore a swastika T-shirt or started up a gun museum to rival the “Sex Museum.” (Guns are banned.)

Bluenosed, witch-hanging America could sure learn a lot from Dutch pragmatism in dealing with drugs and sex education. But my Jefferson side doesn’t trust a place where “nobody really needs to be radical,” as one interview subject put it.

Democracy without dissent is stagnant. A movie without dissent is, too.

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