From: rat@erg.sri.com (Ray Trent)
Subject: Re: SNUFF FILMS sighted in TIME MAGAZINE!!! (Dworkin and MacKinnon, too)
Reply-To: rat@erg.sri.com (Ray Trent)
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 20:44:20 GMT

In the referenced article, steinar@otello.solan.unit.no (Cindy Kandolf) writes:
>There is, i think, an obvious difference between soft-core porn, in which
>all parties involved are (or for the sake of the picture pretending to be)
>enjoying themselves, and hard-core porn, where violence is involved and
>not all involved are (seem to be) enjoying themselves.

There are 2 significant problems with this line of reasoning. First:
soft vs. hard core pornography most commonly refers to whether
explicit sex is shown, not whether it is violent. Second: where do you
people find all of this violent pornography? I've gone to some
reasonably extreme lengths to find pornography in my time, and yet the
only catagory which I've ever found that includes violence doesn't
really include all that much sex (i.e. S&M). Additionally, a
non-scientific, anecdotal comparison on my part indicates that S&M
pornography is roughly equal in whether it is men or women getting
beaten/whipped/whatever. The only exception I can find to this general
rule is porno movies made in the 70s, which seem to have had much much
more nastiness in them (e.g. Pretty Peaches), though only a few of
them were like this. Pornographers have come to realize that violence
doesn't really have a significant market these days.

The conclusion that I come to is that one would have to go to really
extreme lengths (at least in the United States) to find anything
recent that could be considered violent, degrading, nasty to women
pornography (unless, of course, you consider sex to be violent,
degrading and nasty towards women). I would claim that anyone that
succeeds at doing this has a problem much bigger than the pornography
in the first place. 

>Films in which one person appears to be murdered are pretty clearly in
>the second category.  We're in agreement so far, i hope?

In the hard-core pornography catagory? Why do you say this? Maybe if
they show a person being fucked to death with a sharp object or
something. What does violence have to do with it? Rambo II showed
infinitely more death and violence than *any* of the hundreds of
recent pornographic movies I've seen.

>Now, maybe the reason you hear so little about soft-core porn is that
>most people don't feel it does any harm, and so ignore it.  And maybe
>the reason you hear so much about violent porn is because a fairly
>vocal group feels it _does_ do harm.  And after a while, since
>soft-core is so seldom spoken about, the word "pornography" comes to
>mean for some people only the more violent type.

If this is the case, my experience indicates they are expending a
great deal of energy on what is essentially a non-existant problem. It
may have been more of a problem in the past, but what's their beef with
what's by and large being made now? We're talking about 1 part in a
thousand here.

Admittedly, I'm a hard-core First Amendment enthusiast, so I would
probably be (as reluctantly as the ACLU protects Nazis) arguing the
same side even if it were a widespread problem, but it isn't even
that.

-- 
"When you're down, it's a long way up
 When you're up, it's a long way down
 It's all the same thing
 And it's no new tale to tell"                      ../ray\..