The topic hasn’t been exhausted. We’re still asking you to clarify your answer. If I start another thread will you answer the question there?
I don’t think you need to do that. You raised some good points, and stated them clearly.
If I understand Shodan correctly, he is saying that he would censor sympathetic viewings of rape, and hopefully the same would go for other crimes in that he would censor a sympathetic showing of murder. I am not certain if “The Passion” would qualify as a sympethetic showing.
If you define sympathetic as neccessary, then it does. But it seems to me that sympathetic indicates supported. In your example, if Christian said, “Here, this is torture, do this, we support it” yes, it is a sympathetic showing. I don’t think that Christians, when they say the cruciifixion is a good thing, mean it is good that someone got flogged, beaton , and crucified. I think they mean that Someone was willing to suffer for them, as a sacrifice is good. I it seems like it would fall under this criteria, in that it is an historical event (of course, that is another debate in and of itself)
Now we’re supposed to believe that you never participate in hijacks? I don’t know why you’d want to dodge the question unless you can’t justify your stance. And if you can’t justify it, one would hope you’d be open to changing your mind if you saw a contradiction in your beliefs.
Perhaps the OP would weigh in on whether or not this line of discourse is indeed a hijack…? If he agrees it isn’t a hijack, will you re-engage in the discussion?
I thought you said this wasn’t a hijack.
I find this series of threads on the Political Compass to be interesting and valuable (thanks again, SentientMeat, for starting them). If there is nothing whatever to be said about pornography except the general consensus that it’s just fine, then we are indeed done with the topic. If not, then let’s continue the discussion, but about pornography - not murder, not insider trading, not the war in Iraq.
You are of course free to assume what you like. I will assume in return that you find my principle absolutely air-tight and unassailable, and can think of nothing whatever wrong with it, and that what I have said settles the subject of pornography once and for all. :rolleyes:
Come on, John, you know better than that.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think it is. But even if you do, that hasn’t stopped you in other threads. 
As I asked above, if **SM **agrees that it’s not a hijack, will you continue with the discussion? After all, who better than the OP to judge whether something is a hijack or not. If he agrees that it is a hijack, I’ll stop pestering you.
Not at all. One criitical aspect of this topic is why we treate sexually related subjects differently than we treat other social unacceptable behavior. Your response cuts to the core of that issue.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at, but if you were insulted by my supposition, then I withdraw it.
Oh? Is there any precedent for banning consensual “expressions of anger”, which I suppose would also include films and plays in which one character threatens another?
Looks like I forgot to answer the OP…
(-3.38, -5.54)
Strongly agree.
In fact, I’ll go a step further and say it should be legal for everyone to possess or buy. I’m not convinced that any good is done by keeping erotic material out of the hands of minors. Despite the legal status, it’s common for teenagers to have access to porn–either through friends, or their dad’s box of Playboys, or in recent years the internet–and it doesn’t seem to cause any harm.
-2.8, -3 (or the other way around, it’s been a while)
Strongly Agree, as worded. Piece of cake to get to that conclusion.
As to the other issues raised…
I would not censor representations of pornography involving acts that would be illegal in real life, if they are completely simulated and do not involve real people. So comics or computer games depicting rape, bestiality, incest or pedophilia, would still be legal – for adults – as long as no real people were used. It may yet come down to censoring graphics that can’t be distinguished from “live” by competent experts (we’re still not quite there with what’s available to the average garage-workshop perv). If you can show me that this "character"was born out of a set of vector forms in your graphics program, you’re clean (I would ban sampling real persons’ faces w/o their consent, for privacy considerations). And simulated-rape porn, as long as proof of it having been just a show is forthcoming, would be as stands, legal but in bad taste and mostly avoided by mainstream producers in the USA. (yes, I know, with this paragraph I just saved half the Japanese porn industry :D).
But of course, I would impose a condition on creators to explicitly disclaim any “reality”, warn us to “not try this at home” and add a Thriller-style disclaimer of advocacy, thus putting me against something like Shodan’s hypothetical “Blair Rape Project”. If the creators back off and loudly proclaim “it’s only an act”, then I’d leave them to the marketplace.
The Passion doesn’t quite rise to the level of “suffering-porn” since besides knowing that James Claveziel was not brutally murdered in the course of the filming, the intent of graphically depicting the fate of the Man of Sorrows may be to portray that as a necessary and inspirational thing, but it’s not to provide pleasure in itself. Say someone produced a very realistic film about Hiroshima and Nagasaki wherein they showed graphic, explicit scenes of what happens to human flesh in under nuclear flash, in the firestorm, and upon radiation poisoning, but in the context that these things had to happen in order for freedom and victory to be ensured. It would not be “violence porn” even though many people would be disturbed by the very idea, IMO.
[ul][li]Shodan’s hypothetical fiction (I like the “Blair Rape Project” title, JRD - perhaps it could be set in the House of heh Commons?) should be legal, because it is fiction: all the actors are consenting adults. Now, I don’t think I’d particularly enjoy the film or identify with its message but, heck, the same goes for the vast majority of the cultural sewage Hollywood pumps towards me every year. I “support” letting the hoopleheads choose their preferred fiction.[/li][li]Discussion of Shodan’s definition of “pornography that should be banned” is itself a (minor) hijack, but I’m happy for it to be explored here. In any of these threads, the “all or some?” question can be asked, which is why I started them in the first place so that people could give their straight answers and the caveat which the Test denies. Where the proposition itself is responded to pretty unanimously, as here, these caveats become the focus of debate, so thanks to Shodan for supplying one.[/li]Given that the caveat is now the focus of debate, there is no particular further hijack in exploring Shodan’s definition of what he thinks should or should not be banned and whether its logical consequences are consistent. “Sympathetic portrayal of morally repugnant acts” need not be arbitrarily limited to sexual acts, and so I don’t mind whether such a clarification continues here or in another thread. (An interesting and relevant case will be released in November: “V for Vendetta” is essentially a sympathetic portrayal of a terrorist in a future totalitarian Britain).[/ul]
Fair enough.
All this is with the caveat that I have not seen The Passion of the Christ, and all my information about it is second hand.
The original question/hijack was:
And the definition presented was:
rainwalker78’s post expressed much of what I would say pretty well, but to recap:
The Passion of the Christ meets none of the criteria in the definition of pornography, therefore should not be banned. There is, as I mentioned, no explicit sexual behavior in the movie. So it fails the first part. The rest of it concerned whether or not the behavior was presented in such a way as to create the desire to emulate it in a reasonable person. A proposition, from all I know about the picture, which is pretty difficult to sustain, or even to take seriously.
Put it this way. If you can find some reasonably mainstream movie critic, available online, who says that [ul][li]Christ is presented as having a high old time being scourged and crucified, and a person could reasonably say after seeing the film, “Boy, that looks like fun! I hope someone flogs and crucifies me!”[] or that the Jewish leaders who are presented as engineering the whole event are being presented in too sympathetic a light, []or that the Roman soldiers who tortured the Lord really were reluctant to do so, and acted only out of an understandable sense of military duty[/ul]then I will argue the point. [/li]
I said earlier that I thought a jury of your peers would work as a way to establish a standard of reasonableness. So you are gonna have to come up with cites from twelve different people establishing the above.
Regards,
Shodan
I knew they were making this flick, but I hadn’t thought about that angle. You’re right, that could get very interesting!
I guess, Shodan, I’d start by asking what qualities you feel that you possess that make it your right to determine what information other adult citizens can access? This is not a personal attack on you: what I am saying is, you are and adult citizen, others who wish to access the information you wish to suppress are adult citizens, what give you the right to you suppress it?
I think that unless you’re a free-speech absolutist and think that any media should be legal to possess[sup]1[/sup] , it’s not fair to ask Shodan that question: If you’re not an absolutist, then you too feel that you (as part of society) can determine what information other adult citizens can access.
If you feel that posession of any media should be limited, the debate is no longer over whether you believe in limiting the intellectual rights of others and instead becomes a question of where the threshold for curtailing liberty should be set.
[ol]I don’t know if this is or isn’t your position; I’ve already stated that it’s mine…[/ol]
[QUOTE=Metacom]
I think that unless you’re a free-speech absolutist and think that any media should be legal to possess[sup]1[/sup] , it’s not fair to ask Shodan that question: If you’re not an absolutist, then you too feel that you (as part of society) can determine what information other adult citizens can access.
If you feel that posession of any media should be limited, the debate is no longer over whether you believe in limiting the intellectual rights of others and instead becomes a question of where the threshold for curtailing liberty should be set.
[ol][li]I don’t know if this is or isn’t your position; I’ve already stated that it’s mine…[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Actually, it is my position, except in the instances of children (a protected class – I would not put myself in the position of being the one to say to parents: “I know better than you what information your children should have access to.” and works that are essentially nonconsensual in their creation: rape videos, child porn, snuff films, etc.
I might also make an exception of the extremes of consensual SM scenes: there was the fellow in Germany who consensually allowed another guy to kill and eat him. I think if you’re crazy enough to do that, or to have parts of your body (organs, digits, etc.) surgically removed as part of a consensual SM ritual, you’re not sane enough to give consent. Of course, this gets into a slippery slope argument and questions of degree, but I suspect if you’re willing to set the bar high enough, you can come to a reasonable standard.
Oh, and military secrets during wartime. But this would be limited to factual information. Opinions about military activities after the fact cannot and must not be suppressed. That “aiding the enemy” bullshit doesn’t fly here.
I consider censorship itself to be a dangerous, evil thing, innately hostile to freedom and democracy and only to be engaged in with EXTREME caution. As citizens of a democracy, we have to fight it wherever it appears. Our first instinct should always be to resist censorship and to regard one who would institute it with deep suspicion.
If you think that the posession of “works that are essentially nonconensual in their creation” should be illegal to posess (again–I’m speaking strictly of posession, as opposed to production or commercial distribution) then you think that you should be able to “determine what information other adult citizens can access”. Your disagreement with Shodan isn’t one of fundamental principal but of degree: You simply disagree on which interests are compelling enough to warrant censorship.
Wow, what an ingeniously evasive answer.
Never mind The Passion (and the point is that it can be perceived as sadistic. It seemed to me like the director was getting off on it. Whether the victim enjoyed it is of no consequence at all), just answer the greater question about sympathetic portrayals of murder in general. For instance, the movie Million Dollar Baby ends with a symathetic portrayal of the murder of a paraplegic woman with the full consent- indeed, in accordance with the fervent wishes- of the victim. Should that be illegal?
How about movies like The Godfather in which organized crime is portrayed sympathetically and acts of murder as well?
Trying to delimit your answer only to one movie is still avoiding the question.
Sure, but none of my rationales have anything to do with the content of the information, which is where I think a reasonable dividing line may be drawn here. That is, the first exception is ceding the autonomy of parents – surely you would not be one to say, “Your children MUST have access to hard-core porn – it’s the only way we can be FREE!” would you?
The others all deal with other protected class or speech that must involve a crime to be made. . People being raped or assaulted to make a video. Children (protected class again.) SM people who are too far gone into it to be sane by any reasonable definition of the word, a protected class as well.
Troop locations and movements during wartime would be an exception here – would YOU violated it, my absolutist friend?
Wow, what a completely stupid response.
If you are going to ask a question like “should such-and-such a movie be banned, and if not, why not?”, get an answer of 'No, and here’s why", and then complain that the answer is evasive, then it becomes clear that a rational debate is not going to be possible. My bad for expecting anything else.
Thanks for your thoughts, Metacom, which are cogent and interesting.
Regards,
Shodan
As for the “possession” issue, it’s such an obvious dodge. “I, uh, I FOUND this collection of child porn in my DVD player when I bought it!” I’m afraid that issue doesn’t get much respect from me.
Problem is, you have a reason why pornography should be a separate category from violence. However, that does not mean that you have any logic or reasoning behind it, just personal preference. If you support “The Passion of the Zombies”, then using the same reasoning, you should support pornography. Your position doesn’t sound defendable, which is the biggest sin on this board.
Repent, sinner, repent! 