Here's a nice birthday card which I got from a family member.
The statue is made by my uncle, and depicts Leda and the Swan.
I'm amused to note that it does not show the most important thing which happened between Leda and the swan...
Though if it had, I might have had to burn it, since bestiality porn is illegal to posses in the UK since January.
OK, it has to be photo-realistic, but still, that's an insane law. I don't crave ownership of bestiality porn, but putting people in jail for having it boggles the mind.
Update: the Backlash umbrella group opposes this law (it's about more than just bestiality) as being harmful to freedom of expression.
"The law has been criticised for criminalising images where no crime took place in their creation. In the House of Lords debates, Lord Wallace of Tankerness stated "Having engaged in it consensually would not be a crime, but to have a photograph of it in one's possession would be a crime. That does not seem to me to make sense.""
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I think the whole issue hinges on this important question:
Should something be made illegal only because it's disgusting to most people?
I believe not.
For example: suppose somebody makes a snuff-film porno using computer graphics and/or good actors, so that it looks totally convincing, but nobody was hurt. Should that film and the possession of it be illegal? (Which it is now in the UK.) Suppose it is so gross that 90% of everybody gets sick when they watch it. Should it be illegal? Why?
If the theory is that it might inspire violence, should this not be proven? And proven rather solidly rather than by anecdotal evidence?
21 comments:
What, the age of "reason" is getting you down?
Haha. Yeah, a bit.
Go read Paul Butzi today, it'll make you feel better.
http://photomusings.wordpress.com/
What about the many classic paintings / statues about animal-morphed gods mating with mortals? Should we suddenly jail museum curators?
What about religious freedom? Many faiths, and not only some eccentrics who'd want to maintain ancient greco-roman religion alive, actually have animal matings among their founding mythos. Like the native Americans. African animists. Probably the Hinduists. Etc.
What about the fetish of coprophilia? Shouldn't we also dedicate consistent police power to prohibiting depictions of THAT disgusing fetish, probably offensive to more than 99% of ANY population?
But... in Islamic tradition AND faith, alcohol is taboo. What would we say if Ahmadinejad suddenly jailed in his country anyone having a depiction of unknown, potentially fermented, beverage drinking? "Even if it's apple juice, pretending to drink it as if it's alcohol is offensive to the Prophet, so..."
How about vegan religions? What if India outlawed all films where a human eats meat, fish, fowl or eggs?
OK, enough already. My gas fumes are close to ending.
Closer that I thouht, forgot the concluding sentence:
"I think I've demonstrated the absurdity of it all quite enough, for anyone intelligent enough to NOT be a British legislator."
The rule to end all absurd legislation should be: no victim, no crime.
It that typical reaction of politics: make legislation and the problem will go away. Absurd. To me it seems highly unlikely that this will stop the hardcore bestiality porn lover or producer. What will most likely happen though, is that the market will shrink, which will make prices go up, and thus the really bad guys more interested in the market.
Or to put it short: if you make bestiality porn criminal, criminals will make bestiality porn....
See it this way:
Regulation creates jobs for those whose job it is to make sure that the regulation is obeyed.
I think you can notice ever so often, that regulated and forbidden things make you even more curious, whereas tolerated things are or get boring very soon.
The Free Responsible Adult says:
Here our own responsibility comes into play, which would make ANY regulation and legislation unnecessary.
It's very hard to bear responsibility, I know I know.....
But I think this is THE keyword for human interaction, making even the Ten Commandments of the bible obsolete.
"The rule to end all absurd legislation should be: no victim, no crime."
You said it.
It's mind-boggling that this is not obvious to everybody.
Pascal, I hate to take the wind out of your sail, but scatological videos *have* been deemed obscene in the US in the past. People have been pursecuted!
See:
http://tr.im/gZ8K
If you're curious about that video you can see it here:
http://tr.im/gZ8R
But beware, it's not for faint of stomach! Seriously.
ah yes, but can you prove the animal consented? but still, guess we kill and eat them without consent
Very good point. Absurd.
That's yet more proof that sex is worse than murder in many people's eyes. There's no law against simulated murder of a child on film, but there is against simulated sex with one.
Wijn,
"Remember the Prohibition!"
I still can't believe they actually wised up and suppressed that damn alcohol Prohibition law. I mean, by what miracle?
Doesn't seem about to happen again for any "victimless crime"...
"Jail for the underage wankers!"? Don't snicker, it's not that far-fetched... :-(
"whereas tolerated things are or get boring very soon."
Yeah, today I feel no interest for trying bungee jumping. I'll probably die of old age without ever leaping in the void with a rubber band around my ankles.
Unless they make a law. Anything they forbid I start considering as possibly fun. By definition.
Being a loose -and armed- hooliganistic political activist is legal in Lebanon, and in fact commonplace. Sex before / outside marriage is a big no-no. Guess which one I find more appealing? ;-)
"making even the Ten Commandments of the bible obsolete."
They already are. I mean, lying and killing and missing prayer and dissing your parents and adultery and perjury and envying your neighbor's wealth, all made equivalent?
Plus, they're redundant. And a bit absurd: consenting adultery is wrong, but not a mention of rape in the Founding Ten? WTF? (Pun intended!)
And aren't there more urgent matters than ENVY? Not one, but TWO rules about coveting something, which it is already forbidden to take in the same paragraph. But I'd rather cut short (cinconscribe? circumcise?) the temptation(!) of theological ranting for this one time.
Yes, really. Nobody's perfect. :-)
Besides, I think Jesus already obsoleted the Ten single-handedly, when he said that the main virtue is Love, and its absence the main sin. More or less.
"no victim, no crime."
"It's mind-boggling that this is not obvious to everybody."
No-no-no, you've got it all backwards: it's not obvious to everybody BECAUSE of mind boggling!
Don't you get it? THAT is Politics!
"Pascal, I hate to take the wind out of your sail"
Yeah, that you just did. Took the wind right out of my, um, "sail", skipper. (Funny, I'm still discovering new english slang rude terms! ;-)
"People have been pursecuted!"
A deliberate portmanteau there? :-)
Yeah, serves them well! And I've said it mere days ago, with a very cute fable: Philornithology. [How great minds keep meeting!]
If people want to eat s***, they should just become political militants and join the herd of the voters. That's the only legally sanctioned way.
"not for faint of stomach"? Good one! Worshiping the Altar of the Literal with a smile again, are we?
(Disclaimer: not an actual altar, complaints will not be acknowledged. Colors and specifications liable to change without notice.)
"ah yes, but can you prove the animal consented?"
Suhiko, I take it you're not talking about Leda and the Swan. Who was actually Zeus transmogrified (a multiform Animagus, that guy?), raising the more relevant question of whether his many knocked up mistresses were consenting, or under his hypnosis!
"but there is against simulated sex with one"
Have you seen Sweet Sweetback's Badass song, opening scene?
It seems this film is known as one of the many mainstream movies with unsimulated sex acts. At least between the adults.
Didn't hear of any morality lynching posse for the scene with the child. Odd, that.
O tempora, o mores, these were other times.
... the funny thing is that if you take certain scenes from, say, Pretty Baby, and other, and take them out of context, and people may be getting off on them, *then* it's illegal!
It's apparently sexual excitement which is the problem.
... take them out of context ...
I think that's very fundamental: ANYTHING depends on it's context, may one of them be real, fictitious or hallucinated. That relationship defines everything.
Duality. Like a painting on a canvas. Just imagine: Take the same painting and put it on different screens.
One without the other is not thinkable, and defines "world" as it is seen and judged.
O tempora, o mores ... I had to enjoy Latin at school (and partly I have), so I cannot resist:
"Tempora mutantur,
et nos mutamur in illis."
(Times are changing,
and we are changing in them.)
An Hexameter by Ovid, as far as I remember.
If you're curious about that video you can see it here: http://tr.im/gZ8R
But beware, it's not for faint of stomach! Seriously.
I didn't know it before, and so I was curious and watched it, but it didn't affect me (after this posting I will eat with good appetite) ... I was reminded on an old story of my life:
Many years ago I was visiting an horror movie together with my brother. The movie was rated "over 16". My brother was of legal age to watch it, I was not, being 13 or so. (As far as I remember the movie should have been better "over 18".)
After the movie my brother was remarkably horrified, I was not, being aware all the time that it's only a movie, meaning some light and shadow on a screen. Not real.
So, at the way back home I had somehow the task to bring my brother down to the earth again. I did it by starting a playful boxing and so centering him in his body. (I did it not as a "therapy" consciously done, but it worked perfectly, as if.)
So, beside all other aspects, looking at any horrible or disgusting movie you may take it as a test about how much you are centered in reality or not ...
I see the same structure like what I have commented recently about Tantra temples:
The illustration of all kinds of sexual behaviour on a Tantra temple is a means to be confronted with your own attachments/demons concerning sex, and you go further only by letting go and embracing ...
Good points. I've learned that repressing things, including one's own "perversions" is counter-productive.
I'd go a step further and say that the more grounded one is, the less one is affected not only by films, but reality too.
One without the other is not thinkable, and defines "world" as it is seen and judged.
Sometimes my English seems misunderstable, even to me after some time rereading it - I try to make it better. I wanted to say:
One without the other is not thinkable. Both together define "world" as it is seen and judged.
Addendum: And "Self" is the (already much colored with many layers) canvas everybody is painting on, when relating with the "world outside oneself".
Now, what happens, if the canvas is nothingness?
;-)
I'd go a step further and say that the more grounded one is, the less one is affected not only by films, but reality too.
Yes. In my experience "reality" becomes more and more like a shadow, or a bunch of clouds.
I don't know whether this is good or bad, but one of the consequences is, that very often I can't understand anymore, why so many people are very fast upset about small things, as if their world is breaking down.
And furthermore, my urge to exchange arguments is also fading. So, often I prefer and try to go into deep silence together with somebody arguing about something (if possible), and sometimes the result is an astounding kind of healing ...
Sometimes I try to express it in the following way: I like sharing, but I don't like discussing. ("To discuss" comes from the Latin word "discutere", which means something like "to break up", "to shatter", "to scatter", "to dispel", "to frighten away".)
I think, this should be easily understood. But funny, I have learned that some people take it as arrogant. For me it is just the contrary.
I like to share in some Blogs like this one :-)
Neeraj quoted...
"An Hexameter by Ovid, as far as I remember."
You bring such a refined cultural component to our rough on the edges group. :-)
No, but seriously, I love your quotes. Always informative and clever.
"(I did it not as a "therapy" consciously done, but it worked perfectly, as if.)"
Well, a little brother's job IS to be annoying! :-)
Good work there, little one.
"looking at any horrible or disgusting movie you may take it as a test about how much you are centered in reality or not"
Well, what bothers me the most about the bits is saw of, well, Saw, is the mental cruelty itself. The carefully thought sadism. This is why I refuse to watch a movie of that series when I happen to identify one while channel-surfing.
But beyond my bucking against the twisted voyeurism (pleonasm?) intent of such a series, many horror movies annoy me, more than anything else. I mean, they are always built on the paradigm that something horribly bloody, mean and scary is suddenly happening. Why? How? It's not an issue, in fact you are required to forget your acute feeling of absurdity and start shivering at it all. Well, it makes me feel sorry for whomever would enter such a mindset seriously. Feels like deliberate masochism: "I want to be afraid, and if it is pointlessly absurd all the better, I don't want to question my attraction to pain and fear." Somehow, at a very young age my sense of logic rebelled against such a meanie view of the world.
On a further level, such films might make me laugh at how ridiculously bad the whole thing is. I don't even need to remind myself "it's only a dream/illusion, it can't be real", because I just can't suspend disbelief enough to NEED exiting the movie.
And then there's the whole category of poor SFX, usually added on top of the mediocrity.
Now, a good horror movie, with a solid story, and not overdoing either the ketchup squirting or the pointless slaughters, that I can enjoy for a good thrill.
Never gave me nightmares.
The only thing that ever gave me nightmares, is the absurd sadism or mindless cruelty of REAL life. Essentially, with pests bent on attacking my tranquility. Basically, I'm allergic to real nastiness.
And I feel an underlying such nastiness in the Saw series. Go ahead, don't worry, spoil me the whole thing: is the total headcase behind all those far-fetched machines ever identified? Do we ever know WHY he plays Batman Extreme? Is HE ever caught by his sick games?
That's the only thing I care to know. Not out of curiosity for the stories. Just for the writer who came up with that stuff. I want to understand the person, to know whether it's anything more that the cruelty equivalent of the bloodshed in 300.
The only fascination I find in exclusively sadistic movies, is the tormented mind that came up with it.
What makes MY world nightmarish is not horror movies, it's people who want to view, live and make this world into the sick joke of a sadistic God. They spittle static on my serenity.
Now, back to films and material with "oh, heavens no, that's bad!" sexual stimulation, those who are not hopelessly hollow and of poor taste I have nothing against. Again, the only thing that could bother me is the exhibitionism of a sick mind, and in present case that would be fanatic pornophobes.
The stuff that gives me nightmares. (Getting redundant here...)
Ironic, isn't it? That porno might be as pointlessly tasteless as horror, even though they're theoretically antinomic: violence is intrinsically stupid, sex is intrinsically harmless. And yet they both make for some very poor movies. (P'horror movies? Poorn movies?)
"Now, what happens, if the canvas is nothingness?"
Castles in the sky, buddy. Castles in the sky.
Miyazaki, anyone?
I'm just re-watching The League Of Gentlemen, BBC series, wonderful combo of humor and horror.
Well, humorous horror I just love to bits. Like Evil Dead 3. The previous two I only found very efficiently scary -and enjoyable in that aspect-. I think I saw them when I was a bit too young. Watching ED2 again a few years back, I could see all the clever dark humour there as well. But the third took on a definite comedy tone, a bit like the first Pirates of the Caribbean with its sometimes oddball zombies.
How did we end up here from an Ancient Greece babe shagging an aquatic bird?
Oh. Never mind.
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