The War On Porn

I don’t like horror movies. I like slasher movies even less. Okay, it’s a wild generalisation – but really I have no interest whatsoever in watching a bunch of actors, especially women, running around ostensibly having the shit scared out of them by the prospect of being monstered by one grisly psychopath or another.

To take one reasonably high-profile example, I thought Cape Fear was a miserable travesty, a dreadful betrayal of the talents of one of the greatest film directors of all time, Martin Scorsese, and of his long-time acting lynch-pin, Robert de Niro. How could the men who had made Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas waste their magnificent talents on useless, manipulative drivel like this? It isn’t that I have a problem with violence: it is integral to a lot of great movies. Raging Bull was fiercely grisly at times because it had to be. But, essentially, there is nothing to slasher movies other than the violence, which is what makes it a form of pornography.
It is a genre that preys on people’s worst instincts. Some fans take a form of malicious pleasure in watching the spectacle of the actors – or the characters, rather – blubbing in fear. Especially if they’re women with their clothes half-torn off. Others get a twisted buzz out of sharing in the fear factor. They want the worst to be threatened so that they can cower in terror. They need dead bodies and mutilation so that they can scream in horror as the knife goes in or somebody’s head gets torn off. I’m not sure which is the more demeaning.
In case you haven’t seen it, Cape Fear tells the heart-warming story of a rapist, played by de Niro, who sets about terrorising the public prosecutor who defended him (played by Nick Nolte), and who purposely failed to keep him out of jail. A morality tale of sorts lurks therein. But in truth it is all about how violent and nasty the Robert de Niro character can be. There is a brutal rape scene, during which he bites a lump out of the cheek of a female colleague of the prosecutor. He pursues Nolte relentlessly. There’s a couple of murders along the way before the family flee to their house boat in Cape Fear.
The beast follows. Rather than killing Nolte’s character when he has the chance, however, he elects to rape his wife and daughter first. Or that’s the plan.
Part of the thrill for audiences, presumably, is watching the embodiment of evil – in this case represented by the de Niro character – ultimately being extirpated. He is nearly burned to death by Nolte’s daughter first, but survives to mount one last frantic assault. Finally, there is a fight to the death with Nolte, and the uplifting end of the movie – not – sees a psychotic, raging de Niro being dragged into the river shackled to a part of the boat, and going under for ever.
This, of course, is positively classy stuff compared to a lot of what passes for movie-making in the horror, slasher or ‘psychlogical thriller’ mode. Whereas the likes of Hitchcock generally used the power of suggestion, nowadays it often seems that the more hideously graphic you can make the violence, the better audiences love it.
It might not be the most fashionable position to adopt, but I’m inclined to consider all of this stuff – or most of it at any rate – hopelessly degrading, stupid, exploitative and wasteful. I certainly don’t want to expend any precious time viewing it. Would I want young kids to watch it? No. Would I recommend to adult friends to watch it? No. Does it have any redeeming quality, point or purpose? Not that I can see. Would I care if no one ever made another slasher movie? No.
But, on the other hand, do I want them banned? No. Censored then? No. Kept off the internet? No. Filtered so that children can’t see them? No.
So which is more objectionable: a slasher movie or a film aimed at the erotic market, which shows consenting adults fornicating to beat the band? It’s obvious. A graphically violent slasher movie, featuring crazed aggression, multiple bloody scenes, and assorted other forms of mayhem, murder and death is far more objectionable than anything in which people are copulating, engaged in oral sex or otherwise enjoying carnal pleasure of one kind or another together on screen.
There is, of course, a lot of stuff available online now in the pornographic realm that goes a lot further than people getting butt-naked and screwing. It is a point that Anne Sexton has made in her column in the pages of Hot Press recently: some of it is irredeemably nasty and unpleasant. ‘Rape pornography’ is a particularly noxious strand, which offers an index of just how low people will go to make money.
But we know this already. So is the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, right to ask the Internet Service Providers, in a measure which purports to protect children, to filter pornography so that people have to opt-in to access it? And should Enda Kenny follow suit?
Here’s what I think.
There are laws in place to deal with sex crimes. Paedophilia is one. Rape is another. And anyone who trades in material which depicts either of these crimes happening in real life, to real people, leaves themselves open to prosecution and imprisonment. That is the way it should be. And the law should be applied rigorously.
But it is vital to retain a sense of proportion. In the first instance, the most important thing that you can do for your children is to be good and kind to them, stay close to them, show them as far as you can by your own actions what matters and instill positive values by example.
The second thing is that we too often underestimate ourselves – and youngsters in particular. Most people have an innate sense of decency. They know instinctively if something is wrong. And so what we need to do, through education, is to heighten the commitment, the solidarity and the generosity that young people feel towards one another – and the natural proclivity most of them have to do the right thing.
The old-fashioned, conservative view is that anything to do with sex should be hidden – which is why David Cameron’s move is likely to play well with his party’s voters. But it is a nonsensical position. For a start, there’s nothing wrong with sexual activity. It is just the where, the when and the how that people need to think carefully about. But also, it is just one strand in a barrage of popular cultural influences, any of which can make a claim to being well worth banning.
Slasher movies are an example. But in games, comics, books and films, violence is everywhere. Similarly, between bullying on Facebook, sexting pictures that were originally shared in confidence and vile abuse on Twitter, there is more than enough unpleasantness to go around. The only reasonable conclusion you can come to in a world of information overload is that the only battle worth fighting is to work as hard as you can to bring out the best in people.
Censorship is a crude instrument. Left in the hands of service providers to manage, the law of unintended consequences would undoubtedly come into effect. It would stifle creativity, block ideas and generally work against the kind of free, open and tolerant society towards which we should be aiming. No good will come of it.
So let’s not go there. If we put our energies into positive policies, they will bear fruit – and together we will achieve remarkable things.