Sephychu said:
MelasZepheos said:
The thing is, what you're saying is that there does have to be a line somewhere. I'm saying there doesn't. A person's right to privacy is an important one, and as long as what they are watching doesn't harm someone, I don't think it's anybody's right to tell them they can't watch it.
This movie depicts horrible events, but it isn't somebody filming them. Nothing in this film is actually happening, so if other people get off to that, it isn't wrong to them, it's very right, and people who find it wrong being in the majority isn't enough for me to find it right to deny them pleasure, as long as it occurs at nobody else's expense.
snip.
I suppose a lot of my concern raises from 'if a person's privacy is needed because it involves things like this, I'd be concerned about what sort of person they were.'
I guess the best way to phrase this would be to say: Imagine if you had to disclose all your viewings to someone. It would be embarassing, but actually I would be fine with all my porn, all my erotica, everything I read or watch, being shared, because underneath I have nothing to hide in what I view. People who insist on having their privacy make me nervous because it suggests to me they have something to hide.
The sort of person that would watch this is obviously a torture porn fetishist, and there is a difference between a torture porn fetishist and a more common Sadist or Masochist. Sado-Masochism is a complex but understood series of internal checks and balances between the sadist and the masochist, which is why they go so well together. Sadism is not so much getting off on the thought of someone feeling pain but (according to what I've read and my small sampling of sado-masochist friends) it's the knowledge that your sexual control and arousal is leading to someone else's sexual arousal through domination. It might self-destructive, but actually since the masochist's sexual arousal through being dominated is tied to the sadist's arousal through the dominance, it's actually a sharing of the roles for mutual benefit, much as any relationship.
A movie like this is about torture porn though, and torture porn (again as I have come to understand) is about directly eliciting sexual pleasure through seeing somebody else suffer. The ultimate expression of this naturally being witnessing an actual death (hardcore torture porn if you will).
Now I might go as far to say that drawn torture porn is about on the border of what I would deem as okay, as I would also place lolicon (conservatively) on that line. The drawn nature, the separation from the event, make it easier to understand the fantasy aspect, and since the text and pictures carry no inherent emotion the pleasure of the victim can be assumed in all but the sickest. When it moves to live action though, the distinction between real and fantasy becomes ever more blurred.
The sort of person who would read lolicon is not the sort of person who watch a live action depiction of child sexual intercourse, in general. The sort of person who would watch live action child porn fantasy, I would argue, is the sort of person more likely to indulge in actual child pornography, because once the line has been blurred to live action, why not real action?
And so back to our torture fetishist, the sort of person who would watch this movie and like it for its content is someone I would consider to be a rather dangerous individual, and I suspect would also be someone (to link to my first point) who would not be willing to divulge the nature of his leisure materials. Because he had something to hide. I think most of the misunderstanding comes that people can't quite understand how people can genuinely get aroused by this because their own reaction is so opposed to it.
You yourself said you felt uncomfortable and ashamed, probably in the same way you would feel if you watched a depiction of child abuse, but there are genuinely people in the world who get aroused by that, and frankly, why give them any validation? The fantasy aspect of cinema is diminished somewhat when the acts become too realistic, and the gore too lovingly rendered. This very film's plot is built around something that conceivably could happen, someone could watch these films, get so aroused by the idea that they attempt it. Child molestors have large quantities of child abuse films on their harddrives, so what do you suppose torture enthusiasts (and they do exist) have on theirs?
Sorry for the long answer, which doesn't even begin to really explore my points, just give the best overview I can, but I really need to sleep now so I won't be able to respond.
