Wasn’t really so worried about the “crazies with guns” side of things, there’s probably a lot more going on there than a few dodgy videos and Shock-Rock. Your average sociopath is born heading in that direction, and given a helping hand all the way down from those that have influence over them. A reassuringly rare convergence of negatives.
No - I was more on about truncated childhoods - okay, there’s some evidence that better nutrition is causing accelerated maturity in our children - they reach adolescence faster than I/we (how old are you Zeno…?) used to, so the abysses and elation of teenage sexuality begins all the sooner… But the more unusual hardcore porn, and some of the nastier, realer, darker flicks don’t help. Ken Park, for example. Henry - Portrait of a serial killer for example. Man bites Dog for example. And the last two are from years ago - I’m not into arthouse/film noire as much as I used to be - I don’t keep up with the minor films - but God only knows what a media producer of such an ambition would have to portray to shock in these jaded days. See
this thread for what I and others thought of hardcore porn’s effects on the young.
I don’t know - call me old-fashioned or completely unrealistic if you like, but I think kids get exposed to the grubbier sides of life, before they’ve had chance to experience the nicer sides of life for themselves. Life allows us little time to be innocent as it is, why not protect that of the young a little longer…? I mean - what have we really got to lose…? Do you like to see some of the shit that gets shown on TV/cinemas/DVD…?, would you miss it…? Would you be a lesser person for it…? I know when it comes to the idea of censorship - every liberal minded adult’s bullshit detector starts beeping - but it isn’t us that pays the price of fighting for this particular right to view anything and everything the human imagination’s darker side can dream up… Is it…? - We’re grown up, full of swagger - “Bring it on - we can take it - you bastards” we say somewhere deep down, “I’m hard.” And we’re right. But children, however much they might think they are - however much they wish to be, aren’t. They’re soft - malleable, and the things they see, get right into their heads and stay.
I look at a pretty blonde schoolgirl - and I see, a pretty blonde schoolgirl. But little John Doe 12, who accidently watched “Stabfest High” on his brother’s DVD player when he was 7, he looks at a pretty blonde schoolgirl, and though most of him sees the reality, a little part of him, the part of him that wet his pants when the nasty guy in the hood cut off the pretty blonde schoolgirl’s head and then did something weird with her corpse, that only now he realizes was sex, sees a flashback to that scene. Nice way to start out on sexuality’s rocky path to the plateau of lurve…
I know it’s out of the bag. And too late to put it back in. But we could at least make it harder to get, and make people in general, not just parents - more aware of what kids absorb from the world around them.
Crap - anti-censorship’ers all harp on about their right to choose, their right to watch anything they wish… But the thing is - if I go out and make the nastiest, darkest, most hopeless exploititive porn/slasher reallity-TV flick imaginable… And don’t advertize it all over the broadsheets as “Hey shitheads - I dare you to see this film” - just let it lie, dissappear, like the video from “The Ring” - It is not those anti-censorship people who will seek it out, now is it…? They/you/we are only argueing against censorship for the principle of the thing - as you say - we don’t like the idea of an ‘appointed’ other to effect what we can experience.
And once we’ve finally defeated the firewall of censorship, even in the last tattered and sheepish format existant today, we will go back to our nice suburban houses, have a cheese and wine party and clap ourselves on the back… “Oh Quentin - aren’t we so right-on…? We won one for the people there didn’t we, one in the eye for the MAN…!” Ho-ho-hee-hee.
Then 10 years later, and they’re sitting with their heads in their hands, wondering why little Johnny seems so fucked up - well, it won’t even cross their tiny minds that maybe they helped him on his way…