?about under age-professional spoiler
creepie
>
>A question to all of the film freaks in this group,
> A few nights ago, a buddy of mine had me over to watch some flicks and we
>watched "Pretty Baby", which I had never seen. It was an ok film but what
surprised
>me the most was the nudity involving Brooke Shields and the amount of it that
>appeared in the film. It was pretty surprising especially for an American
film, with
>all of the naked scenes that Shields was in, and I wondered if the film caused
lots
>of controversy when it was released. My main question-Have there been other
>films, before or after, and either American or foreign, that have had such
>extensive under age nudity and what what kind of backlash did they encounter,
if
>any? I am just curious since recently "The Professional" had stirred up some
>discussions along these lines and that had no nudity. Please post to the group
>since I have no email access. Thanks,
> "Simon"
>
>
Dear "Simon":
I'm not really a part of this "group," but I think you bring up an interesting
point. There is the infamous case of Traci Lords who was in so many porno
movies while under 18 that the hapless girl was practically a cottage industry
of for kiddie porn-makers. Clever Traci then co-financed the only skin flicks
of her OVER 18, then subsequently reported her age to the "authorities;" her
kiddie porn movies were unceremoniously torn from the unclean hands of would-be
admirers everywhere and those jonesing for a dose of Traci had to rent, buy or
steal copies of the movies in which she held a monetary stake.
Over the counter but equally questionable is "The Professional." I've seen
"The Professional" praised and qualifiedly panned (most American critics avoid
criticizing foreign "films," especially those made by "les French," for fear of
being to "American-dumb" or "repressed"), but my personal take on it is that
it's thinly veiled kiddie eroticism dressed up as a "stylish crime thriller."
Luc Besson will argue that Leon, the "cleaner" who teaches Mathilda to kill, is
in fact more child-like than the child -- OK, I'll buy that. My problem is not
with that relationship (it's no more "realistic" than anything else in the
movie, including taking the Roosevelt Island tram to Jersey, among other
gaffes) but with the relationship between the director, his camera and the
lovely and talented Natalie Portman, all of 12 years-old and being photographed
like a bottle blonde in a Playboy-After-Dark "video centerfold." The
outstanding performances of both Portman and Jean Reno nearly overcome the
film's naively exploitative nature. The story is so similar to Kubrick's
adaptation of Nabokov's LOLITA only without "getting" the essential thrust of
the latter -- that Lolita's "relationship" with Humbert ruins her life.
Mathilda's seems unchanged at the end of "The Professional" to the point that
she even says an identical line in the end as she had in the beginning.
By the way, in the early drafts of the script there was a love scene. It's
anyone's guess who killed it -- certainly not (m'ais d'accord!) the redoubtable
M. Besson.
A better movie along the same lines is "NAMBLA: Men Who Love Boys." Different
gender, same situation.
creepie
Shari L. Rosenblum
fake i.d. Poor Traci.
Unless we're going to buy into Catherine Mackinnon's garbage about how
women cannot consent to pornography (because, she says, society renders
them incapable of consent), Traci (like the older Linda Marchiano (?) aka
Lovelace) was no dupe -- and no innocent. The fact that she continued
her porn career after 18, that she submitted false i.d., that she was a
married woman, and thus no longer a "minor" for most legal purposes, are
not factors to be swept under the rug.
The Supreme Court ruled on the Traci Lords issue this year -- focusing
on the reprehensibly worded first-amendment-offensive federal statute
that says that you don't have to know that a person is underaged to be
guilty of the crime of using underaged actors in porn. The Court
said the statute was fine, as long as you don't read the words as if
they were English (that, of course, being my paraphrase of the ridiculous
rationale the Court gave). And who were the only beacons of light for
First Amendment protections? Scalia and Thomas.
Makes you wonder who the "conservatives" are.
Shari (sl...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
creepie
<SL...@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> writes:
The fact that she continued
>her porn career after 18, that she submitted false i.d., that she was a
>married woman, and thus no longer a "minor" for most legal purposes,
are
>not factors to be swept under the rug.
Your implication that a marriage and fake ID somehow imply maturity is
troublingly naive. The fact that Traci continued her porn career after
turning 18 is irrelevant.
>The Supreme Court ruled on the Traci Lords issue this year -- focusing
>on the reprehensibly worded first-amendment-offensive federal statute
>that says that you don't have to know that a person is underaged to be
>guilty of the crime of using underaged actors in porn. The Court
>said the statute was fine, as long as you don't read the words as if
>they were English (that, of course, being my paraphrase of the
ridiculous
>rationale the Court gave). And who were the only beacons of light for
>First Amendment protections? Scalia and Thomas.
>
>Makes you wonder who the "conservatives" are.
>
> Shari (sl...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
>
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Putting nude kids on film to
titillate pederasts and "erotica connoisseurs" alike is a crime. A
pornographer’s claim not to know the age of his or her actor is
irrelevant; people lie all the time, especially when their livelihood
and freedom is at stake. I will agree that the First Amendment is
nebulously constructed, perhaps too open to interpretation to do any
good. The courts make mistakes all the time with regards to abuse,
which is why many of us own guns.
creepie
Shari L. Rosenblum
> The fact that she continued
>>her porn career after 18, that she submitted false i.d., that she was a
>>married woman, and thus no longer a "minor" for most legal purposes,
>are
>>not factors to be swept under the rug.
>Your implication that a marriage and fake ID somehow imply maturity is
>troublingly naive. The fact that Traci continued her porn career after
>turning 18 is irrelevant.
was what I was commenting on. And I didn't imply that marriage and a
fake i.d. were synonymous with maturity -- I stated up front that
they are both means of abdicating one's right to legally attribute blame
elsewhere. You may find it troubling, sir, but it is hardly naive.
The fact that Lords continued her career when she was of an age the
law considers capable of making such a decision -- and that she did
so under her own auspices -- suggests that her legal claim of exploitation
is one more act of her knowing exactly when and where to stroke for the
camera.
She's playing on men's beliefs (and need to believe) that they are still
the force that controls us. Traci doesn't need your protection -- and
though she may be a perfect symbol for what men will suffer for pleasure,
let her not be a poster-girl for feminists are anti-pornographers (two
states which I hold antithetical...)
>Putting nude kids on film to
>titillate pederasts and "erotica connoisseurs" alike is a crime.
Model Penal Code ... do you mean child abuse? 'Cause that's a different
case and has its own punishments.
>A pornographer"s claim not to know the age of his or her actor is
>irrelevant;
to convict postal carriers who know only that they're distributing
material related to film. Really. The Court said, read it as reckless
disregard -- to protect postal carriers. But it's still left open
enough to convict you if you send a tape to a friend and the tape,
unbeknownst to you, contains an underaged child engaged in an obscene
act (defined by the Court in Miller). Feel safe?
>I will agree that the First Amendment is
>nebulously constructed, perhaps too open to interpretation to do any
>good. The courts make mistakes all the time with regards to abuse,
>which is why many of us own guns.
in plain English -- and if it's vague to anyone, I suggest they return
to primers. To believe it's nebulous is to read the decisions of
political judges rather than the text itself. To believe that courts
misinterpret it by mistake rather than by plan is to prove the Federalists
had a point in distrusting the judiciousness of the masses.
You may wish to read the legislative history of the First Amendment, if
the text is unclear to you. Madison submitted that we be free in
everything we think, do, write, speak, publish, or print. Jefferson
suggested the same, making exceptions only for libel and treason. You
may note that pornography was not excluded from the guarantee by either
of them. (I don't know what Fisher Ames or George Mason said on the
floor of the Convention -- but I know that pornography was never in
question.)
But perhaps you're of those who believe neither text nor history. Let us
then move on to political theory. From Milton's Areopagitica to the most
recent decisions of the Court, prior restraint has been the main evil
against which the First Amendment is to be the block. And nothing that
"chills" free speech is to be tolerated. A law which punishes those
who don't know they're breaking it is more chilling, and more like
prior restraint than most anything the Brits had imposed.
If you want to go against child pornographers, go after them on child abuse.
If that's their crime, that should define their punishment. Don't go after
the producers, distributers, and vendors of the films (as the approved law
does) -- the First Amendment shouldn't suffer because law enforcement is
ineffective. Make it more effective. Let the cops do their job, and let
freedom reign. (Sound cliched? Only to those who've given up on the
Constitution.)
As for the Second Amendment, which you seem also to have misread, I suggest
again the text (unambiguous for anyone who understands grammar and isn't
motivated by some political goal), the history, and the political theory.
If you disagree with it, vote it out -- don't ignore it, and don't lie
about it. Deception -- even well meaning deception -- should never be
used in place of the amendment process.
Shari (sl...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Shari L. Rosenblum
have a different set of social mores from ours. Here's a true story
to confirm that.
Some years ago I was video-interviewing students on the streets of
Paris, asking them about their lives and values. One of the women
I interviewed said (in paraphrased translation, of course), "Americans
are so uptight." "Like how?" I asked. "You know," she said, "like
they won't walk around their homes naked." "Yeah, I guess we are,"
I conceded.
As for the movie poster for Beau-Pere, I don't know what was shown
here, but in France the poster had the young girl topless on her
step-father's lap. Why is that not a shock? Well, for one thing
women sunbathe topless on the banks of the Seine, in Parisian city pools,
everywhere in the South of France, etc. -- I was shocked when my friends
-- and their mothers -- took off their tops with their fathers and
brothers present. But they did. And they had no sexual concern about
it at all.
On another of those interviews I did, I asked a different
young woman how one could meet a man while sunbathing topless and
retain a sense of "modesty" ("pudeur" -- an untranslatable word) when
out with him. "So American," she said, "nudity isn't sex. One's
aesthetic, the other's experiential. We don't confuse them."
Shari (sl...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Sasha Stone
>
>On another of those interviews I did, I asked a different
>young woman how one could meet a man while sunbathing topless and
>retain a sense of "modesty" ("pudeur" -- an untranslatable word) when
>out with him. "So American," she said, "nudity isn't sex. One's
>aesthetic, the other's experiential. We don't confuse them."
>
> Shari (sl...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Yeah, I find it endlessly fascinating that we can see people raped,
beaten, shot, tortured on television but cannot show a woman's breasts.
Bizarre. It doesn't make sense to me. Why was the oral sex part of Basic
Instinct too "hot" to leave in (it's in the re-release, "director's" cut)
but all the ice pick stuff was okay? Why is it easier to see a bed
smeared with the blood of a dead body than it is to see, well, you know.
-Sasha
--
"The only parallel I can think of to this is having the zoo come to you,
one animal at a time; and I suspect that what you hear one week from the
giraffe is contradicted the next week by the baboon."
-Flannery O'Connor, on the lecture series "How the Writer Writes"
Sasha Stone
in(stuff deleted, read previous article, for chrissakes.)>
For Alun, et al., this is Flixman:
>
>>Many people, including myself, feel that it matters not a bit what you
>>may be able to demonstrate about the particular victim of exploitation.
>>The production and sale of child pornography remains reprehensible, and
>>its existence a threat to every child, and, to all sane society, a moral
>>cancer.
>
Me:
It's true, yes, but I would argue that Lords couldn't really be
considered a "child" as it were. At sixteen most of my friends (at
fourteen really) were already on the pill, already having abortions,
etc., So I don't know. Because the law says it's so doesn't always make
it so, in my mind. Again, I bring up the 13 year old who bludgeoned an
entire family to death and was still considered a "minor." I don't know
why it was decided that 18 was the age at which one becomes an adult.
How does one measure that in the hard cold reality of this corrupt world?
Shari:
>Reprehensible, definitely. A
danger, unquestionably. Your right to >abridge, not at all.
>
>In your description, the definition of exploitation seems to be up to
>you. Doesn't matter what can be proven? Why not? Decision's already
>made? That's not how it works ...
>
Me:
I suppose what we get down to here is whether or not Lords herself felt
exploited, right? Creepie et al. seemes to be saying that it doesn't
matter what Lords felt about it are two things I have to say about it,
for what it's worth: Child molestor's will often say (as is proved in
NAMBLA) that the child consented. And it is always a gross
misinterpretation on their part, given the state of mind of the child,
the pressure they were put under, etc., if child protection laws are in
place in order that someone will be a few years older to make a
difficult decision, then the system screwed Tracy Lords and she fought
back. More power to her, I say. What is the point of having these laws
unless they are enforced? So, don't blame the victim if the victim was
let down by the system. Think back to what it was like to be sixteen;
there are so many confusing things going on how is anyone, let alone
a drug addict, able to make the right decision? No, it was the
"filmmakers" that turned an irresponsible eye, not the young girl who was
caught up in all of it. That's simply the fact of the matter.
Flixman:
>>Further, your argument seems to say that if you abuse and rape a child,
>>so degrading her that, when she reaches "legal age," she chooses to
>>become a prostitute, that her choice of career suddenly legitimizes the
>>abuse.
Me:
Yeah, what he said.
>
Flixman, I assume:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Republicans are opposed to big government <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>>>excepting those parts of government that carry guns.<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
Shari:
>This sig, btw, is completely false. Republicans believe in guns as a
>means to protect themselves (i.e., the people) from the government.
>The militia mentioned in the Second Amendment is -- according to all
>historical documents -- intended as necessary to fight the army should
>the government become -- abusive ...
> Shari (sl...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Me:
Shari, can I buy you a drink? One thing I cannot stomach are the
hypocrites that hold up anti-abortion signs that oppose murder while
murdering the doctors who perform the abortions...Oh, will it ever end?
Yes, will someone please do away with the NRA? Do something with them to
make them go away, sweep them under some rug somewhere, pile them in a
pick-up truck and dump them in the Hudson. Please.
Yes, let's oppose murdering unborn children but let's, as a State, murder
criminals because they murdered someone else. But murder of any kind is
wrong. When it suits us, that is... Read TIME magazine and all the kids
who shot themselves in the head because a gun was in the house...please.
All the freaks who can walk into a gun shop and buy something to wipe out
everyone in the Macdonald's. Oh, yeah, and please don't take away our
guns...please. Especially not the semi-automatics out there. Damn, we
need to protect ourselves afterall.
By all means, let's make it easier to get guns.
Give me a fucking break.
mustang...@gmail.com
~Lolita