Hardcore pornography

I did mention this before on some censorship thread or other. Yes, it is now perfectly legal to buy BBFC-approved R18 hardcore vids from licensed sex shops - you still cannot purchase or sell them via the post, as children may be using their parents' credit cards to buy 'em (this is according to the mentalist Trading Standards Authority...)

"Anything goes" - erm, not quite. The BBFC still censors most forms of bondage/pain etc, gay group sex (illegal in this country - remember the 'Spanner' trial?), spitting/slapping/felching, outdoor sex ('cos it qualifies as 'obscenity in a public place')and 'female ejaculation' (the BBFC has been 'advised' this doesn't exist, and therefore is the same as pissing, which is also a no-no.)

Visit the BBFC website or www.melonfarmers.co.uk (an excellent anti- censorship site) for the latest info.

The job of BBFC classifiers must have got a lot more interesting/hellish in the last year or so. Does anyone know any BBFC classifiers? I once read an interview with one of them. He was just your average coasting through life guy who'd answered an ad in the paper. Didn't really need any qualifications. I wonder if would drive one insane. Do you think you'd end up hating films/sex?

[...]spitting/slapping/felching, outdoor sex ('cos it qualifies as 'obscenity in a public place')and 'female ejaculation'[...]

...these are a few of my fay-vo-rite thiiings...

From the way the BBFC guy and lawyers on the programme were talking, I don't see how anything that is legal to do could now be illegal to publish. So, aside from the gay group sex and some S&M things, I don't follow. Or is female ejaculation illegal?

Only if they don't have a proper penis.

To go off at a slight tangent I have just been enlightened as to the rules on nude dancing in public places in London. I was reading that Peter Stringfellow was moaning as his gaff is in Westminster and the girls cannot go naked whereas Spearmint Rhino is in Camden and the girls can go right down to their Brazilians. My sleazy colleague informs me that this is not quite right, all the girls can dance naked on stage (hurray!) but if you want a nude table / lap dance you want to be in Camden. How confusing for the man about town in search of nudity.

As far as I understand it N, Ben Dover (aka Mr Linzi Drew) submitted one of his porn flicks to the BBFC with a 'female ejaculation' scene in it. The BBFC consulted 'medical experts' who told them that there is no such thing as female ejaculation - your own experience may tell you differently - and that therefore the woman in question was not ejaculating but urinating. As pissing is still considered an 'obscene' act by the Board, the scene in question was removed. It's not illegal to have a crap, but I don't think the BBFC are in any hurry to pass scat flicks either (although years ago they passed Wim Wenders' 'Kings Of The Road', which does indeed feature one of the main characters dropping a log. It's that old art movie snobbery again.)

BTW, I should say that all this info was gathered for 'professional purposes' (I was running Bizarre Magazine's retail website last year, and at one point we looked into the possibility of selling R18s on the site) rather than any personal pervy obsession. Honest.

And I think Mark S and I both know/knew Richard Falcon, who worked for the BBFC for many years. Dunno if he's still there. He was a big expert on 'New German Cinema' and a mad keen horror movie fan - nothing like you would imagine a censor to be.

Erections and close-ups used to be illegal in Britain??

Yes, apparently James Ferman refused to believe they existed.

You can't paint Ferman as the Victorian, he is actually a pretty liberal guy. It's the Clare Shorts, Ann Widdecombes and Tessa Jowells who are the problem, ie politicians who condemn things they 'haven't seen and don't want to see'.

From The Guardian's profile of Widdicombe: 'Asked about sex, she answers: "Yuk! Spare me! That's one thing I don't miss." She prefers her cats.'

I'm not criticising Ferman at all. I was just making a joke. (see female ejaculation, above)*

*Not literally, because it doesn't exist, duh.

It was just that 'refused to believe they existed' which sounded a lot like the old story of Queen Victoria refusing to dismiss some lesbian governesses in her employ. After having lesbianism explained to her, she simply said 'Such things do not happen in England' and kept the governesses on.

Momus, see the Stupid old bat dies, aged 91 thread for ILE's mammoth mark s vs DG 'should we bash the BBFC?' debate. Your name is taken in vain several times, but I'm sure you don't mind.

I'll look at that, thanks.

In the present context, the interesting thing is the mis-identification of the 'ectoplasm' of female ejaculation with urine. Usually people who witness events they fail to believe in suspect their own senses (rub their own eyes, or other organs). As in the Queen Victoria case, such innocence or lack of experience has a permissive outcome (the governesses remain). But in the case of female ejaculation, the scene was immediately reclassified as another known obscenity rather than something unknown. I think here we see the illogicality of those who insist on classifying everything, and refusing to let anything remain 'unknown'. In this light, perhaps the job of 'classifiers' is more, not less, offensive than the job of 'censors' (as they formerly called themselves). The hubris of obfuscating classification is a greater sin than the childish arrogance of mere prohibition.

As pissing is still considered an 'obscene' act by the Board, the scene in question was removed.

Surely there are lots of examples of urination on film and TV, plenty of them fairly explicit? For some reason, the only ones I can think of at the moment are Chris Morris-related: the "Kilroy-Silk goes mad" sketch in jam and the end of the "Good/Bad Science" episode of Brass Eye.

a friend of mine stands to lose all the cash she invested in a porn film cos it's illegal to distribute!! it's actually got v little sex in it, it's either the spanking or the pissing that makes it illegal. just so you know

Could she not just cut out the pissing and spanking? Or is the director a bit precious about his/her art?

Well anyway, this is all very confusing. I can see I am going to have to write a letter of complaint to the makers 'Sex & Shopping' for misleading me so.

Having read the other thread, I'm sorta glad I was on tour and didn't have to waste three days of my life fighting this battle. But one image remains from one of Mark S's points there, the sad picture of a chastened Genesis P. Orridge reconciled to society by a musical version of the BBFC, staying on to make watered-down versions of slightly-less-throbbing gristle in Britain rather than fleeing to Brooklyn.

I think Mark was arguing the reasonableness of the BBFC, and even hinting that little BBFCs should spring up all over the arts world. But instead he painted a chilly picture of a 'parallel P.Orridge' as the Winston Smith who loves Big Brother, the post- Ludovico's Clockwork Alex who retches on hearing Beethoven.

How truly sad is the idea of 'responsible art'. Any real artist would preder exile, with at least the possibility of revenge on the tyrannous old homeland in the form of a harsh and unpalatable Meltdown Festival.

Could she not just cut out the pissing and spanking?

First thing I said. THis would leave them with no film apaprently beyond "Hello you're a new servant" and "Right back below stairs with you" or something along those lines

Sounds great! Repackage it as an 'Upstairs Downstairs' style heritage romp and flog it to the Americans.

Hmm, i dont know if we have hardcore porn here in the states...

Kate Winslet widdles down her leg in 'Holy Smoke'. One of the highlights of my life.

I heard she had a stunt pisser.

Also Candy Clark in 'The Man Who Fell To Earth', when Mr Newton reveals his yellow contact lenses.

yeah, I saw that documentary (ahem) too.

gen didn't flee so he could make "unwatered down" TG stuff in the US since i. he'd already (long) moved away from his hardcore work and ii. the threat in this country was that HIS CHILDREN WERE GOING TO BE REMOVED (ie — arguably anyway — because a respectable legal line could NOT BE DRAWN between his work and child porn, he was in imminent danger of being sent to jail as an abuser, a charge totally w/o foundation, it goes w./o saying: if something like the BBFC had existed *in* his area of concern, then maybe the worst danger he would have faced was a snip here and a snip there, not a grotesque career-threatening miscarriage of justice)

i'm glad momus was away too, as we managed to edge the argt away from pure abstract self-regarding essentially meaningless "principle" this time, and explain how pragmatic systems actually allow much more than free-for-alls will: i have no intention starting it again

(besides i seem to recall dave q had the best of the argt on that thread anyway)

i don't actually know richard falcon, tho andrew's characterisation is abt right: he was one the censors ousted when ferman made it a one-man outfit; it's andreas whittam-smith currently

ferman i think wanted to rationalise and respectabilise the process, which was a loser of a notion: he became a egomaniac, cleared out all his colleagues, and muddled on on his own for a year or three

gen of course got his own back on all justice systems anywhere when he won a lawsuit against rick r*bin: r*bin's studio, where e was recording caught fire, rick had of course ignored safety provision, gen had to fling himself out of a window for dear life, breaking his arm rather badly. He sued, claiming his guitar playing abilities had been damaged beyond reair, and r*bin ended paying up a LOT of money. Why didn't r* bin's defence lawyer play some of TG's old tapes? WHAT guitar playing ability? Anyway, that's what I heard and doubtless every word is a verdommte lie...

That's the story as I heard it too, from David J of Love and Rockets who was at the same party and took the stand in the case as a character witness for Genesis, I believe. David also mentioned that before the party they had all been playing a game of 'hunt the buried voodoo doll' in the garden.

I don't know about Gen's music, but he's still making some pretty unwatered-down visual art from his red-brick outpost of Hell in Brooklyn. All the paintings I've seen by him in gallery shows have 'blood, sperm, urine' as materials on the label. No water, however.

water! yuk!!

Perhaps he consulted his own personal BBFC (Brooklyn Brotherhood of Fornication and Copulation?) and they advised him to make cuts in scenes involving water.

There's a Frontline special going out right now on PBS called 'American Porn'. One fact that emerges is the way changes in administration have changed the industry completely. The anything-goes 70s were reversed by the Reagan administration, which prosecuted all the big porn producers under existing legislation which uses the standard 'Is it offensive to general community values?' The government could win against anyone, if the will was there. Most juries had never seen hardcore porn, and were easily shocked, making prosecution a foregone conclusion.

When Clinton and Reno arrived, the will was no longer there, and porn prospered. But the arrival of Bush and Ashscroft made all the porn producers nervous. Ashcroft, according to Larry Flynt and others, was preparing multiple prosecutions in early September when Osama struck and changed his priorities.

But now the war on terror has quietened down, Ashcroft has more time for his favourite bete noir. The first obscenity case since 1993 is now happening in LA -- a guy called Seymour Butts (snurf snurf) is being done for showing fisting.

The big producers are running scared and toning down their produce, worried that they'll be the next Seymour Butts. They now have a voluntary self-censorship strategy based around something called 'the Cambria list', which lists taboo activities like urination, defecation, making adults resemble children, bestiality, pain, fisting, bukkake. Avoiding these contentious issues allows them to keep high profile companies like AT&T and Yahoo! distributing their material. Porn is often what makes the difference between profit and loss for these big 'family' companies, although it's disguised as things like 'broadband content' in their earnings reports.

what actually is fisting? is it in the vagina or the bottom? is it supposed to hurt or not? is it using an actual clenched fist, or is that just a sort of vague description?

its stuffing a fist up a cunt or an arse , really simple http://www.fetishclub.com/exchange/fisting01.shtml