I am a documentary film director. Subjects of my films have included love, sex, 9/11, indigenous fisheries, hurricanes, refugees, HIV/AIDS orphans, and visualization of God. I am best known for the Real People, Real Life, Real Sex series of documentaries that simultaneously explore the vital role of sexual pleasure in committed relationships and the problematic place of explicit sexuality in cinema. This is my "Safe" blog.
Last week I saw that Youtube video, the one with the congressman and the college students; and since then I’ve been ruminating on camera size, freedom of the press, the limits of morality, the limits of law, terms of service, algorithms, and other stuff.
The more I think, the more the idea expands; and the more it expands, the more I read; and the more I read, the more I think. Even trying to frame up the following fable threatens to spin out of control. So I’ll say simply this:
I came to the story of King Canute by the Seashore late in life, somewhere in my late 20s, and it was told to me by my wife Peggy. I don’t remember the circumstances, but it was well before I became Tony Comstock, and before I started making the movies that brought me in such close contact with the thin edge of law, morality, commerce, community, and all the rest.
I’m recounting the story here because if Tom Atzet’s interpretation of Climax Ecology helps me understand the actions of non-state actors in relation to sexuality in art, the story of King Canute at the Seashore helps me understand the state actors. Any more than that and we’ll be here another 20,000 words:
Long ago, England was ruled by a king named Canute. Like many leaders and men of power, Canute was surrounded by people who were always praising him. Every time he walked into a room, the flattery began.
“You are the greatest man that ever lived,” one would say.
“O king, there can never be another as mighty as you,” another would insist.
“Your highness, there is nothing you cannot do,” someone would smile.
“Great Canute, you are the monarch of all,” another would sing. “Nothing in this world dares to disobey you.”
The king was a man of sense, and he grew tired of hearing such foolish speeches.
One day he was walking by the seashore, and his officers and courtiers were with him, praising him as usual. Canute decided to teach them a lesson.
“So you say I am the greatest man in the world?” he asked them.
“O king,” they cried, “there never has been anyone as mighty as you, and there never be anyone so great, ever again!”
“And you say all things obey me?” Canute asked.
“Absolutely!” they said. “The world bows before you, and gives you honor.”
“I see,” the king answered. “In that case, bring me my chair, and we will go down to the water.”
“At once, your majesty!” They scrambled to carry his royal chair over the sands.
“Bring it closer to the sea,” Canute called. “Put it right here, right at the water’s edge.” He sat down and surveyed the ocean before him. “I notice the tide is coming in. Do you think it will stop if I give the command?”
His officers were puzzled, but they did not dare say no. “Give the order, O great king, and it will obey,” one of then assured him.
“Very well. Sea,” cried Canute, “I command you to come no further! Waves, stop your rolling!. Surf, stop your pounding! Do not dare touch my feet!”
He waited a moment, quietly, and a tiny wave rushed up the sand and lapped at his feet.
“How dare you!” Canute shouted. “Ocean, turn back now! I have ordered you to retreat before me, and now you must obey! Go back!”
And in answer another wave swept forward and curled around the king’s feet. The tide came in, just as it always did. The water rose higher and higher. It came up around the king’s chair, and wet not only his feet, but also his robe. His officers stood before him, alarmed, and wondering whether he was not mad.
“Well, my friends,” Canute said, “it seems I do not have quite so much power as you would have me believe. Perhaps you have learned something today. Perhaps now you will remember there is only one King who is all-powerful, and it is he who rules the sea, and holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand. I suggest you reserve your praises for him.”
The royal officers and courtiers hung their heads and looked foolish. And some say Canute took off his crown soon afterward, and never wore it again.
As I mentioned in my Nov. 2009 post Walking the walk. (Even if she won’t talk the talk.) my wife Peggy is a supporter of The Organization for Transformative Works and is an enthusiastic fanfic reader and writer. So you might imagine she and I don’t always see eye to eye on copyright issues.
Copyright is our bread and butter here at Comstock Films. We think up ideas, buy filmstock, rent expensive equipment and higher skilled professionals to create our films. Then we spend more time and money pressing them, paying to warehouse them, running our servers, etc. The analogy that I like to use is that we packed our wagon, headed off into the wilderness, cut our farm out of the jungle, planted an orchard, nursed it till it began to bear fruit, and then cut a road back to civilization so we could sell our crop.
It was and still is hard work; and I’ve been known to get a little prickly about the idea that other people have the right to do whatever the hell they want to do with our films, or that after some arbitrary period of time these films that cost us so much time, money, and grief to bring to the public magically turn into public property. Given Peggy’s interests, you can imagine the sort debates over “fair use” that rage here at Casa Comstock.
This morning Peggy’s winning:
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While I was away in the Carribean I was befriended by a 19 year clean and sober drug and alcohol addict, turned high performance motorcycle builder, turning bluewater sailor and dive instructor. He was remarkably clear-eyed about his misadventures (and adventures!) with addiction, and hearing his story helped me better understand some of the things that have been making me less than happy for the past while.
One of his useful tools for self-examination was “Based on results, how’s that working out for you?” and that’s a question I’d love to hear the answer to from both sides of the (perennial) pro-porn/anti-porn debate that’s sprouted up again.
Because from where I’m sitting, after the 30 years I’ve been watching and participating, nothing’s changed. The antis are still saying it’s worse than ever, (if it still worse than ever, maybe you’re doing something wrong).
And if porn’s so great, how come after more than 40 years of (relatively) legal status, there’s still not much that’s worth defending on anything more than principle (Napoleon has a quote about the sorts of results you can expect with that approach, but my Google Fu is weak this morning.)
Anyway, this morning, based on results, my narrowly drawn fair-use arguments aren’t working so well. But I am loving the above embedded Ynonne Craig mashup!
I have decided to make a list of other Yiddish words I will try not to use in the New York Times. So far, the list includes: putz,  mamzer,shlong,shtup, knish (in its gynecological, rather than culinary, connotation) and shvantz.
Back in 2007, when Comstock Films was the subject of a PBS article about the Great Google sex bug, but didn’t link to us, it came to my attention that KQED the PBS affiliate in San Francisco used Bulldog filtering software to keep (save?) it’s employies from seeing unsavory things on the internet; and as a result comstockfilms.com was blocked on Mark Glasor’s work computer. The only way he could actually see what he wasn’t linking to was to send a note down to IT asking that ComstockFilms.com be unlocked.
I don’t reckon Glaser is a prude, but neither do I think he’s especially enterprising, and I’m sure he’s busy. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we wrote his piece without ever seeing our site or reading my blog; trusting that if comstockfilms.com was being blocked at work, it was probably something most people would be happier not having pop up on their computer, even if they clicked a link. (Let’s call this the Goatse Calculus.)
I got my panties in a good twist over the whole thing and called Bulldog; to see if we could get off their list of banned sites, of course, but also to find out more about how their software is made and sold.
The long and short is that out of the box, the filtering package is set at third grade level. That’s right, the default setting is to block anything Bulldog’s editors think isn’t appropriate for a third grader.
Then I talked to someone in sales, and as I suspected, the package is pitched as a super-simple, set it and forget it install. No mention of tuning it to a level appropriate to the organization where it’s being run.
Then I got back on the phone with KQED, but this time I chatted up their IT department.
“Running Bulldog I hear?”
“Yeah, it’s great. Really cuts down on the spam.”
“What content threshold are you running?”
“Content threshold?”
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Back over on TheIntentToArouse.com, in the chapter “How “X-rated†became synonymous with “porn,†and the death of movie making for grown-ups.” I argue that it was, in part, the MPAA’s failure to trademark their X-rating that contributed to the collapse of a legitimate adults-only movie making space, and the result is that even today, the (trademarked) replacement, NC-17 is a corrupted brand that, like the old X-rating, has come to be regarded as a liablity to anyone to whose work it might be applied.
But I see to importance differces between the collapse of thelegitimate adults-only movie making space, and this new SFW internet.
The first is that as big a part of our culture as movies are, it’s just movies. Even at the height of it’s power, editors at the New York Times were not making choices about what words and ideas to put in their papers on the basis of what rating the MPAA would give them.
The second is that whatever deficiencies in the MPAA’s rating system, and especially those around the MPAA missteps in protecting grown-up filmmaking, there’s still room for words like putz and mamzer in the MPAA’s regime.
Both sides [pro-porn and anti-porn] are all over the sexuality and representation aspects of the conversation, but are missing a critique of the business of sex and the working conditions under which porn performers do their jobs. To me, good and bad porn is not so much about what it looks like, but the business transactions and pressures happening behind the scenes.
This approach is appeals to me because it offer the hope of delivering hard data; i.e. defining what pornography is is hard enough (there is no legal definition,) and without a substantive definition based on content and aesthetics, measuring the effect on viewers seems like a fool’s errand.
But other aspects can be measured: production budgets, performer wages, distribution outlets, STI infection rates, union membership rolls, etc. And if direct comparisons to statistics in other forms of media, other professions, or other ways of life are imperfect, at least the numbers might provide a starting point for a stab at some measure of objectivity.
And whatever case one is trying to make – pro, anti, or other – that’s got to be better starting point than “this is bad because looking at it makes me angry” or “you can’t prove that watching this is hurting anyone.”
(Cross-posted to The Art & Business of Making Erotic Films)
The long message below and after the jump is from film director Tony Comstock, of Comstock Films and the Intent to Arouse site. His argument is about not governmental controls but what he sees as unaccountable private controls on expression by Internet companies, above all Google. He contends that, out of concern about being seen as pornography-mongers, they end up suppressing legitimate discussion of “sexuality, especially sexual dissent,” which is his field of work.
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