Indrid Cold wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 5:05 pm
This may be the case a lot of the time, but you know that filmmakers often play to the desires of the audience to see the killer/monster make mincemeat of the two-dimensional slaughter fodder. Granted, it's not generally of a sexual nature (though there is undeniably this element in some cases), but it's still gratification via fantasy killing. Some horror movie villains are glorified as veritable heroes.
That's true, but that's more akin to the adrenaline rush audiences feel in action movies when the hero mows down the bad guys. The gratification comes from the adrenaline rush, which has a mainstream association with violence. Sexuality does not mesh with violence from a mainstream perspective. A good demonstration of this is when James A. Janisse took offense to Shannon Elizabeth being raped to death in Jack Frost - the purely violent death scenes typically don't phase him, but he found a death that mixed sex and violence to be offensive.
PainInPerfection wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 5:42 pm
Yeah these are all good points, and it doesn't even seem possible to ban death fetish videos as a whole on grounds of obscenity. From what i understand obscenity rulings are made on a case by case basis. You can't just say that ALL death fetish videos are obscene, because there are ones which might have more aesthetic/artistic value then others, and thus those ones couldn't be declared obscene. This is why it really doesn't make sense to me what they are doing, they must know this, they cant be that stupid and ignorant. It's another reason I think they are full of shit and are just trying to get there name out there, make money from there book and bring in revenue from the podcast.
Yeah I understand totally, but what I meant though is, from a legal perspective how could you seperate the two? Why would a death fetish video be considered obscene(illegal) and not any other horror movie with scenes that mix sex and death? Is it because of the intention of the creator? Sombody who makes a fetish video could say that it wasn't there intention to have their video be sexually appealing.
The DOJ page on obscenity is focused on child pornography and that makes sense because child pornography is harmful by nature. The same argument can't be made for death fetish because all the offensive content is fake. I'd like to give the podcasters the benefit of the doubt, but as an opponent of censorship of the arts (and yeah, I do consider this art), I can't support banning fictional content simply because someone found it offensive. The real concern should be the content that's actually harmful and / or intended to be harmful. None of us are legal experts here and I suspect there is a case that could be made against death fetish, but I don't see that succeeding because it has less to do with actual harm and more to do with assumptions of harm; harm that's not intended by the producers, hence all the disclaimers.
Trying to separate death fetish videos and horror movies will probably come down to outside information - e.g., where the death fetish video was sold, and why it was created. But I agree when it comes to the video itself, trying to separate it from horror movies isn't so simple. I think the obscenity argument should focus on the video itself, not how people use it - hell, scenes from horror movies have been used as fetish material. Worst case scenario, the death fetish videos could be presented as short horror movies and created with the intention of being short movies. The only content that might not be protected is anything depicting necrophilia because even though the necrophilia is fake, the sex isn't and it's hard to justify something with non-simulated sex as not having a sexual purpose.
Opposition to death fetish isn't worth more than a thread or two, if even that. It's going to take more than a podcast, book, and social media posts to deem fictional content "obscene" just because some people don't like the fictional depictions.