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Essay, 6 pages (1400 words)

Sex and violence in movies

In the late seventies, Our Nation became shocked and outraged by the rape , multilation, and murder of a dozen young beautiful girls. The man who was mainly responsable for these murders, Ted Bundy, who was later apprehended and executed. During his detention in various penitentiaries, he was mentally probed and probbed by phycologist and phychoanalysts hoping to discover the root of violent actions and sexual frustrations. Many theories arose in attempts to explain the motivational factors behind his muderous escapades. However, the strongest and feasible of these theories came not from the phycologists, but from the man himself, As a teenager, my buddies and I would all sneak around and watch porn. As I grew older, I became more and more intrested and involved in it,(pornography) became an obsession. I got so involved in it, I wanted to incorporate (porn) into my life, but I couldn’t behave like that and maintain the success I had worked so hard for. I generated an alter-ego to fullfill my fantasies under-cover. Pornography was a means of unlocking the evil I had buried inside of myself (Leidholdt 47). Is it possible that pornography is acting as the key to unlocking the evil in unstable minds? According to Edward Donnerstein, a leading researcher in the pornography feild, The relationship between sexually violent images in the media and subsequent aggression and … callous attitudes towards women is much stronger statistically than the relationship beetween smoking and cancer(Itzin 22). After considering the increase in rape and molestation, sexual harasement, and other sex crimes over the last few decades, and also the corresponding increase of business in the pornography needs considerable study and examination. Once the evidence you will encounter in this paper is evaluated and quatified it will be hard not come away with the realization that habitual use of pornographic material promotes unrealistic and unattainable desires in men that leac to violent behavior toward women. In odrer to properly discuss pornography and be able to link it to violence, we must first come to a basic and aggreable understanding of what the word pornography means.. The term pornography originates from two greek words, porne, which means harlot, and graphein, which means to write.(Webster’s 286). My belief is that the combination of the two words was originally meant to describe, in literature, the sexual escapades of women deemed to be whores. As times had passed, this definition of pornography has grown to include any and all obscene literature and pictures. At the present date date, the term is basically a blanket which covers all types of material such as explicit literature, phtography, films, and video tapes with varying degrees of sexual content. According to Catherine Itzin a leading reasecher in the pornography feild pornography can be divided into three categories: The sexually explicit and violent; the sexually explicit and nonviolent, but subordinating and dehumanizing; and the sexually explicit, nonviolent, and nonsubordinating that is based upon mutuality. The sexually explicit and violent is graphic, showing penetration and ejaculation. Also it shows the violent act towards a woman. The second example shows the graphic sexual act and climax, but not a violent act. This example shows the woman being dressed in a costume or being talked down to in order to reduce her to something to have sex with, a body opening or an orifice. Not only does erotica show the entire graphic sexual act , it also depicits an attraction between two people. Her reaserch consistenly shows that harmful effects are associated with the first two, but that the third erotica, is harmless.(22)These three categories basically exist as tools of discerning content. Although sometimes they overlap without a true disticntion, as in when the film is graphic in the sexual act and also in violence, but shows the act as being a muyual activity between the people participating. In my view, to further divide ponography, it is possible to break it down into simpler categories: soft and hard core pornography. Hard core pornography is a combination of the sexually explicit and violent and the sexually explicit and non violent, but subordinating and dehumanizing categories, previously discussed . Soft core pornography is though to be harmless and falls into the category known as Erotica; which is the category based on mutuality. In Hard core pornography, commonly rated XXX, you can see graphic depiction’s of violent sexual acts usually with a man or a group of men, deriving sexual gratification from the degradation of a woman. You can also see women participating in demorlizing sexual behavior among themselves for the gratification of men. In a Triple-X movie all physical aspects are shown such as extreme close-ups of the genitalia, oral, vaginal and anal penetration, and also ejaculation. Much of the time emphasis is put on the painful and humiliating experience of the woman, for the sole satisfation of the male. Soft core pornography, or X-rated pornography is less explcit in terms of what is shown and the sexual act is usually put in the light of mutual enjoyment for both the male and female parties(Cameron and Frazer 23). Triple-X pornography is manufactured and sold legally in Canada in the United States. Deborah Cameron and Elizabeth Frazer point out that other forms of hard core pornography that have to bekept under wraps, made and sold illegally in underground black markets. These are ultraviolent tapes or videos show the actual torture, rape and sometimes mutilation of a woman. Snuff films go even future to decict the actual death of a victim, and child pornography reveals the use of under-age or pre-pubescent children for the sexual purposes (17-18). These types of pornography cross over the boundaries of entertainment and are definitely Hard core. Now that pornography has been defined in a fashion mirroring its content, it is now possible to touch upon the more complex ways a community, as a society, views or defines it. Some have said it is impossible for a group of induviduals to form a concrete opinion as to what pornography means. A Supreme Court Judge is quoted as saying I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it (Itzin 20). This statement can be heard at community meetings in every in every province, city across the nation. Community standards are hazy due to the fact that when asked what pornography is to them, most individuals cannot express or explain in words what porno is, therefore creating confusion among themselves. Communities are left somewhat helpless in this matter since the federal court of Canada passed a legislation to keep pornography available to adults. The courts assess that to ban or censor the material would be infringing on the public’s Bill of Rights(Carol 28). Maureen O’Brien quotes critics of a congressionally terminated bill, the Pornography Victim’s Compensation Act, as saying That if it had passed , it would have had severely chilling effects on the Bill of Rights, allowing victims of sexual crimes to file lawsuits against producers and distributors of any work that was proven to have had caused the attack, such as graphic material in books, magazines, videos films, and records(7). People in a community debating over pornography often have different views as to whether or not it should even be made available period, and some could even argue this point against the types of women used in pornography: A far greater variety of females types are shown as desirable in pornography than mainstream films and networks television have ever recognized: fat women, flat women, hairy women, aggressive women, older women, you name it(Carol 25). If we could all decide on just exactly what pornography is and what is acceptable, there wouldn’t be so much debate over the issue of censoring it. The bounds of the community standards have been streched by mainstreaming movies, opening the way even further for the legalization of more explcit fare (Jenish 53). In most comtemporary communities explcit sex that is without violent or dehumanizing acts is acceptable in Canada society these days. These community standards have not been around very long. When movies were first brought out, they were heavily restricted and not protected by the Bill of Rights, because films then were looked upon as only as diversionary entertainement and business . Even though sexual images were highly monitored, the movie industry was hit so hard during the Great Depression that film-makers found themselves sneaking in as much sexual content as possible, were then they saw that sex-sells (Clark 1029). Films were highly restricted throughout the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s by the once independent films of the 60’s such as: Bonnie and Clyde and Whose afraid of Virginia Woolfe?(Clark 1029-30), both with explicit language, sexual innuendo, and violence back were torn down in barriers holding sex and violence back were torn in the name of profit. Adult content was put into movies the long ago, we have become more immune and can’t expect it to get any better or to away. Porn is here for good. Pornography is a multi-million dollar international industry, ultimately run by organized crime all over the world, and is produced by respectable mainstream publishing business companies (Itzin 21). Although the publishing companies are though to be respectable people generally stereotype buyers and users of pornographic material as dirty old men in trenchcoats but most patrons of adult stores are well- educated people with disposable income (Jenish 52). Porno movies provide adults of both genders with activities they normally wouldn

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