2257, Obscenity, and the Magic Camera
“Adult sexual conduct is not illegal and it is in fact constitutionally protected. See, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). The regulation of visual depictions of adult sexual activity is not based on its intrinsic relation to illegal conduct.”
That’s from the Sixth Circuit Court’s ruling 2257 regulations unconstitutional, and gets to the heart of why I am fascinated by, and passionate about making sexual imagery.
Some few years ago I directed a film about Hutu refugees in Eastern Zaire. The imagery from the camps themselves was appalling enough: emaciated men, women, and children dying as the camera rolled; bodies being stacked into the bed of trucks like cordwood. But also included was footage from the Hutu genocidal slaughter of their Tutsi countrymen (carried out largely by machete,) including footage of a man being murdered by decapitation and the desecration of corpses.
I thought long and hard about what shots I would and would not include this film. I wanted my audience to vividly understand the horrors that had played out, but I did not want to them to withdraw, to down emotionally. I wanted them to stay with the film, through to the end, and hoped that they would find meaning in what I chose to show them. I thought a lot about the line between enough and too much. But never, not even for a moment, did I think about whether or not the footage I chose to include was prosecutable.
By contrast, nothing I show in the films I make about sex is awful. In fact, it’s all quite wonderful! People who desire each other giving and receiving pleasure in the most intimate and delicious ways! Yet in choosing to document and then distributed these consensual, loving, pleasurable, and entirely legal acts, some how through the magical powers of the camera, I may be committing a crime. Depending on where my films are watched, and by whom, what I do may not be protected by the First Amendment, what I do may be considered obscene, what I do may be against the law.
“The regulation of visual depictions of adult sexual activity is not based on its intrinsic relation to illegal conduct.” That’s what the Sixth Circuit Court says. I don’t see how that squares with Miller v. California. I’d like to find out, but I don’t want to lose my house or go to jail.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
This is a wonderful essay; it’s very hard to imagine an honest way to reconcile these two holdings. How, in fact, can a permissible - a protected activity be the foundation for a crime when filmed. It’s like saying “peace rallies - protected by the first amendment - but not if yu’re recording it.
October 27th, 2007 at 4:19 am
This is a peculiar feature of my and Peggy’s life. It’s hard to imagine that anything we do would be indictable, let alone convictable. Then I read that Senator Hatch demands that Mukasy commit to prosecuting “mainstream obscenity” and I’m reminded that most people won’t ship to Utah.
We do; and to Tennessee and to all the other places you’ll see on a typical Do No Ship list. It’s a small gesture.
October 27th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
The fact that atrocities such as the ones you documented can take place, and the fact that there are people who will throw someone else in jail for filming a natural act, are both sides of the same coin. CONTROL. As Hunter S. said, it is the ultimate drug, and even those who claim to be the most upright and pure of people will get addicted to it without even knowing.