It’s four in the morning here and I just finished a long chat with a representative of the OFLC.

“Ashley and Kisha” has not been classified, which meant that the OFLC could have given it a festival exemption to play at MUFF.

But OFLC refused to give it a festival exemption on the basis that my previous three films were classified X.

I asked why Destricted, which features work by Larry Clark, who’s previous film was refused classification, was given a festival exemption to play the same night as Ashley and Kisha, across town at ACMI, a and they could not answer.

I asked why Destricted, which features brutally mercenary depictions of the most loveless anal sex, was given a festival exemption and they could not answer.

Their suggestion was that we submit “Ashley and Kisha” for rush classification, in the hopes that we would receive a R classification.

But…

When I asked why 9 Songs, which feature actors performing cunelingus, felatio, ejaculation, and penetration was given an R, while our films which depict actual lovers are given an X, they could not answer.

When I asked why Shortbus, which features, among other things, an actor masturbating and then ejaculating on his face was given an R, while our film, which explore sexual pleasure inside the context of committed real-life loving relationships, they could not answer.

When I asked why numerous videos from the Sinclair Institute, which feature various sex acts performed by paid models, and presented under the guise of education are given R , while our film, which are held in the libraries of The Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana, Planned Parenthood, The Gay Mens Health Crisis, The San Francisco Sex Information Hotline and many other health and education organizations are given an X, they could not answer.

They have told me the process is subjective and imperfect; yet this process has a “perfect” track record of marginalizing our films.

Now they would ask that we once again submit our work to this subjective and imperfect process, pay $1,000 for the privilege of doing so, against the hope that the fifth time’s the charm.

I may be a fool, but I’m not that kind of fool.

Writing about “Ashley and Kisha” Megan Spencer said, “The sweetest thing - Kisha & Ashley is one of the sweetest love stories you’re ever likely to see committed to film. The Comstocks once again put their perfect documentary formula to good use - true love and real sex - on screen; what’s not to like?!”

True love and real sex, what’s not to like indeed?

Obviously the OFLC has no problem with real sex. It has granted its R classification to 9 Songs, Shortbus, and many other videos containing real sex. It has granted a festival exemption to Destricted, which contains real sex.

One can only conclude that the problem the OFLC has is with true love, and what a pity that is; for this film, for the people who wanted to see it, and for Australia.

(From our upcoming BEN AND DESIREE)

More than two years ago, in post entitled No Sadness, Anguish, Pain, or Suffering I quoted a bit from Violet Blue’s blog about her upcoming edition of Best Women’s Erotica 2006. Said Violet:

“I don’t know, but I have to say that I’ve noticed a huge difference in the way that previous generations of women have edited erotic anthologies in comparison to my generations’ attitudes about sex. We don’t think that “literary” erotica, especially women’s erotica, needs to be somehow qualified by sadness, anguish, pain or suffering… A message to the publishers and editors (and filmmakers) who imbue the hot fuck with a moral: you’re not relevant anymore… I’m running totally sexually fucking amok with BWE ‘06. I’m tossing OUT all the fucking depressing submissions I’m getting. I want erotica that totally turns my head around, and makes me want to fuck.”

Two years later, The Guardians Josh Spero has identified “the disturbing nature of sex” as a hallmark of the Independent Film Channels “50 Great Sex Scenes in Cinema.” Says Josh:

“Many of the scenes are marked out by the disturbing nature of the sex. Take No 1 - Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland having grief-stricken sex in Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. It’s profoundly out of place given the rest of the film, yet it is tender, erotic and tells us about the characters, as meaningful sex scenes should.The disturbances continue through the top 10: Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello pound away at each other on the stairs in A History of Violence (2), with all the layers of deceit and mistrust involved; Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring have surreal sapphic sex in Mulholland Drive (3); while Secretary (8) and Betty Blue (6) are chock-full of odd, unhinged sex. Perhaps most disturbing is The Night Porter (12), where Nazi guard Dirk Bogarde and concentration camp survivor Charlotte Rampling reconnect.”

Let’s see; disturbing, grief-striken, deceit, mistrust, surreal, odd, unhinged, disturbing (again), and just for kicks, Nazi and concentration camp.

Notice anything?

Look, I know, drama require doubt, and as I said in Part 1, if you made a film about how great bicycling is, you’d virtually be *required* to subject one of the characters to a deadly, or at least greviously injurious wreck. That’s how story-telling (usually) works. But like Violet, I am simply sick to death of the idea that sex has to be contextualized by sadness, anguish, pain and/or suffering to be taken seriously.

Oh look! Another art-house film showing us how, even when people have wild, break the bedframe, smash the china, sing into each other’s assholes sex, they still can’t connect; not deep down inside where it counts. Did anyone besides me notice that in SHORTBUS when main characters finally got their restoritive, healing, last reel of the film sex, we didn’t get to see it!? Disturbing, grief-striken, deceitful, mistrustful, surreal, odd, unhinged sex is a reality worth of being closely observed. But sex that is merely connective, pleasurable, loving – well what sort of a pervert wants to see that?

Rant over.

I’m going to the beach!

The poster for LAST TANGO IN PARIS, including X-rating symbol
(click to enlarge)

Fad23 is absolutely right. The X-rating was a part of the MPAA four-tier system first introduced in 1968.

But unlike G, PG, and R, X was not a trademarked MPAA property. The X rating was conceived of by the MPAA as a rating meaning ‘not suitable for children’ that could be and was self-applied by producers who did not feel their film needed and/or warranted a less restrictive rating.

But there have always been films deemed “not suitable for children,” and long before X or NC-17 there was an “adults only” classification, given to films like DUAL IN THE SUN, BABY DOLL, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, TO EACH HIS OWN and others that, by the standards of the day, were deemed to be inappropriate for children.

But in the 1950’s “foreign films”, made outside the (self imposed) Hayes Code that governed Hollywood production, began to make their way into the US. These films frequently addressed issues of sexuality in a manner that was far more frank than the coded subtexualized language required to address adult themes within the strictures of the code.

Poster for THE LOVERS, the film at the center of Jacobellis v. Ohio.

The 1950s also saw the breakup of the studio system, particularly the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition, which considerably loosened control on what theaters could and would screen, and by the 1960s cultural mores had shifted to the point that the old production code was becoming increasingly irrelevant. In response code was revised in 1966, and in 1968 the production code was abandoned in favor G,PG, R and X system (originally G, M, R, X.)

But it’s important to remember that from the start, the X-rating was always intended as a rating that could be self-applied by producers, and unlike G, PG, and R, the MPAA maintained no control over the X rating as a trademarked property. It’s also important to remember that when the system was introduce “X” had no special stigma, any more than the previous rating of Adults Only rating give to DUEL IN THE SUN, et al.

Around the same time, there were court decisions established the legality of both producing films depicting actual sex acts and showing them in theaters. This new legal climate gave rise to the open production and theatrical screening of films featuring depictions of actual sex acts. Because X, which meant “adults only” was a self-applied rating, producers of these films were free to give their films an X-rating with or without the MPAAs approval.

At first this was done to give these sexually explicit films an air of legitimacy, but with no control over who could or could not use the X-rating it quickly became associated with very low-budget products concerned with little more than creating a vehicle for the presentation of explicit sex. It was at during this time that films like MIDNIGHT COWBOY, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and others moved to have their ratings changed from X to R. Sometimes this was done by petitioning the MPAA to re-evaluate the rating, sometimes by simply editing out the “offending material”.

The stigma of the X-rating was further deepened when some producers began using XXX an gimmick to communicate that their films were especially raw or filled with sex, as opposed to merely X-rated, which could and did refer to films (such as MIDNIGHT COWBOY or A CLOCKWORK ORANGE,) that were unsuitable for children, but contained little, if any, explicit sex or nudity.

42nd Street, circa 1975 (click to enlarge)

This was also a time when many urban areas were in decline, and many theaters were turning to sexually explicit movies to draw audiences to theaters that would otherwise have been empty (think Times Square in the 70s.) In response, theater landlords began to write “no x-rated films” into their leases. Also theater chains enforced “no X” policies on their fanchiseese, and many newspapers had “no X” advertising policies.

Now remember, R means a film may be suitable for suitable for children when accompanied by an adult; X meant a film is not suitable for children at all. The concept of an “adults only film”, a concept that had existed from the beginning of commercial cinema, suddenly collapsed. It became impossible to advertise or exhibit a film that that was not suitable for children. For a film to be able to advertise in most newspapers, or play in most theaters, it had to have an R-rating, and that meant the omission of any element–sex, violence, language, drug use–that was not suitable viewing for children.

This collapse was not some grand conspiracy on the part of the MPAA to put an end to films for grown-ups. It was the result of the collision of changes to the MPAA ratings system, court decisions that allowed the production and public exhibition of films featuring depictions of actual sex acts, demographic and social changes that altered theater going habits, and the odd quirk that the MPAA had allowed their X-rating to be “public property”.

As a result, the X-rating was more or less abandoned by all parties. Hollywood producers weren’t going to invest millions of dollars in a film that couldn’t be advertised or screened in legitimate venues, and restricted their “adult” efforts to R-rated films. And producers of sexually explicit film and videos preferred to label their product as XXX, rather than the seemingly milder X. According to their own website, no films were rated X by the MPAA during the entire decade of the 1980s, (and virtually none in the 1970s.)

What that means is that for 20 years, all films produced by the Hollywood establishment that were produced within the confines of what could conceivably be shown to children. Moviemaking for grown-ups died.

Poster for HENRY AND JUNE, 1990, NC-17

In 1990 the MPAA attempted to reestablish a “legitimate” adults-only movie-making space with introduction of the NC-17 rating. Not wanting to repeat their mistake with the X-rating, the NC-17 is a trademarked property that can only be used if you submit your film and advertising to the MPAA process. But it was too little too late.

Not understanding the history of the X rating, and convinced that the MPAA was simply trying to put a new name on porn, most exhibition and advertising venues simply re-wrote their rules to prohibit the exhibition and advertising of NC-17 films. To this day some of America’s largest theater chains will not exhibit NC-17 movies, and many of America’s largest media outlets will not accept adverting for NC-17 movies. A few NC-17 art-house films were made, mostly in the nineties, and in 1995 MGM/UA gambled (and lost) on the NC-17 rating with the laughably bad big budget feature SHOWGIRLS. But in this decade (2000s), only a small handful of films have been rated NC-17, (including our own MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY.)

Now lest I be seen as an apologist for the MPAA, I think they were slow to understand what was happening to the X-rating, slow to take action, (nearly 20 years!) and when they did finally introduce the NC-17 rating, they did “drop the ball”. More over, as far as I can tell, they’ve done precious little since then to correct their mistake.

These days there’s very little movie-making that is truly for grown-ups. Even “serious films” that have no interest in attracting a teen audience have to be made “suitable for children” to avoid the dreaded NC-17, so even “realistic adult dramas” have an odd lack of candor in the way that sex is depicted visually.

The situations are adult, the language may be frank, but the sex and nudity is strangely demure. Sex is always under the covers, or with the lights low, or the camera-angles are cheated just enough to the left or the right to preserve the all important R-rating.

As a result we have a cinematic landscape where every other aspect of the human experience is rendered in vivid detail (with often a special fetishization of violence,) but the simple truth of what people look like naked, or what people look like when they give themselves over to sexual desire remains largely unexplored by filmmakers, and remains largely unseen by audiences.

Production still from MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, 2002, NC-17

“I know it when I see it.” has been called one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of the Supreme Court. It was written by Justice Potter Stewart in his concurrence with the court’s 1964 decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio, a case which determined that the film LES AMANTS was not obscene. Wrote Justice Stewart:

“It is possible to read the Court’s opinion in Roth v. United States and Alberts v. California, 354 U.S. 476, in a variety of ways. In saying this, I imply no criticism of the Court, which in those cases was faced with the task of trying to define what may be indefinable. I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court’s decisions since Roth and Alberts,1 that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

When Justice Stewart wrote this famous phrase, the standard for determining obscenity had been laid forth in the 1957 case Roth v. United States. Reading from Jacobellis v. Ohio:

The test for obscenity is “whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.” Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476. Pp. 191-195.A work cannot be proscribed unless it is “utterly without redeeming social importance,” and hence material that deals with sex in a manner that advocates ideas, or that has literary or scientific or artistic value or any other form of social importance, may not be held obscene and denied constitutional protection. P. 191.

In 1973 the standard laid forth in Roth was replaced by a standard laid forth in Miller vs. California, commonly refereed to as The Miller Standard:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

I don’t see that Miller provides anymore guidance than Roth, but then I’m not a lawyer, I’m a filmmaker. But I did well in my civics class, and the very fact that obscenity can only be determined after a trial gives the entire concept of punishing the expression of ideas that cannot be known to be obscene at the time of their creation the reek of ex post facto, which is explicitly prohibited by our constitution.

But never-mind concerns about the slippery definition of obscenity, or pesky prohibitions on ex post facto laws, from where does the state derive its authority to regulate this (so-called) obscenity? It’s true enough that the First Amendment does not protect every utterance, but by what logic does the state gather into its grasp how we the people choose to talk about sex?

British art and culture critic Bryan Appleyard is trying to say something about fame and the internet and “Web 2.0″, but since he gets nearly all of the technical details wrong, it’s hard to tell what point he’s making, other than that he doesn’t like a lot of what he sees on the online.

Of course no curmudgeonly rant about the vapidity of the internet would be complete without a mention of sex and porn. So who’s Bryan’s target? Violet Blue! Writes Bryan:

“In Web 1.0, human nature expressed itself primarily through lust and greed. Everybody was trying – and failing – to find new ways of making money, and delivering pornography was the main purpose of the web. Both are still present in Web 2.0, but they have changed. Making money, through online gambling and advertising focused on individual users, for example, exploits the new levels of interactivity. Pornography is now delivered with streaming video and, frequently, high levels of interactivity. In addition, there are now porn social-networking sites. You can post your home-made porn on one site and join in the fun as a voyeur on another. And there are endless sites offering the full 2.0 sex experience. Violet Blue calls herself a “pro-blogger, podcaster, vlogger and femmebot”. She’s written “ultimate guides” to cunnilingus and fellatio and, of course, The Smart Girl’s Guide to the G-Spot. Her site is a sex shop and supermarket of self-promotion – lust and recognition all in one super-refined techno-package. As one leading British thinker put it, “How come the highest technology is always used for the lowest purposes?” (Emphasis mine.)

I can’t tell you who Bryan’s “leading British thinker” is. The quote only returns Bryan’s diatribe on Google, and it’s not in any of the quotation books I have either. Pity, because I’d like to see the context of the quote, and make my own judgement as to whether this “leading British thinker” believes the enjoyment of sex is “the lowest purpose.” Obviously Bryan does, which I suppose explains why he is so sardonic about his advancing age.

None of us are as young as we used to be, Bryan.

Unlike Bryan’s blog, Violet’s doesn’t even allow user comments, which are the sin non qua for Web 2.0. Nor is there any other aspect of user-interactivity on Tinynibbles.com, and there’s even less adverting than on TinyNibbles.com than there is on Bryan’s site.

Bryan, why such a hard-on for Ms. Blue?

A person would have to be dead inside to view this and not come away thinking along the lines of “what this couple has is special, and that is something I desire in my life as well.”

That’s the conclusion that The Visitor reaches in their very nice four and a half star review of MATT AND KHYM on ADT.

The Visitor’s review is full of all sorts of details, which is incredibly flattering to read. It’s a great feeling to think that someone is watching something we made so intently. One passage is particularly:

The word ‘real’ keeps coming to mind. Although the cameraman gets good angles, it is never obtrusive. Unlike the more commercial porn where the actors are in positions meant specifically for viewing and not mainly for true genital contact, this couple really does make love. The grinding together of their pelvises, the kissing, the neck nuzzling. You know this is real, and even though some explicitness is not there as in the real hard core stuff, this is a real turn-on seeing true love-making. (On a technical note, film, not video, is used, which gives it a more ‘real’ feel. Although at first I thought the lighting would be an issue, but in watching it, it is like you are right there in the bedroom with no artificiality.).

There is this idea that when depicting sex, a filmmaker has to choose between being explicit and being cinematic, between being erotic heat and emotional weight. (Mike Nichols, “I think sex in a movie is boring… Sex is very powerful as part of a fantasy… But to stare directly at it is to be wasting most of what’s available in drama and in film.” John Cameron Mitchell, “We tried to de-eroticize the sex to see what kind of emotions and ideas are left over when the haze of eroticism is waved away.”)

I think Nichols and Mitchell and others are wrong.

I don’t think staring directly at sex is a waste, and I don’t think that eroticism is a haze that has to “waved away” to see have a cinematic experience of emotions and ideas, and we began making these films one of the questions I wanted to answer was whether or not sex couple be depicted in a way that was completely frank, while still being cinematic, emotional, and erotic.

Now I don’t pretend that any of my films are on par with Mike Nichols, or even John Cameron Mitchell, in scope, sophistication, or artistry. My films are nothing if not modest in the objectives and execution. But I do think they’ve suceeded (modestly) where Nichols and Mitchell and others haven’t even dared to go.

(From “Matt and Khym: Better than Ever”)

Blowfish is where I discovered sex didn’t suck. Or rather Blowfish is where I discovered that the sex business didn’t have to suck. It was in their online catalog that I first found things like Vixen Creations Dildos or the work of Jullian Snelling and started to wonder why there weren’t sex videos that were equally well made.

Blowfish was also the first American retailer to buy our first film, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, so I’m always anxious to hear what they think of our films. It’s not that I think they’d hate anything we’d produced, but I hold Blowfish in extra high esteem, and I want them to be extra charmed with what we offer them. You can imagine the sigh of relief when I read this in the Blowfish weekly newsletter:

“We like Tony Comstock’s movies. He specializes in documentaries that all follow the same basic pattern: a long interview with a couple, mostly about their sex life but also about the origin of their romance, followed by a long sex scene. The end result is strangely intimate — having heard so much about their lives, it’s quite moving to watch these people have sex. In a field where sleaze and vulgarity are pretty much part of the atmosphere, Comstock’s films provide a welcome touch of class, and they’re often as much about love as lust.“Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit is Comstock’s first film devoted to a lesbian couple, and they’re wonderful subjects, funny and sweet and willing to laugh at themselves. (The fact that they’re totally gorgeous is a bonus.) Their story has the satisfying contours of a romantic comedy: Ashley the openly gay student athlete pursues straight college girl Kisha, who turns out to be not quite as straight as she’d always assumed. There’s even a cute meet, when Kisha barges into the bathroom at a party where Ashley is making out with her ex-girlfriend; Ashley confessed that, though she slept with her ex that night, she was really thinking about the glimpse she got of Kisha’s ass in the bathroom.

During his promotion of his film SHORTBUS one of the things John Cameron Mitchell said was, “We tried to de-eroticize the sex to see what kind of emotions and ideas are left over when the haze of eroticism is waved away…by the end if you’re thinking only about the sex, then you have a problem.”

Peggy and I watched SHORTBUS together, in bed, on a Friday night, after the kids were fast asleep, and I guess we don’t have a problem, because by the end of the movie we were not thinking about sex so much that we didn’t even have sex ourselves. Mitchell had so successfully “de-eroticized” the sex that SHORTBUS effectively squelched my usually rampant libido.

The problem that I do have is with the idea that arousal, that sexual desire, that erotic pleasure is some sort of haze that keeps us from seeing our better selves. This idea utterly pervades the discussion of sexual art – from The United States v. Ulysses, to Sir Quintin of the BBFC, to Mitchell’s strange pride that although “all the orgasms and all the semen in SHORTBUS were real…no one in the audience got a hard-on” – artists and audiences both are obliged to deny and devalue the the erotic, to say (true or not) that their interest in sex lies elsewhere.

Fine. Whatever. Not me.

I love exploring the erotic. I love hearing what turns people on, I love seeing what turns people on, I love seeing what people do when they are turned on. I love the idea that sex can be restorative, curative, and connective. I love that getting hard or wet or whatever is a part of falling in love, and being in love, and staying in love. And I love making films about it.

I love when people watch my films and laugh and cry and sigh, and most of all, I love when people watch my films and get turned on. I love hearing about the gushy wanks and lusty tumbles these films inspire. I love hearing about how, after watching our films, lovers trip down memory lane, recounting their own “hardcore love stories”, and then add another chapter right there and then!

Does that make me a romantic, or a recovering romantic or a delusional romantic? Yes, and I’m proud to be one, and proud and delighted to see another one of our films at Blowfish.com!

“[W]hilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.” – Judge John M. Woolsey, 1933“We think that Ulysses is a book of originality and sincerity of treatment and that it has not the effect of promoting lust. Accordingly it does not fall within the statute, even though it justly may offend many.” – Augustus Noble Hand, Second Ciruit Court of Appeals, 1934

On the eve of its release, it looks like ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT is leaving the nest almost like a full-fledged film. It’s already listed for pre-order on Amazon.com, has a listing on Blockbuster and The New York Times, and of course let’s not forget the all important IMDb listing.

“The intent to arouse is often cited as the dividing line between art and porn. In the whole range of emotions a director might hope to incite in his audience, arousal remains the last taboo – a taboo Tony Comstock gleefully breaks.” is something I wrote for the press release supporting last Summer’s QueerDoc screening of DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER.

Well last Summer, the Australian government slapped us down, calling DAMON AND HUNTER unfit for public exhibition and threatening the festival if they screened the film. We fought back as hard as we could, and lost. The screening was cancelled and we went home to lick our wounds. But a year later, with an impending write-up in Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine, one could make a case that our intentionally arousing films have penetrated the very center of mainstream culture.

So what’s next? I have no idea. ASHLEY AND KISHA has been submitted to about 15 film festivals. There have been some encouraging whispers, but nothing definitive yet. Lest I jinx it, I’ll leave it at that. The important thing is that it looks like we can keep making these films, keep taking what we learn from each iteration and incorporate that into the next one, all while keeping a roof over our head and our pantry full. What more could a person want!

In contrast to the e-mail battle to get DAMON & HUNTER listed with the grown-up movies (as opposed to “adult” movies,) the rest of our filmography has appeared on IMDb sans drama.

It’s now possible for a casual IMDb visitor to look up both Xana & Dax and Matt & Khym, no having to log in, no having the secret “show me adult results” box checked. Whether or not this has something to do with the fact that Xana & Dax and Matt & Khym are straight couples, or it’s merely a matter of having worn the IMDb editors down with the Damon & Hunter episode, I don’t know.

I do know that sometimes fretting about this sort of thing seems like a lot of fuss over nothing, a distraction from the business of making my movies. Now that Ashley & Kisha is finished, I’ve got the backlog wittled down to four unfinished films. Maybe time would be better spend in the edit bay then worrying about IMDb listings and similar.

But in the last week I’ve had three different experiences that have reminded me why things like IMDb and Google, and how the hardware, software, and wetware resources at those, and other organization interpret sex, expecially sex words, matters.

* Yesterday I received e-mail from Good For Her announcing the awards event next month that Peggy is going to. In the subject line porn was spelled “P*rn”.

* A couple of days ago I got a note from Em & Lo, sex columnists at New York Magazine and elsewhere. In the subject line and throughout the body copy, sex was spelled “s*x”.

* Last week I sent a note to journalist Mark Glaser, with a link to a post on my blog. Mark wrote back to tell me that he couldn’t access my blog from his workplace.

No one has benefited more from the digitization of culture than I have. I have a comfortable life, living in a wonderful place, doing work I’m passionate about, all largely because of the opportunities this brave new digital world has provided me. But the same technology that makes it easy for information to fly around the globe also makes it easy to prevent people from receiving information, often without anyone even being aware that the information they have access to has been censored filtered.

For example, when I spoke to a representative at St. Bernard Software (conjures up an image of a benevolent protector, doen’t it?) the people who provide censoring filtering software to Mark’s workplace, he told me the default setting for their software is what they feel would be appropriate for a eight year old child.

A eight year old child? I was incredulous. What was internet filtering software like that doing on the corporate network of a journalism organization? The St. Bernard fellow explained that they sell to a lot of schools and libraries, so the defaults are set cautiously, and that network administrators can fine-tune the filtering to suit the needs of their workplace.

Well maybe that works in theory, but the fact everyone is busy, and St. Bernard’s sale force sells their software as a “turn-key” solution, “Just install it and our human-edited list of no-go sites will keep your kids safe, your employees hard at work, your workplace lawsuit free…” (I’m not speculating here. I spoke to the IT department at Mark’s workplace. “We’re not doing anything special here. Just running St. Bernard with the normal settings.”)

I’m both a parent and a businessman, I’m not unsympathetic to these concerns. But as parent and a businessman I have concerns of my own. The St. Bernard fellow told me they also sell their software to a lot of colleges and universities, and because their database classifies ComstockFilms.com as pornographic site, there’s a good chance that access to our website is blocked on campuses running St. Bernard software.

College students aren’t a very important part of our market (they don’t have any money), so I’m not particularly concerned about that (though that’s not the sort of university experience I want my daughters to have.) But I do sometime imagine an art or film studies professor going to look us up and not being able to access our site.

I also feel concerned about the prejudicial effect that being categorized and filtered in this way can have on our work, and our business. Amazon.com sells Shortbus, but they do not sell “pornography”. The BBFC gave Destricted an R rating, but “pornography” gets an R18. The catagorization of our films, at IMDb, and at St. Bernard, at the BBFC and elsewhere have a profound effect on who can see our work, where our films can be shown, and who can/will sell our DVDs. And in an increasingly wired world, the flick of a switch can send us or anyone else off into digital purgatory. (That’s how you get s*x and p*rn.)

So I’m relieved that Xana and Dax and Matt and Khym are listed with the grown-up movies on IMDb, out in the real world, with films like In the Realm of the Senses, Shortbus, and Pink Flamigos. If you’re registered at IMDb and wanted to go over and throw a few stars our way, that couldn’t hurt. They’re easy to find – just use the search function.