A scene from swap.avi
I’ve not seen swap.avi. As they said in 8mm, “…there are some things you can’t un-see..” and watching poor Brazilian’s defecating into each others distended rectums is an image I can happily live without, especially knowing someone then vomits into the same open ass and waits for the fecal-puke to be shit out so they can eat it.
Nastier than a drunken evening with Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney.
The video is the result of a thread at ‘Something Awful’ which started with this enquiry from a participant called ‘Metis’:
“I’ve read the rules for requesting a movie to be made, and it said that if I have a fetish that is different from what is offered, you may be able to talk to the directors and work something out. I got a great idea while watching some scat movies recently: scat swapping. This would basically be a movie where one woman’s ass is penetrated by fingering and tonguing and fisting to make her anus very loose. A third woman will pull her anus open further and hold it open, meanwhile the second woman, the scat-giver, shits in the first woman’s open ass. The woman whose ass has been shit in will then shit the scat-giver’s shit back out, and everyone will eat it. If possible, I would also like it if the women were able to vomit in the woman’s ass along with the shit, or afterwards, so that the vomit could also be shit out and eaten. Please get back to me and let me know if this is something you can accomplish in a video, and if so, how much it would cost. Thank you!”
There’s a fantastic writeup of the saga, including a review of the humanity-cancer which is swap.avi, at Something Awful. It’s a video which prompts the question, which Nerve has independently asked and is the subject of debate at Metafilter, where do the edges of defensible porn lie?
As always, this isn’t a question of censorship but what, if anything, do ‘average’ sex-positive porn fans think is outside the bounds of good taste, or is taste not an applicable measure when it comes to sex? We claim to prohibit criminality in porn not only because we respect the law but because we agree child abuse and murder are wrong. Is there anything you can do to an adult short of killing them which counts as abuse and, if so, when does ‘fetish’ in porn cross the line?
If you want to research this properly and see what $350 buys in Brazil, you can download swap.avi below. If you’re reading this from work… well no one’s that stupid: Swap.avi (torrent)
Dude! Agh! Yikes!
First of all, I would like to spend a few hours (or days) interviewing anyone who gets hot at the thought (let alone the reality) of swap.avi. I am dying to know what causes that particular bit of wiring to cross.
As for crossing lines, well, it depends on which lines we’re talking about. If Person A asks Person B to do X to A, that doesn’t cross any significant line for me. No matter how awful X might be, if A is dumb enough to ask for it, I have no sympathy for the outcome. A has it coming. However, if X is sufficiently extreme, I may very well feel that it crosses the line into gross irresponsibility on the part of B.
Back in the day, I would get into debates with ExtremeKink types who proclaimed that it would be theoretically appropriate to amputate a submissive partner’s arm in a scene. For me, it always came down to the fact that consent and even enthusiasm are nice for the sub, but it would still be an irresponsible act on the dom’s part. Unless you’re a trained surgeon and have the ability to peer into the future, there are just too many variables in the risk/reward calculations.
Given that, do I think swap.avi crosses a line or constitutes abuse? I’m not gonna watch it, so I can’t make a definitive statement about the former, and I don’t know enough about the circumstances of the shoot to address the latter.
All I *can* say is that the subject matter icks me out, but the pursuit and creation of that matter doesn’t offend me.
Vague enough for ya?
Roger,
Vague is good. My question - which is normally missunderstood due to my inability to phrase it clearly - isn’t regarding issues of consent (though I’m on record as saying ‘Yes’ doesn’t always constitute an informed contractual obligation in my view), but more what, if anything, can be agreed upon as not ‘nice’. Is there anything you can say, “I support porn, but I don’t condone that”, about without losing your cred?
I’m probably just a wuss but I don’t get off on people doing things they don’t want to because they’re desperate. It strikes me like consenting to sell your child because your have seven others who are hungry. I figure the buyer has some responsibility too.
Maybe not though? That’s why I ask the questions.
I’ve seen people brutally murdered on the internet. I’ve seen the aftermath of heinous and horrible deaths on the internet. I’ve seen people defecating and people eating said defecation on the internet. Guess what made me physically ill?
Yeah, no way in hell am I clicking that link, haha.
THAT BEING SAID - if you’re freaky enough to be into that, and NO ONE is being harmed, more power to you. As it relates to porn, though, while I think it goes above and beyond what would constitute that imaginary “line,” I have no problem in accepting it as an artistic expression (as far as that goes).
Is it disgusting the majority of people out there? I’d say a big “YES.” Is there any socially redeeming value in it? I’d say “Hell NO!” Would I legislate it until it was a major felony to do/film/own? Nope. No one (apparently) is being hurt, everyone is (apparently) a consenting adult, so as far as I’m concerned, they’re free to do as they please.
Of course, all this brings to mind Max Hardcore and what he does, and his current legal issues and how a spotlight is about to be on porn again, and I cringe at the thought of what might happen to the more benign/vanilla/”normal” aspects of the industry.
Chris,
Good points all but you raise a question. No one appears to be being physically hurt but does mental anguish play a role? If we consider it torture to put someone through a mock-execution - recognizing the torment which can be caused without physical brutality - could we argue that eating a mixture of shit and puke was damaging to the psyche?
History will not be kind to Paul (Max Hardcore), not because what he does is wrong, but because of what it says about a society which delights in it.
Sam: You were clear… I just tend to ramble. A lot.
As an audience member, I’m not particularly concerned about desperation. If your life sucks so completely that eating a ShitPuke cocktail seems like a reasonable business opportunity, then the resulting trauma (if any) is likely to amount to a few grains of sand swirling in a vast emotional desert. And if not, well, that which cannot be unseen can’t be undone, either. There’s just too much misery in the world for me to get wrapped up in the theoretical backstories of those who voluntarily put themselves through hell on video.
From a production standpoint, though, things are a bit more ethically complicated. For example, let’s say I’m shooting a mainstream action movie, and a scene calls for someone to perform a dangerous stunt. If the lead actress wants to do it, I’d consider it… but not in isolation. I’d also want to know if she’s done anything similar in the past, if she knows what she’s getting into, if there is a risk here that she can’t see. There would be other matters to consider, of course, but they’d be more practical than ethical.
So in the context of a swap.avi, if I had a volunteer who had done similar things in the past, who could convince me she wouldn’t be any worse off than she already was, I wouldn’t see a line being crossed. I can’t rewind her life and unmake her decisions, nor am I inclined to judge her too much for making such decisions in the first place. If this is where she is in life, if she’s fully set on this road, then I’m not gonna play the unwanted savior.
But what if the volunteer is a scared runaway, fiending for meth? Now the line-crossing begins! Such a person would have an extremely difficult time convincing me to let her participate. In fact, I don’t know that anyone under 35 could convince me they were gonna be okay with doing a swap.avi scene.
All of which means (I think) that the making of swap.avi was unethical (IMO), but the viewing of it isn’t.
Roger - Case closed. Nothing further your honor.
Sorry for the babbling. I generally need to circle a topic a few times before I get past my initial impressions to what I actually think.
that’s pretty grim alright but the video on cupchicks.com is way worse fyi