Ofcom Discussion

Eccles - Thanks for rubbing it in with that photo - my 'Raining-Death-Bow-Ray' was a fraction of a degree off target and Meeester Bond's boat escaped the fiery demise I'd been planning for him. Drat.
On the issue of 'art' and outright erotica, no - there is no true distinction; and nor has there been since Edouard Manet submitted 'Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe' for the Salon des Refuses in 1863! The central nude female figure in that seminal work addresses the viewer directly (and scandalously, in the eyes of the 'establishment' of the day). And yet, as Emile Zola points out, the reaction to that work at the time was sheer hypocrisy!
No, art is not separate from erotica, and porn is extreme erotica (thou disagree'st, oh sagely Quango member? Then let us discuss...). If one accepts the extreme offerings of the current batch of middle-aged 'shock artists'....so-called 'avant-garde'! Yeh! Right......as being truly 'art' then what we have on the babe shows also is art. A different branch of it, but a celebration of the female nude and a challenge to the principles of the establishment through the possibly exploitative use of this old tradition - by turning the principles of the 'artistic nude' on its head, what we have acheived is to defy and redefine what art really is - just like Hirst and Emin and the others. What, you gonna take back their prizes in response to this? Nope, didn't think so. And you think masturbation should never intrude into the world of 'art'? I refer you to the Conceptual work 'Seed Bed' (1971) by Vito Acconci. Look it up.
AND look how long it took photography to be turned to such potentially titillating uses as, say, nude female photography.
Yes, I'll stretch the point in open discussion with anyone who wants to discuss it, Colonel Ofcom; Bring it! You'll find I can make it UNBELIEVABLY elastic and it'll NEVER break in my hands, because hypocrisy always deserves a damn good handful of holes shot through it and I volunteer EVERY time. Dammit.

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

(21-10-2010 22:47 )eccles Wrote:  If Im optimistic, Im hoping they get told in outline what their new powers will be, and told to act in accordance with the spirit of them until a new law is passed. Why would the Goverment do that? Because they can cut 50% off their running costs, reduce the compliance cost for broadcasters, and usher in a new era of freedom and personal responsibility.

eccles, OFCOM were told to balance the rights of adults against the need to protect under eighteens. The evidence of any need to protect under eighteens from sexual material falls firmly in the not needed end of the spectrum - i.e. "Based on the available evidence the risk of harm to children from viewing R18 material is insignificant" - as proclaimed by the High Court of England and Wales.

So where is there any evidence of balance at OFCOM?

As I said previously, to watch R18-type material people (e.g. parents/older siblings) must buy it and take it into their homes/bedrooms where under eighteens could (and if top-shelf mags are anything to go buy) WILL find it and view it. The whole point of that High Court Judicial Review was to decalre R18-certified material totally SAFE for kids to view because they can and inevetibly will be exposed to it. If there were ANY evidence of a significant risk to children, R18 would still only contain softcore - indeed, until that High Court ruling in 2000, ALL 'adult channels' broadcast so-called "full strength" (i.e. butchered hardcore) R18-type material as this was the legal standard 'adult material' available in the UK at that time.

The simple fact is OFCOM are failing in their legal duties to protect the wider public. Every complaint from some dozy fuck about getting over excited while watching a phone babe is entirely OFCOM's fault for not ensuring EVERYONE is aware of all the means at their own disposal to block and/or PIN protect any channels THEY do not wish themselves or their children to see. This is the ONLY way to adequately protect memnbers of the public AND ensure compliance with Freedom of Expression for all us red-blooded males and horny females in this shithole excuse for a liberal democracy.

I love sex and I like porn - most people I know do too. OFCOM can only HARM us and our rights by denying us what we actually enjoy watching and have a legal right to receive. OFCOM are supposed to protect us from harm and offence - clearly, OFCOM don't understand what real harm and rights-abuse is or how they are guilty of committing it and how insulting their position is to the liberal majority of this land.

It can be shown quite clearly that OFCOM have simply copied and pasted whole chuncks of the Comms Act into their piss poor excuse for a Standards Code. IF the law were meant to form the Standards Code then I believe Parliament could and would have written it for OFCOM to then enforce. But Parliament didn't nor, I dare say, did Parliament intend for OFCOM to mindlessly copy sections of the law into their shitty Code. OFCOM are a bunch of lazy good-for-nothing arseholes who clearly don't have a fucking clue of what is actually required or expected of them.

We don't need any new laws, all we need is for someone to take a good look at what OFCOM have done in spite of the laws of this land and find them guilty of Human Rights Abuses and wholescale abuses of their powers. OFCOM need to undergo a Judicial Review in the same way the BBFC did - then we might see reason, logic and Justice prevail. OFCOM do not make law - like the rest of us, THEY ANSWER TO IT!

Awesome stuff - powerful, on-target ranting. Just what I like to see.

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

(21-10-2010 23:53 )Krill Liberator Wrote:  Yes, I'll stretch the point in open discussion with anyone who wants to discuss it, Colonel Ofcom; Bring it! You'll find I can make it UNBELIEVABLY elastic and it'll NEVER break in my hands, because hypocrisy always deserves a damn good handful of holes shot through it and I volunteer EVERY time. Dammit.

erm, I was quite drunk last night and I apologise for my random faux-intellectual venom-spraying. wtf?

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

(21-10-2010 23:53 )Krill Liberator Wrote:  On the issue of 'art' and outright erotica, no - there is no true distinction; and nor has there been since Edouard Manet submitted 'Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe' for the Salon des Refuses in 1863! The central nude female figure in that seminal work addresses the viewer directly (and scandalously, in the eyes of the 'establishment' of the day). And yet, as Emile Zola points out, the reaction to that work at the time was sheer hypocrisy!
No, art is not separate from erotica, and porn is extreme erotica (thou disagree'st, oh sagely Quango member? Then let us discuss...). If one accepts the extreme offerings of the current batch of middle-aged 'shock artists'....so-called 'avant-garde'! Yeh! Right......as being truly 'art' then what we have on the babe shows also is art. A different branch of it, but a celebration of the female nude and a challenge to the principles of the establishment through the possibly exploitative use of this old tradition - by turning the principles of the 'artistic nude' on its head, what we have acheived is to defy and redefine what art really is - just like Hirst and Emin and the others. What, you gonna take back their prizes in response to this? Nope, didn't think so. And you think masturbation should never intrude into the world of 'art'? I refer you to the Conceptual work 'Seed Bed' (1971) by Vito Acconci. Look it up.
AND look how long it took photography to be turned to such potentially titillating uses as, say, nude female photography.
Yes, I'll stretch the point in open discussion with anyone who wants to discuss it, Colonel Ofcom; Bring it! You'll find I can make it UNBELIEVABLY elastic and it'll NEVER break in my hands, because hypocrisy always deserves a damn good handful of holes shot through it and I volunteer EVERY time. Dammit.

'Outright erotica' is distinct from art in as much as the former has a narrowly specific function: it exists to get people off. Someone somewhere once neatly defined porn as (I'm paraphrasing): an image or set of images that a person loses all interest in the moment they've achieved orgasm. I think that's pretty bang on. I mean, how many of us enjoying an evening's TV choose to carry on watching the babe channels once we've emptied our balls, when we know there's a tasty sounding Singer/Songwriters special about to be screened on BBC4, or whatever?

Art, erotic art included, remains to some degree brain food - it has the capacity to offer something interesting even to those who've very recently enjoyed a good fuck or wank (assuming they're receptive to art). It may reference the erotic, directly or indirectly (and the impulse to make art might even spring from the part of the brain that deals with/processes the erotic – the 'Tate Gallery bricks' artist Carl Andre is of that opinion, I think), but can't operate as 'outright erotica' (maybe old artworks that incorporated nudity were exclusively used in such a way by some in the days before photography, but once the camera arrived, people stopped going to Botticelli's Venus or a dusty old copy of the illustrated Kama Sutra to help them rub one out! Manet's 'Dejeuner' or 'A Modern Olympia' - at the time Manet was producing these, photo porn was just getting into its early stride - beyond aiming to rile the bourgeoisie, were created to stimulate the contemplative mind more than the testicles.

Acconci's 'Seedbed' addresses the subject of masturbation by actually incorporating the act itself, but it's not there to help or inspire others to actually masturbate, like a babe show performance is (it might be considered a provocative artwork, in the Benjamin-Peret-baiting-A-Priest early Dada tradition, or obscene, but that's a whole other bag of transgressions). But hey, if someone wants to tango con mano while looking at a set of grainy black and white snaps of the lanky - and frankly horrible looking - Mr. Acconci, crouching uncomfortably beneath the floor of a gallery having masturbatory fantasies about the gallery goers walking around above him, then go for it.

(Psst! In trying to argue that the line between art and erotica isn't clear cut, I'm surprised you didn't namecheck something like Carolee Schneemann's 'Meat Joy,' or the orgiastic blood and guts pseudo-crucifixion ceremonies of Hermann Nitsch - performance pieces that blur the that line to a much greater extent than the Acconci piece. They blur it, but they still don't erase it.)

(22-10-2010 20:31 )Addison Wrote:  'Outright erotica' is distinct from art in as much as the former has a narrowly specific function: it exists to get people off. Someone somewhere once neatly defined porn as (I'm paraphrasing): an image or set of images that a person loses all interest in the moment they've achieved orgasm.

Does anyone really think that it matters one jot how OFCOM go about trying to justify a distinction between art and erotica?

Until human beings mature there will always be a prudish guilt associated with all forms of nudity!

Hmm, got some GOOD NEWS and some BAD NEWS
First the GOOD NEWS: "One in five staff employed by Ofcom will be made redundant after the media regulator announced that its funding settlement with the Treasury would result in a 28 per cent cut to its budget ... its budget cap would fall from £143 million to £112.7 million by 2015, leading to the loss of 170 posts from the regulators staff of 870 ... the proposals are subject to 90 days consultation with decisions to be taken in the new year ... handback powers ... salary cut ...
Now the not so good news: "In the coming months the regulator will publish its draft annual plan for 2011-12 which will detail its priorities for the forthcoming year. These will include promoting sustainable competition, ensuring the efficient use of public assets, supporting and protecting consumers and protecting audiences." (Times 22/10/2010 or Telegraph)

Though you will be doing well to find any mention of this on the Ofcom or DCMS websites. A major news story that neither organisation - one a communications regulator - lists among its Press Releases. Keep an eye out for the consultation. And bear in mind that the cap on university fees was changed just 48 hours after it was announced - changes ARE possible.

Anyone who thinks that these minor changes will have any real impact on the issue at hand, are living in cloud cuckoo land!! These do nothing but obfuscate the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter is that OFCOM are FULL of nonsense!!

I doff my cap, bow, and step aside for Addison in response to, frankly, an extraordinarily well-informed and insightful puncturing of my pitiful pissed dribbling. Fabulous stuff, sir! (I have now deleted all those full-frontal snaps of Vito from my hard-drive.) I thank you.
And yes, I am still very drunk.
PS - I much prefer 'Olympia' to 'Dejeuner...' that Victorine is pretty hot for a dead chick.
pps - even after the money shot, it's still a great painting and, bizarrely, I still watch the babeshows. Such a loser...

Missing key events. Talking bollocks. Making stuff up.
~~~SAVE THE KRILL!~~~

I've heard from Digital Spy that ofcom are going to axe a lot of jobs and reduce the pay a lot. About time too because they(ofcom) have dictated everything about the babe channels censorship, dynamics, fines, just about everything under the sun that is anti-democratic. Can't wait to see looks on their faces when ofcom is shut down, I mean imagine it if it happened. We would be celebarting that the pain in the arse quango is ditched.

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