The months are just not long enough. As usual, I am a little late on this.
More on Pigtails Members: I am getting a little impatient with members not following the instructions I send. I understand that many of you are familiar with WordPress and even though we use the software, we are not on their server. Also because of automated attacks, we have had to modify the system so that our server won’t have to deal with the extra garbage traffic. That means that the login process for registered members is not the usual route that most other WP sites follow. If you attempt to login incorrectly, your IP will be blocked for 24 hours and you will have to wait to try again. So please follow the instructions!
During the registration process, I noticed that Yahoo and AOL are notorious for automatically blocking the automated email that sends you your password. In some cases, you can find it in the “spam” folder—not to be confused with the “junk” folder. Firefox and Mozilla email applications won’t even show you these. Therefore, for those who want to use those email accounts, I am going to have to send you the passwords manually. As if I didn’t have enough work already. Aargh!
Instagram Artists: I have gotten a spate of leads having to do with Instagram accounts with quality images by skilled photographers—amateur or otherwise. Young people are fond of sharing selfies but these few seems to be of higher production quality. Readers may even see posts here on some of these account holders in the future. Here are some of the leads I have received so far: here, here, here and here.
Quality Foreign Films: When I use the term “foreign”, this is from an English-speaking perspective. I really mean international films that were never intended for an international market. Someone turned me on to a YouTube channel with a collection (over 600) of foreign films in a wide range of languages. In one case, I found a much higher quality version of the film Du sel sur la peau (1984). I was intending to take new screen shots and update them on the post but the specific shots I captured weren’t really that bad. The problem was avoiding the hard-coded French subtitles and really poor sound quality. The channel in question has the theme of children in cinema which includes boys and girls so I would appreciate any readers willing to go through these and identify those dealing with girls that are not already included in the ‘Pipeline: Films’ page. The account seems to have been started in January 2022 which indicates to me that this person’s account is periodically cancelled due to “community standards” issues. Copyright issues are unlikely given the age of these films.
An Ethical Conundrum: I got a report about a pornography video—I believe a full-length film—that contains a child. Of course children engaging in sexual behavior with adults is almost universally illegal but this filmmaker seems to be pushing the edge and I wanted to hear comments—thoughtful, of course—about this tactic. According to the lead, the girl in question is not in any scene with an adult. In the story, the scene with the young girl (9 years old) is included as a flashback of one of the main characters in the film. The child’s genitals are visible for a few seconds because the scene is about her “playing doctor” with three little boys. The boys are also shown but the scenes were shot in such a way so the naked girl is not actually in the same room with the boy actors. To further complicate things, I am told that the girl’s face is recognizable in some shots which adds the possibility of stigmatization for having acted in the film. We have often discussed how nudity should not imply a sexual connotation (and therefore not stigmatized) but this little actress has been deliberately included in a porno film. Assuming the girl was otherwise treated well during filming, where do you fall on the ethics of this? Was it really necessary to show the girl’s genitals so prominently? Maybe because of the typical production values of pornos (low, in case you didn’t already know), maybe the filmmaker didn’t give it that much careful thought, but they seem to be skirting the edges of legality here. What do you think? Also, for the morbidly curious among you, I will not be divulging the title of the film, where it can be found and, no, I have not looked at the film myself so don’t bother asking!
Hands up as one of those guilty of log in errors, apologies Ron & thanks for your patience in helping me sort it out.
Sadly the links to the instagram artists have already been deleted.
Keep up the good work
I recall seeing some footage that matches your example. It appeared to me that it was made like this: Three boys and one girl were filmed in a short scene with no sexual behavior and no nudity. Then the boys only were filmed reacting to and interacting with something that was not shown, and may have been imaginary to the boys when they were filmed. The boys went home and the girl was filmed in her nude scene, which involved no sexual activity, or any activity at all.
Then these scenes were cut and spliced together, narration from an adult actress was added, and the sequence was put into a hardcore porn movie. It was implied that while playing doctor, one of the boys molested the girl by inserting something into her vagina. It can be argued that any harm to the children was not inflicted until after they left the studio and the edited version of their scenes was released in a porn film. This may have been legal in the jurisdiction where the movie was made, but it was not right.
Since the children were in the movie approximately one minute and did not interact with other actors, there was no need for them to see the entire script or even to know the name of the movie. It is possible that parents signed a vague contract allowing the studio to use the scenes in any movie they want. They may have thought that the nude scene would be used in a film like Cider with Rosie, rather than in pornography.
Another question is how they get away with making the movie like that when Pigtails was shut down for an innocent Brazilian post card.
There are stories in existence claiming that in that movie, at the moment when the girl’s genitals are visible, a “prosthetic dummy” was actually used instead. There is even a story that one DVD of that movie contained a “Making of” feature, in which the prosthetic dummy was actually shown and discussed.
I remember something that I heard on the radio after the movie Lolita was released. Lolita is a fictional character. The actress who portrayed Lolita was a minor, Dominique Swain. An adult body double was used to portray Lolita in sex scenes, but these scenes were deleted, on advice of the studio’s lawyers, before the movie was released. The lawyer’s reasoning was that it is prefectly legal for an adult actress to portray a fictional character in a sex scene. The problem was that since Dominique Swain portrayed Lolita in the other scenes, it would be implied to the audience that Dominique Swain, a minor, was also acting in the sex scenes. So even though Dominique Swain was not in the sex scenes, she could be stigmatized by the implication that she was, and therefore the scenes were of dubious legality and had to be cut.
The same reasoning could be applied to the movie in question. Probably no object actually penetrated the vagina of the minor actress during the “playing doctor” scene. There was, however, an implication that this happened. It could be argued that the minor actress, whose face was recognizable and who was named in the credits, could be harmed by this implication.
This is much like the story of Brooke Shields’ work on The Blue Lagoon. Although it was obvious to me, another woman was used for scenes that showed more nudity. This is in part a backlash after the Gross photos and Shields’ mother insisted that her daughter would no longer be shot in the nude. -Ron
I’m confused. You say you have not looked at the film, yet you discuss it as though you are familiar with the content. Are you relying on second-hand interpretations? If so, that’s problematic. I fully understand your unwillingness to identify the film, but at the same time, you are leaving us hanging in the exact same way you objected to me obliquely referring to LS Studios in a different post.
In any case, more context is called for. At the least, when and where did the film originate? I have never heard of anything like this. You refer to it as pornography, but I don’t need to point out to you that the term is extremely subjective, especially if you haven’t actually seen it for yourself. One person’s porn is another person’s erotic art. Indeed, I’m old enough to remember when “Deep Throat” was considered an arthouse film. So we can be talking about anything from a quickie shot in a motel room in the San Fernando Valley to a big budget “epic” out of France or such. And the time period makes a difference: are we talking about something contemporary, or out of the so-called “Golden Age of Porn”? Or even, for that matter, from that brief period when CP was defacto legal in Denmark? There’s just a lot of gaps for us to be able to evaluate your ethical conundrum.
I admit skepticism is called for but my source is someone I have found reliable in the past and I am inclined to believe him. As I said in another comment, calling this film a porno is perfectly legitimate because it is the producer’s explicit intention that it is so and further reinforced by the marketing channels used originally to promote the film.
Deep Throat is another film I have not seen but am aware of its historical significance in the world of pornography. Pornos don’t appeal to me personally but I do read and watch documentaries about their history in the context of human nature (and am aware of a few noteworthy figures). Some of these films may have some unusual artistic merit but that does not change the intent of the film which I think the producers would fairly call pornographic. Some distinction needs to be made between erotica and pornography but I don’t know when it will be time for society to start dealing with that one. Perhaps when human beings on the a global level stop brutalizing each other, we can begin to cope with these finer details.
In any case, the scenario was presented as a hypothetical case and it hardly matters how many instances of it actually exist. It is a human compulsion to push the edges of the envelope and so the existence of such a thing is hardly a surprise to me and I thought worthy of discussion. -Ron
Why people still bring up the so called studio material, it’s damaging to the females that are portrayed. Imagine yourself in their shoes, the possibility of being recognized and then blackmailed. You are confusing an adult which is aware of the consequences of posing nude and is signing a model release, to the minors who have no clue of the damage that will be done to their lives. Imagine being ridiculed at school, university, work. I don’t understand how did the parents/guardians agree to sign a nude model release knowing the consequences it will cause in the future.
It’s easy for us to sit back and declare with 20/20 hindsight that the parents should have exercised more prudence. But on the subject of putting oneself in another’s shoes, it should be born in mind that the level of stigma may have been lower at the time and one cannot discount the force of economic incentives. From the point of view of some hypothetical disinterested observer, it must seem more than a little amusing what lengths viewers will push content so that the line between erotic and pornographic are badly blurred. Amusing until one engages in compassionate contemplation and realizes the harm caused to the model and, surprisingly, even the purveyors of such material.
I had an argument with an associate a few years ago when I suggested the main cause of harm is not the sexuality itself, but the state of poverty of the model/victim. I let the subject drop but was vindicated by later statistics and a podcast commentator who said essentially the same thing (he was discussing human trafficking generally). The reason this truism is not a part of mainstream discourse has mainly to do with the extraordinary effort required to solve the problem of poverty in a substantive way; sexuality is easier to manipulate. If we did deal with the root cause, things like racism, sexism and a multitude of other social ills would fade away as well. Without the specter of economic desperation, it would be interesting how an activity like this might be framed. OK, time to get off my soapbox! -Ron
Most of us agree that studio material is bad ,but as with other things there are two sides of the coin and the question is what is the positive aspect of such studio material. Is it the basic fact that human form should not be censored no matter the shape, age, race, dissability ,gender identity or else.
I have been maintaining that view for a long time. Almost anything will have a silver lining but the real question has to be if there is a more positive or more negative effect in the endeavor. This is very difficult to assess because of the natural bias of human beings which makes it impossible to make persuasive arguments. Commodifying the bodies of children is a monstrous effect of the kind of rapacious capitalism we have in the so-called free trade world. This creates niches for desperate bad actors who want to claim they are helping these models and their families financially. Let us all be careful about the ways we are capable of deluding ourselves and take a stand for a better world. The precious presence of a child’s countenance will almost certainly be a part of such a world. -Ron