April 30, 2007
After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits of Movie Violence
The Torture of College Students May No Longer Seem Entertaining
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
LOS ANGELES, April 29 — If the horror at Virginia Tech has changed the chemistry of America’s popular culture, those who count box-office receipts at Lionsgate would be among the first to know.
The independent studio, a clearinghouse for some of the entertainment industry’s most graphically violent fare, still plans to release on June 8 its “Hostel: Part II,” about the torture killing of college students.
The movie will open as other studios are turning toward comedies like “Knocked Up,” capers like “Ocean’s 13,” or fantasy adventures like “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.”
Given its subject matter and the marketing campaign that has already come with it — posters featuring a woman’s severed head and other grisly images are now scattered on the Web — the Lionsgate film is emerging as a test of continued audience enthusiasm for such onscreen brutality, which some commentators have connected with the Blacksburg gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s video and its possible echoes of the Korean revenge film “Old Boy.”
“What might have been traditionally acceptable exploitation in one period can be seen as stupendously bad taste in another,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, which examines the links among entertainment, commerce and society.
Eight years ago, in one such case, the Columbine High School killings fed a political storm around the marketing of violent entertainment to the young, and led to stricter policing of sales practices in the movie and video-game industries.
“You can’t win on this one,” said Peter Dekom, a longtime entertainment lawyer and author, with Peter Sealey, of “Not on My Watch: Hollywood vs. the Future.”
Mr. Dekom predicted that fallout from the killings would hurt the film’s performance. But the damage would only grow deeper, he suggested, if Lionsgate delayed the film, allowing the Internet buzz to tag it as being troubled.
Written and directed by Eli Roth, with Quentin Tarantino as an executive producer, “Hostel: Part II” follows an immensely lucrative predecessor, which cost only about $5 million to make, and took in more than $80 million worldwide when Lionsgate released it last year in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Screen Gems division. (Sony, whose executives declined to comment, also has a stake in the new film.)
The original film told the story of three young travelers who are lured by gorgeous women into captivity and deadly torture; the new picture follows three young women studying abroad who fall into much the same trap. Along with the three hits in its “Saw” series, the film cemented Lionsgate’s reputation as a nonpareil distributor of so-called torture porn and helped to feed a surge in violent horror movies from virtually every major studio in recent years.
(Lionsgate is not solely devoted to gore; it has also released the family-oriented Tyler Perry movies and “Crash,” which won the best picture Oscar for 2005. On Friday, the studio will open Sarah Polley’s “Away From Her,” based on a short story by Alice Munro about an aging couple dealing with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.)
Peter Wilkes, a Lionsgate spokesman, confirmed that his company plans to proceed with a June release for “Hostel: Part II,” but declined to discuss whether it planned to adjust the movie or its marketing campaign.
In recent weeks, the Motion Picture Association of America, which reviews advertising materials for films that seek a rating, approved the severed head poster, with a proviso that it not be displayed in multiplex theaters, where children might be exposed to it, according to a person involved with the process.
Lionsgate has circulated additional images, including one of a dead or dying woman suspended upside down with fluid dripping from her nose. “Hostel: Part II” has not yet been rated, but like its predecessor, will probably receive an R rating.
Even before the events in Blacksburg, the heavy run of violent films had gained attention from the government — a Federal Trade Commission report this month found that studios were still selling R-rated fare to adolescents over the Internet, among other things — just as the genre was beginning to show signs of audience fatigue.
Pictures like “Dead Silence” from Universal, “The Hills Have Eyes 2” from Fox Atomic, “Grindhouse” from the Weinstein Company, and “The Reaping” from Warner Brothers Pictures were box-office disappointments. And Sony’s “Vacancy,” which opened on April 20 even as images of the Virginia killings continued to fill television screens, has pulled in just $14 million in its first 9 days.
“You might have seen a little effect” from Blacksburg in audience behavior a week ago, said Roy Lee, a film producer whose projects include a proposed remake of “Old Boy” for Universal.
Mr. Lee said that film, initially intended as a project for Justin Lin, the director of “Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” had fallen out of active development long before Mr. Cho’s video and commentator chatter about supposed influences.
Mr. Lee said that the killings have seriously shaken the prospects for his “Battle Royale,” based on the Japanese novel in which ninth graders imprisoned on an island are forced to kill one another. (Lionsgate’s “The Condemned,” with a similar island face-off premise involving adults, opened this weekend to $4 million.) New Line Cinema has been working since last year for film rights to the game but has yet to sign a deal, according to Mr. Lee.
But he said that he was glad the movie had not started production before the Blacksburg killings. “We would have been slaughtered by the press,” he said.
Asked if he would still be willing to proceed with a “Battle Royale” movie, Mr. Lee said yes, though “we might be a little more sensitive to some of the issues.” A spokeswoman for New Line said she had “no news” about progress on the rights deal.
The trade paper Variety reported last week that two films based on campus violence — the documentary “The Killer Within,” about a planned killing spree at Swarthmore College in the 1950s, and the drama “Dark Matter,” about a dangerously disaffected Asian student — are still looking for distributors.
Yet Dr. Kaplan of the Lear Center, a former film executive for Disney, noted that popular culture has a way of riding out even the most shattering of events.
Dr. Kaplan added that he was hard-pressed to think of any event that had suddenly, and irrevocably, changed audience responsiveness. “Famously, 9/11 was supposed to be the end of irony,” he said. “If anything, irony has blossomed.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business...amp;oref=slogin
Full Version: After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits of Movie Violence
QUOTE
http://onmoviesonline.blogspot.com/
Friday, June 08, 2007
THAT HOSTEL DUDE
More stuff from Eli Roth, who dropped into town recently to talk up Hostel Part II, a sequel that he proudly predicts "will have the reputation of being the most violent R-rated movie ever to hit theaters."
The director's canned line of defense for this orgy of torture porn and misogyny, in which a group of women (and one deserving fellow) get maimed, mutilated, dismembered and worse -- is a sound-byte he's probably offered to a hundred journos by now. It goes like this: "It’s Hostel Part II, it’s not Happy Feet 2. People that are going to see this want to be pushed to the edge."
And about pushing the horror/slasher genre to the edge, Roth -- 35, the product of a psychiatrist dad and an artist mom -- had this to say: "If you look at the stuff that was in Hostel 1, it’s being done on television now. I mean, Hostel 1 was so shocking.... People were saying it was the most violent American film that had been made in years, since the heyday of The Last House On the Left and Dawn of the Dead.
"And now you watch 24 and it’s the same shot: a hand-held point-of-view, picking up a power-drill, and you see it drilling into someone. So, the stuff that I did in the first one [for] theaters that was so shocking, is now being done on television.
"Not only is there competition with other movies, other horror movies, you’re competing with 24, Nip/Tuck, The Shield.... violent stuff that people can get in their own homes.
"So, my goal was to make a better, smarter, scarier film. I think if I had just put more gory moments, people wouldn’t go see it.… And I knew that putting girls into the situation raises the stakes. With girls, it’s the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. When a hunter kills a lion, it's `Oh wow, what a great hunter, they killed a lion!' If they kill a deer, it’s, `Aw, that poor deer.'
"So, with the girls, I could not shoot any torture scenes the way I shot the guys' [torture scenes] in the first one. They had to be more over-the-top, more theatrical and much more stylized."
Enough of that.
Friday, June 08, 2007
THAT HOSTEL DUDE
More stuff from Eli Roth, who dropped into town recently to talk up Hostel Part II, a sequel that he proudly predicts "will have the reputation of being the most violent R-rated movie ever to hit theaters."
The director's canned line of defense for this orgy of torture porn and misogyny, in which a group of women (and one deserving fellow) get maimed, mutilated, dismembered and worse -- is a sound-byte he's probably offered to a hundred journos by now. It goes like this: "It’s Hostel Part II, it’s not Happy Feet 2. People that are going to see this want to be pushed to the edge."
And about pushing the horror/slasher genre to the edge, Roth -- 35, the product of a psychiatrist dad and an artist mom -- had this to say: "If you look at the stuff that was in Hostel 1, it’s being done on television now. I mean, Hostel 1 was so shocking.... People were saying it was the most violent American film that had been made in years, since the heyday of The Last House On the Left and Dawn of the Dead.
"And now you watch 24 and it’s the same shot: a hand-held point-of-view, picking up a power-drill, and you see it drilling into someone. So, the stuff that I did in the first one [for] theaters that was so shocking, is now being done on television.
"Not only is there competition with other movies, other horror movies, you’re competing with 24, Nip/Tuck, The Shield.... violent stuff that people can get in their own homes.
"So, my goal was to make a better, smarter, scarier film. I think if I had just put more gory moments, people wouldn’t go see it.… And I knew that putting girls into the situation raises the stakes. With girls, it’s the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. When a hunter kills a lion, it's `Oh wow, what a great hunter, they killed a lion!' If they kill a deer, it’s, `Aw, that poor deer.'
"So, with the girls, I could not shoot any torture scenes the way I shot the guys' [torture scenes] in the first one. They had to be more over-the-top, more theatrical and much more stylized."
Enough of that.
QUOTE
http://www.topix.net/content/trb/416652486...668333329834418
The Big Picture: 'Hostel' ads test the squirm factor
By Patrick Goldstein
Los Angeles Times
June 04, 2007
What does it take to shock us these days?
The question came to mind as I watched 'Hostel: Part II,' the sequel to Eli Roth's horror film. The original was such a big hit last year that its distributor, Lionsgate, is putting out the new thriller Friday in the midst of a crush of summer behemoths. Whereas the previous installment featured college boys being butchered by lowlifes who pay top dollar to kill a human being, 'Hostel 2' spices up the formula with a trio of comely coeds who are lured to a Slovakian hostel, where a pair of American businessmen are preparing to torture and murder them.
Though that description may make the film sound like a grade-Z splatter picture, 'Hostel: Part II' comes armed with a fancier pedigree, thanks to Roth's cult reputation among Comic-Con fan boys who view him as a cross between Quentin Tarantino (who has a 'presented by' credit on the film) and George Romero. The critics will have their say on the gory R-rated film's merits. What fascinates me about the film is its marketing campaign, which brazenly uses disturbing images of torture, nudity and depravity to attract attention for the film.
The campaign is the brainchild of Tim Palen, Lionsgate's co-president of marketing, who has become a master of guerrilla marketing for the studio's popular horror films. The studio's 'Saw' series, for example, was promoted with billboards featuring two severed fingers with the tagline: 'Oh yes, there will be blood.' Some of Palen's most arresting material is seen only at Comic-Con conventions and youth-oriented Internet sites, allowing it to pass under the radar of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which governs studio marketing material in the U.S.
In an era when most movie marketing material is dreary and unimaginative, Palen has quietly built a reputation as Hollywood's most daring impresario. Filmmakers rave about his work, which he often photographs himself. When the Hollywood Reporter announced nominees for its 36th annual Key Art Awards, Lionsgate, for the second consecutive year, earned the most nominations of any studio. Rival studios have paid Palen the ultimate compliment, either by trying to hire him away or doing knockoffs of his material.
But after seeing the images Palen has created for 'Hostel: Part II,' you have to wonder - is it art or is it exploitation? Or some unsettling combination of the two?
'Advertising by definition is exploitation,' Palen said the other day. 'It's easy to shock people. But you have to know when you're crossing the line. It's all about appropriateness. As a marketer, you have to have an appropriateness meter or you run the risk of people laughing at you or shunning you.'
The problem is that we all have different standards for what's appropriate. Many of the same people who are outraged by violent lyrics in rap music had no problem with Johnny Cash singing, 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.' On the other hand, hip-hop artists get a pass when they insult black women in the most vulgar, demeaning way imaginable, but when Don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team 'nappy headed hos,' he quickly got the old heave-ho.
Palen's 'Hostel: Part II' images are especially provocative because they can't easily be dismissed as trash. They are disturbing because they get under our skin, being almost in equal measures volatile, vulgar and inspired. Palen wanted to start the campaign with an image that would stand out amid the clutter of endless movie posters. So he went to a butcher's shop, bought five different cuts of meat and photographed them in his kitchen.
The winner was a cut of boar meat: 'We had to prove to the MPAA that it wasn't human, so I sent them the receipt from the butcher shop,' he recalls. Shown in an extreme close-up that gives the veins of fat in the meat the look of someone's intestines, the poster instantly established the film's bona fides to horror fans.
The next image in the campaign was from a photo session Palen did with film costar Bijou Phillips. It shows Phillips nude, holding her own severed head in her hand. Knowing the image was too graphic to ever be shown in a theater or in a newspaper ad, Palen gave the poster to international Internet sites, which are not subject to MPAA guidelines, and Comic-Con festivals.
His next image was a mash-up of the previous two, with Phillips' severed head embedded in the rivulets of close-up boar fat. This poster was displayed in theaters, though only in multiplexes that weren't playing G or PG movies. Palen followed this up with another poster, this one with Heather Matarazzo, who plays one of the women tortured in the film. He photographer her hanging upside down, her face contorted, the veins in her neck bulging, a tiny rivulet of snot dripping from her nose.
The photo, which appeared in an ad in our paper on Sunday, stops you in your tracks, which, of course, is what great advertising is meant to do. If you want truth in advertising, this is it - you couldn't possibly walk in to see 'Hostel: Part II' thinking it is a harmless teen comedy. But while I admire the art of these posters, there's a fine line between an image that deftly captures the spirit of a gory film and an image that glamorizes the degradation of women.
Palen defends his work in two ways: in terms of context and execution. The poster of a naked Phillips holding her severed head in her hands, he says, 'is completely inappropriate to be on a billboard on the street or even in the lobby of our offices.' But he says it is suitable for theaters in foreign markets - where people are far less concerned about sexual images - and for hard-core horror fans.
'It's for the boys in the backpacks at these comic conventions, waiting in line for hours to get the posters signed,' says Palen.
Palen insists his images are considerably different from the ones that appeared on billboards for 'Captivity,' whose graphic portrayal of the kidnapping and torture of a woman caused such a furor that they were quickly taken down earlier this year. (The movie, made by After Dark Films, is distributed by Lionsgate, but the company claims it never saw or approved the advertising materials.) Palen says those images were 'vulgar' because of the way they were designed and photographed.
But what about his severed-head poster? Why isn't it vulgar too? 'There's a way for Bijou to hold her head in her hand and do it elegantly instead of gratuitously,' he says. 'It's the flourish and technique brought to it that makes all the difference.'
I'm guessing that many people have trouble buying that logic, even though I'd be the first to argue that a photo of sexy teens by Larry Clark has a very different aesthetic than one by, say, Bruce Weber.
One vocal critic is 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' creator Joss Whedon, who recently posted an impassioned essay about how women are treated in pop culture, comparing the trailer for 'Captivity' to a gruesome CNN story on a young Iraqi woman who was stoned to death by a group of men who took time to film the killing (Read his take at whedonesque.com ).
I don't blame Palen for doing his job. He's not making these movies, just promoting them. Art can often make us squeamish, whether it's high-minded social commentary or squishy horror porn.
What I find depressing is that while 'Hostel: Part II' will play at multiplexes everywhere, the disturbing images of carnage in Iraq are largely hidden away from view, in part because the Defense Department refuses to allow them to be shown, in part because the public acts outraged whenever the media put them on display.
It's hard to imagine anything more moving than 'The Sacrifice,' a series of war photos by James Nachtwey in December's National Geographic that captured in unflinching detail the price our soldiers in Iraq have paid on the battlefield and on the home front. But this is a reality no one wants to see. Imagine the uproar if these photos - simple evidence of the price of war - were on billboards across America, depicting our own horror movie sprung to life.
The next time you see a 'Hostel: Part II' poster, perhaps you'll ponder for a moment why so many of us get a kick out of movies in which kids are gruesomely hacked to death yet so few of us will bother to look at the carnage when it's real kids in a real war. It must be why they call the movies escapist art. When it comes to real gore, we like to turn away.
'The Big Picture' runs each Tuesday in Calendar. Questions or criticism can be e-mailed to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
The Big Picture: 'Hostel' ads test the squirm factor
By Patrick Goldstein
Los Angeles Times
June 04, 2007
What does it take to shock us these days?
The question came to mind as I watched 'Hostel: Part II,' the sequel to Eli Roth's horror film. The original was such a big hit last year that its distributor, Lionsgate, is putting out the new thriller Friday in the midst of a crush of summer behemoths. Whereas the previous installment featured college boys being butchered by lowlifes who pay top dollar to kill a human being, 'Hostel 2' spices up the formula with a trio of comely coeds who are lured to a Slovakian hostel, where a pair of American businessmen are preparing to torture and murder them.
Though that description may make the film sound like a grade-Z splatter picture, 'Hostel: Part II' comes armed with a fancier pedigree, thanks to Roth's cult reputation among Comic-Con fan boys who view him as a cross between Quentin Tarantino (who has a 'presented by' credit on the film) and George Romero. The critics will have their say on the gory R-rated film's merits. What fascinates me about the film is its marketing campaign, which brazenly uses disturbing images of torture, nudity and depravity to attract attention for the film.
The campaign is the brainchild of Tim Palen, Lionsgate's co-president of marketing, who has become a master of guerrilla marketing for the studio's popular horror films. The studio's 'Saw' series, for example, was promoted with billboards featuring two severed fingers with the tagline: 'Oh yes, there will be blood.' Some of Palen's most arresting material is seen only at Comic-Con conventions and youth-oriented Internet sites, allowing it to pass under the radar of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which governs studio marketing material in the U.S.
In an era when most movie marketing material is dreary and unimaginative, Palen has quietly built a reputation as Hollywood's most daring impresario. Filmmakers rave about his work, which he often photographs himself. When the Hollywood Reporter announced nominees for its 36th annual Key Art Awards, Lionsgate, for the second consecutive year, earned the most nominations of any studio. Rival studios have paid Palen the ultimate compliment, either by trying to hire him away or doing knockoffs of his material.
But after seeing the images Palen has created for 'Hostel: Part II,' you have to wonder - is it art or is it exploitation? Or some unsettling combination of the two?
'Advertising by definition is exploitation,' Palen said the other day. 'It's easy to shock people. But you have to know when you're crossing the line. It's all about appropriateness. As a marketer, you have to have an appropriateness meter or you run the risk of people laughing at you or shunning you.'
The problem is that we all have different standards for what's appropriate. Many of the same people who are outraged by violent lyrics in rap music had no problem with Johnny Cash singing, 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.' On the other hand, hip-hop artists get a pass when they insult black women in the most vulgar, demeaning way imaginable, but when Don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team 'nappy headed hos,' he quickly got the old heave-ho.
Palen's 'Hostel: Part II' images are especially provocative because they can't easily be dismissed as trash. They are disturbing because they get under our skin, being almost in equal measures volatile, vulgar and inspired. Palen wanted to start the campaign with an image that would stand out amid the clutter of endless movie posters. So he went to a butcher's shop, bought five different cuts of meat and photographed them in his kitchen.
The winner was a cut of boar meat: 'We had to prove to the MPAA that it wasn't human, so I sent them the receipt from the butcher shop,' he recalls. Shown in an extreme close-up that gives the veins of fat in the meat the look of someone's intestines, the poster instantly established the film's bona fides to horror fans.
The next image in the campaign was from a photo session Palen did with film costar Bijou Phillips. It shows Phillips nude, holding her own severed head in her hand. Knowing the image was too graphic to ever be shown in a theater or in a newspaper ad, Palen gave the poster to international Internet sites, which are not subject to MPAA guidelines, and Comic-Con festivals.
His next image was a mash-up of the previous two, with Phillips' severed head embedded in the rivulets of close-up boar fat. This poster was displayed in theaters, though only in multiplexes that weren't playing G or PG movies. Palen followed this up with another poster, this one with Heather Matarazzo, who plays one of the women tortured in the film. He photographer her hanging upside down, her face contorted, the veins in her neck bulging, a tiny rivulet of snot dripping from her nose.
The photo, which appeared in an ad in our paper on Sunday, stops you in your tracks, which, of course, is what great advertising is meant to do. If you want truth in advertising, this is it - you couldn't possibly walk in to see 'Hostel: Part II' thinking it is a harmless teen comedy. But while I admire the art of these posters, there's a fine line between an image that deftly captures the spirit of a gory film and an image that glamorizes the degradation of women.
Palen defends his work in two ways: in terms of context and execution. The poster of a naked Phillips holding her severed head in her hands, he says, 'is completely inappropriate to be on a billboard on the street or even in the lobby of our offices.' But he says it is suitable for theaters in foreign markets - where people are far less concerned about sexual images - and for hard-core horror fans.
'It's for the boys in the backpacks at these comic conventions, waiting in line for hours to get the posters signed,' says Palen.
Palen insists his images are considerably different from the ones that appeared on billboards for 'Captivity,' whose graphic portrayal of the kidnapping and torture of a woman caused such a furor that they were quickly taken down earlier this year. (The movie, made by After Dark Films, is distributed by Lionsgate, but the company claims it never saw or approved the advertising materials.) Palen says those images were 'vulgar' because of the way they were designed and photographed.
But what about his severed-head poster? Why isn't it vulgar too? 'There's a way for Bijou to hold her head in her hand and do it elegantly instead of gratuitously,' he says. 'It's the flourish and technique brought to it that makes all the difference.'
I'm guessing that many people have trouble buying that logic, even though I'd be the first to argue that a photo of sexy teens by Larry Clark has a very different aesthetic than one by, say, Bruce Weber.
One vocal critic is 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' creator Joss Whedon, who recently posted an impassioned essay about how women are treated in pop culture, comparing the trailer for 'Captivity' to a gruesome CNN story on a young Iraqi woman who was stoned to death by a group of men who took time to film the killing (Read his take at whedonesque.com ).
I don't blame Palen for doing his job. He's not making these movies, just promoting them. Art can often make us squeamish, whether it's high-minded social commentary or squishy horror porn.
What I find depressing is that while 'Hostel: Part II' will play at multiplexes everywhere, the disturbing images of carnage in Iraq are largely hidden away from view, in part because the Defense Department refuses to allow them to be shown, in part because the public acts outraged whenever the media put them on display.
It's hard to imagine anything more moving than 'The Sacrifice,' a series of war photos by James Nachtwey in December's National Geographic that captured in unflinching detail the price our soldiers in Iraq have paid on the battlefield and on the home front. But this is a reality no one wants to see. Imagine the uproar if these photos - simple evidence of the price of war - were on billboards across America, depicting our own horror movie sprung to life.
The next time you see a 'Hostel: Part II' poster, perhaps you'll ponder for a moment why so many of us get a kick out of movies in which kids are gruesomely hacked to death yet so few of us will bother to look at the carnage when it's real kids in a real war. It must be why they call the movies escapist art. When it comes to real gore, we like to turn away.
'The Big Picture' runs each Tuesday in Calendar. Questions or criticism can be e-mailed to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.
First hit on Google search 'protest hostel 2' links to forum thread with chat by 'pornographer,' who mentions attending German film festival showing alternate Hostel ending involving 'German dude's little daughter,' and another Hostel Two fan, who praises the 'behind the scenes' focus on who runs the human trafficking ring, how bidding on the kids they want to kill is accomplished, etc... Lucky this is all fictional, eh?
By contrast, below is an inspiring link, although the group appears inactive now.
By contrast, below is an inspiring link, although the group appears inactive now.
QUOTE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-soloway...em_b_44404.html
Remove The Rating For CAPTIVITY
by Jill Soloway
3/27/2007
A couple of weeks ago I was driving my son to school when I took a left onto LaBrea, and, as usual, sat in traffic for a couple of minutes. As we waited for the construction bottleneck to ease up, we sang along with the new Shins CD. And then, at the same moment, we fell silent.
We were both noticing the same thing.
It was a billboard for a movie. There was actress Elisha Cuthbert, super-heavily made up-dare I say whorishly-- being used as the centerpiece of the most repulsive, horrifying, woman-hating, human- hating thing I have ever seen in public.
The first image had a black-gloved hand over her mouth, titled CAPTURE. Next, her eyes begged for rescue as her mascara ran and her bloody finger tried to pry its way out of a cage, titled CONFINEMENT.
In the next picture, titled TORTURE, she was encased in a strange mask, with tubes coming out of her nose, draining blood. Maybe. We couldn't figure out if it was tubes or a hook-that was another thing about it-you had to keep looking to figure out what the hell was going on.
The last frame was Elisha, may her career rest in peace after posing for this, hanging dead, lying on her back with one breast prominently displayed. The word in this frame was TERMINATION.
That night I had a nightmare about the billboard, and by the next morning, I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach. This wasn't just horror, this wasn't just misogyny... it was a grody combo platter of the two, the torture almost a punishment for the sexiness. It had come from such a despicable inhuman hatred place that it somehow managed to recall Abu Ghraib, the Holocaust, porn and snuff films all at once.
The next morning I decided to take a different route. Except this time I saw two more of the same billboards. It felt like they were EVERYWHERE, peppered all over my city. That afternoon, after the ride home with two more ten year olds in my car-one, a little girl, whose face I watched in my rearview mirror as she tried to make sense of the billboard. Now I was ready to take action.
Instead of making dinner and doing my usual after schooly things, I googled my way to the main number for Lionsgate, the video distributor of this film- and left a message for CEO John Feltheimer asking him to take them down. I sent the number to a few other people, and that night, hoped to sleep without a nightmare.
The next day, my email in-box was filled with hundreds of letters from people thanking me for giving them a place to voice to their feelings. Back channel operatives had sent me Feltheimer's private line and I distributed that one to the latest angry people. Lionsgate said they had nothing to do with After Dark and didn't approve the ads in the first place- they felt they had no responsibility because Lionsgate would only be making money from the home video sales.
That afternoon I spoke to Jill Simpson at the MPAA who told me that something really strange had happened the week before. She said someone had actually come in to their offices-a woman named Sherry Harding-with this exact artwork-and had shown it to them in person for approval.
Jill Simpson said that no one ever does that, things always come in over email and in attached files. No one ever walks in with art like that.
Of course, the MPAA saw the horrific-ness and told them they couldn't put it up.
And two days later it was up.
At the end of my very first tirade day, someone sent me the name of the main scumbag behind this entire operation: super-sociopath Courtney Solomon of After Dark Films.
A few hours later, Solomon called me. He insisted the fact that the billboards were up at all was a printer error. "We were all at ShoWest," he said, re: the distributor conference in Vegas that week-"and we had no idea they were even up!" Solomon apologized and said they would be down in two days, then offered to make a donation to a woman's organization.
He promised me the ones they meant to put up were soooooo much better, just a woman buried alive. He wrote me a long apology letter, insisting that these were "ideas submitted" but never approved by them in-house.
The next night, I met with about ten women and men, moms and TV writers and regular people, plus a rep from the city council, feminist organizers and peace activists-- in the library of my son's school, to talk. People shared their feelings and their rage, and some shared awful memories of violent crime and rape, memories triggered by this 4-panel publicly displayed snuff film.
In the library that night, we made a decision to wage a campaign to make the live up to what they're supposed to do in this case. Their stated consequence for violating their advertising rules is the removal of a film's rating. Without a rating, After Dark will not be able to show the film in American theaters, causing a loss of revenue-the only consequence that is truly meaningful to studios and advertisers.
It's about a week later now, and we have found out a lot of things.
It turns out these weren't ideas submitted to After Dark, but rather photographs art-directed down to the detail by the lovely Mr. Solomon.
It turns out it took them six days to come down instead of two. One of the billboards could be seen from the Ivanhoe schoolyard.
It turns out they're using our rage as links on their advertising campaign, calling it the film that caused all the outrage. It turns out that after the billboards came down, they replaced them with the proud outlaw message: Captivity was here.
It turns out that Moriarty, the authority on horror films on aint-it-cool-news.com, gave this movie the stinkiest possible review and they knew no one would see it so they did this to drum up publicity.
The Hills Have Eyes billboard is still up, of a man dragging a corpse in a body bag. The coming soon one-sheet for the delighthful Lionsgate's Hostel II is one of the indescribably repulsive things I have ever seen.
The good news is this: we actually are at a cultural moment where we have the power to say-- just as we have with porn and cigarettes-fine for those who want it, but please don't advertise it on our streets, on our way to school and work.
Anyway, the discussion and agitation continues at
http://www.removetherating.blogspot.com/
and we would love to hear from more people who want to weigh in, using our section. There's also info for where to send a letter or email to MPAA chairman Dan Glickman. The MPAA ruling is coming next week, and we are thrilled that as they make their decision, they are reading our thoughts on the blog. We are hoping they heed our wishes and that it is their plan to not only disable Courtney Solomon's pariah-complex ego machinery, but also stop all horror/torture filmmakers from advertising their vile fantasies in front of the rest of us .
What follows is Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon's awesome letter to the MPAA...
From: Joss Whedon
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:17 PM
To: Advertising
Subject: CAPTIVITY BILLBOARDS/REMOVE THE RATING
To the MPAA,
There's a message I'm supposed to cut and paste but I imagine you've read it. So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. I've watched plenty of horror - in fact I've made my share. But the advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre. This ad campaign is part of something dangerous and repulsive, and that act of aggression has to be answered.
As a believer not only in the First Amendment but of the necessity of horror stories, I've always been against acts of censorship. I distrust anyone who wants to ban something 'for the good of the public'. But this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It's like being mugged (and I have been). These people flouted the basic rules of human decency. God knows the culture led them there, but we have to find our way back and we have to make them know that people will not stand for this. And the only language they speak is money. (A devastating piece in the New Yorker - not gonna do it.) So talk money. Remove the rating, and let them see how far over the edge they really are.
Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.
Sincerely, Joss Whedon.
Creator, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Remove The Rating For CAPTIVITY
by Jill Soloway
3/27/2007
A couple of weeks ago I was driving my son to school when I took a left onto LaBrea, and, as usual, sat in traffic for a couple of minutes. As we waited for the construction bottleneck to ease up, we sang along with the new Shins CD. And then, at the same moment, we fell silent.
We were both noticing the same thing.
It was a billboard for a movie. There was actress Elisha Cuthbert, super-heavily made up-dare I say whorishly-- being used as the centerpiece of the most repulsive, horrifying, woman-hating, human- hating thing I have ever seen in public.
The first image had a black-gloved hand over her mouth, titled CAPTURE. Next, her eyes begged for rescue as her mascara ran and her bloody finger tried to pry its way out of a cage, titled CONFINEMENT.
In the next picture, titled TORTURE, she was encased in a strange mask, with tubes coming out of her nose, draining blood. Maybe. We couldn't figure out if it was tubes or a hook-that was another thing about it-you had to keep looking to figure out what the hell was going on.
The last frame was Elisha, may her career rest in peace after posing for this, hanging dead, lying on her back with one breast prominently displayed. The word in this frame was TERMINATION.
That night I had a nightmare about the billboard, and by the next morning, I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach. This wasn't just horror, this wasn't just misogyny... it was a grody combo platter of the two, the torture almost a punishment for the sexiness. It had come from such a despicable inhuman hatred place that it somehow managed to recall Abu Ghraib, the Holocaust, porn and snuff films all at once.
The next morning I decided to take a different route. Except this time I saw two more of the same billboards. It felt like they were EVERYWHERE, peppered all over my city. That afternoon, after the ride home with two more ten year olds in my car-one, a little girl, whose face I watched in my rearview mirror as she tried to make sense of the billboard. Now I was ready to take action.
Instead of making dinner and doing my usual after schooly things, I googled my way to the main number for Lionsgate, the video distributor of this film- and left a message for CEO John Feltheimer asking him to take them down. I sent the number to a few other people, and that night, hoped to sleep without a nightmare.
The next day, my email in-box was filled with hundreds of letters from people thanking me for giving them a place to voice to their feelings. Back channel operatives had sent me Feltheimer's private line and I distributed that one to the latest angry people. Lionsgate said they had nothing to do with After Dark and didn't approve the ads in the first place- they felt they had no responsibility because Lionsgate would only be making money from the home video sales.
That afternoon I spoke to Jill Simpson at the MPAA who told me that something really strange had happened the week before. She said someone had actually come in to their offices-a woman named Sherry Harding-with this exact artwork-and had shown it to them in person for approval.
Jill Simpson said that no one ever does that, things always come in over email and in attached files. No one ever walks in with art like that.
Of course, the MPAA saw the horrific-ness and told them they couldn't put it up.
And two days later it was up.
At the end of my very first tirade day, someone sent me the name of the main scumbag behind this entire operation: super-sociopath Courtney Solomon of After Dark Films.
A few hours later, Solomon called me. He insisted the fact that the billboards were up at all was a printer error. "We were all at ShoWest," he said, re: the distributor conference in Vegas that week-"and we had no idea they were even up!" Solomon apologized and said they would be down in two days, then offered to make a donation to a woman's organization.
He promised me the ones they meant to put up were soooooo much better, just a woman buried alive. He wrote me a long apology letter, insisting that these were "ideas submitted" but never approved by them in-house.
The next night, I met with about ten women and men, moms and TV writers and regular people, plus a rep from the city council, feminist organizers and peace activists-- in the library of my son's school, to talk. People shared their feelings and their rage, and some shared awful memories of violent crime and rape, memories triggered by this 4-panel publicly displayed snuff film.
In the library that night, we made a decision to wage a campaign to make the live up to what they're supposed to do in this case. Their stated consequence for violating their advertising rules is the removal of a film's rating. Without a rating, After Dark will not be able to show the film in American theaters, causing a loss of revenue-the only consequence that is truly meaningful to studios and advertisers.
It's about a week later now, and we have found out a lot of things.
It turns out these weren't ideas submitted to After Dark, but rather photographs art-directed down to the detail by the lovely Mr. Solomon.
It turns out it took them six days to come down instead of two. One of the billboards could be seen from the Ivanhoe schoolyard.
It turns out they're using our rage as links on their advertising campaign, calling it the film that caused all the outrage. It turns out that after the billboards came down, they replaced them with the proud outlaw message: Captivity was here.
It turns out that Moriarty, the authority on horror films on aint-it-cool-news.com, gave this movie the stinkiest possible review and they knew no one would see it so they did this to drum up publicity.
The Hills Have Eyes billboard is still up, of a man dragging a corpse in a body bag. The coming soon one-sheet for the delighthful Lionsgate's Hostel II is one of the indescribably repulsive things I have ever seen.
The good news is this: we actually are at a cultural moment where we have the power to say-- just as we have with porn and cigarettes-fine for those who want it, but please don't advertise it on our streets, on our way to school and work.
Anyway, the discussion and agitation continues at
http://www.removetherating.blogspot.com/
and we would love to hear from more people who want to weigh in, using our section. There's also info for where to send a letter or email to MPAA chairman Dan Glickman. The MPAA ruling is coming next week, and we are thrilled that as they make their decision, they are reading our thoughts on the blog. We are hoping they heed our wishes and that it is their plan to not only disable Courtney Solomon's pariah-complex ego machinery, but also stop all horror/torture filmmakers from advertising their vile fantasies in front of the rest of us .
What follows is Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon's awesome letter to the MPAA...
From: Joss Whedon
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:17 PM
To: Advertising
Subject: CAPTIVITY BILLBOARDS/REMOVE THE RATING
To the MPAA,
There's a message I'm supposed to cut and paste but I imagine you've read it. So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. I've watched plenty of horror - in fact I've made my share. But the advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre. This ad campaign is part of something dangerous and repulsive, and that act of aggression has to be answered.
As a believer not only in the First Amendment but of the necessity of horror stories, I've always been against acts of censorship. I distrust anyone who wants to ban something 'for the good of the public'. But this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It's like being mugged (and I have been). These people flouted the basic rules of human decency. God knows the culture led them there, but we have to find our way back and we have to make them know that people will not stand for this. And the only language they speak is money. (A devastating piece in the New Yorker - not gonna do it.) So talk money. Remove the rating, and let them see how far over the edge they really are.
Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.
Sincerely, Joss Whedon.
Creator, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
QUOTE(veritas @ Jun 11 2007, 02:08 PM) 
...Palen defends his work in two ways: in terms of context and execution. The poster of a naked Phillips holding her severed head in her hands, he says, 'is completely inappropriate to be on a billboard on the street or even in the lobby of our offices.' But he says it is suitable for theaters in foreign markets - where people are far less concerned about sexual images - and for hard-core horror fans.
'It's for the boys with the backpacks at these comic conventions, waiting in line for hours to get the posters signed,' says Palen.
'It's for the boys with the backpacks at these comic conventions, waiting in line for hours to get the posters signed,' says Palen.
Is anyone else alarmed by face-to-face networking by 'the boys with the backpacks at these comic conventions, waiting in line for hours to get these posters signed'?
Contrast the profoundly antisocial approach to 'feeding the fire' these films depict with this sweeter one - some overlap of target demographic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Geek
Beauty and the Geek
Related lengthy discussion here (94 posts, none mine) -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=389x1101878
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=389x1101878
Chill, it's just a movie.
QUOTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19sex...agewanted=print
July 19, 2007
Debate on Child Pornography’s Link to Molesting
By JULIAN SHER and BENEDICT CAREY
Experts have often wondered what proportion of men who download explicit sexual images of children also molest them. A new government study of convicted Internet offenders suggests that the number may be startlingly high: 85 percent of the offenders said they had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, from inappropriate touching to rape.
The study, which has not yet been published, is stirring a vehement debate among psychologists, law enforcement officers and prison officials, who cannot agree on how the findings should be presented or interpreted.
The research, carried out by psychologists at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, is the first in-depth survey of such online offenders’ sexual behavior done by prison therapists who were actively performing treatment. Its findings have circulated privately among experts, who say they could have enormous implications for public safety and law enforcement.
Traffic in online child pornography has exploded in recent years, and the new study, some experts say, should be made public as soon as possible, to identify men who claim to be “just looking at pictures” but could, in fact, be predators.
Yet others say that the results, while significant, risk tarring some men unfairly. The findings, based on offenders serving prison time who volunteered for the study, do not necessarily apply to the large and diverse group of adults who have at some point downloaded child pornography, and whose behavior is far too variable to be captured by a single survey.
Adding to the controversy, the prison bureau in April ordered the paper withdrawn from a peer-reviewed academic journal where it had been accepted for publication, apparently concerned that the results might be misinterpreted. A spokeswoman for the bureau said the agency was reviewing a study of child pornography offenders but declined to comment further.
Ernie Allen, who leads the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is mandated to coordinate the nation’s efforts to combat child pornography, said he was surprised that the full study had not been released. “This is the kind of research the public needs to know about,” Mr. Allen said. Others agreed that the report should be published but were more cautious about the findings. “The results could have tremendous implications for community safety and for individual liberties,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic. “If people we thought were not dangerous are more so, then we need to know that and we should treat them that way. But if we’re wrong, then their liberties aren’t going to be fairly addressed.”
Everyone agrees that researchers need to learn more about online consumers of illegal child images. The volume of material seized from computers appears to be doubling each year — the National Center collected more than eight million images of explicit child pornography in the last five years — and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales made child protection a national priority in 2006.
Those who are arrested on charges of possession or distribution of child pornography generally receive lighter sentences and shorter parole periods than sexual abusers. They do not fit any criminal stereotype; recent arrests have included politicians, police officers, teachers and businessmen.
“It’s crucial to understand the sexual history of all these offenders, because sometimes the crime they were arrested for is the tip of the iceberg, and does not reflect their real patterns and interests,” said Jill S. Levenson, an assistant professor of human services at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., and head of the ethics committee of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.
Previous studies, based on surveys of criminal records, estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of those arrested for possessing child pornography also had molested children.
The psychologists who conducted the new study, Andres E. Hernandez and Michael L. Bourke, focused on 155 male inmates who had volunteered to be treated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., according to a draft of the paper obtained by The New York Times from outside experts who want the study published.
The Butner clinic is the only residential program devoted to the treatment of sexual offenders in the federal prison system. The inmates in the study were all serving sentences for possession or distribution of child pornography.
About every six months as part of an 18-month treatment program, they filled out a record of their sexual history, including a “victims list” tallying their previous victims of abuse. Therapists encouraged the men to be honest as part of their treatment, and the sexual histories were anonymous, according to the paper.
The psychologists compared these confessions with the men’s criminal sexual histories at the time of sentencing. More than 85 percent admitted to abusing at least one child, they found, compared with 26 percent who were known to have committed any “hands on” offenses at sentencing. The researchers also counted many more total victims: 1,777, a more than 20-fold increase from the 75 identified when the men were sentenced.
Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Bourke concluded in the paper that “many Internet child pornography offenders may be undetected child molesters.” But they also cautioned that offenders who volunteer for treatment may differ in their behavior from those who do not seek treatment.
They submitted the paper to The Journal of Family Violence, a widely read peer-reviewed publication in the field, and it was accepted.
But in a letter obtained by The Times, dated April 3, Judi Garrett, an official of the Bureau of Prisons, requested that the editors of the journal withdraw the study, because it did not meet “agency approval.”
Editors at The Journal of Family Violence did not respond to phone or e-mail messages asking about the withdrawal.
Dr. Hernandez mentioned the research briefly during testimony before a Senate committee last year. But the bureau blocked Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Bourke from attending some law enforcement conferences to speak about the findings, said two prosecutors who did not want to be identified because they have a continuing work relationship with the bureau.
“We believe it unwise to generalize from limited observations gained in treatment or in records review to the broader population of persons who engage in such behavior,” a bureau official wrote to the organizers of a recent law enforcement conference, in a letter dated May 2 and given to The Times by an expert who is hoping the study will be published.
Some prosecutors say they could use the study to argue for stiffer sentences. While some outside researchers agreed that the risk of over-generalizing the study’s results was real, almost all the experts interviewed also said that the study should still be made public.
Dr. Peter Collins, who leads the Forensic Psychiatry Unit of the Ontario Provincial Police, called the findings “cutting-edge stuff.”
“We’re really on the cusp of learning more about these individuals and studies should be encouraged, not quashed,” Dr. Collins said.
Understanding the relationship between looking at child pornography and sexually assaulting children is central to developing effective treatment, psychologists say.
It is not at all clear when, or in whom, the viewing spurs action or activates a latent, unconscious desire; or whether such images have little or no effect on the offender’s subsequent behavior. But the relationship probably varies widely.
“My concern is about sensationalism, about the way something like this is handled in the media,” said Michael Miner, an associate professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Minnesota who treats sex offenders. “The public perception is that all of these guys will re-offend, and we know that just isn’t true.”
At least some men convicted of sexual abuse say that child pornography from the Internet fueled their urges. In a recent interview, one convicted pedophile serving a 14-year sentence in a Canadian federal prison said that looking at images online certainly gave him no release from his desires — exactly the opposite.
“Because there is no way I can look at a picture of a child on a video screen and not get turned on by that and want to do something about it,” he said. “I knew that in my mind. I knew that in my heart. I didn’t want it to happen, but it was going to happen.”
How many offenders does he speak for? The study may help answer that question, some say.
“The penalties we seek, the vigor with which we prosecute — the very importance we give to child pornography cases — all of these things are affected by what we know about the offenders,” said Leura G. Canary, the United States attorney for Middle Alabama who also leads the Attorney General’s Working Group on Child Exploitation and Obscenity. “And right now we know very little.”
July 19, 2007
Debate on Child Pornography’s Link to Molesting
By JULIAN SHER and BENEDICT CAREY
Experts have often wondered what proportion of men who download explicit sexual images of children also molest them. A new government study of convicted Internet offenders suggests that the number may be startlingly high: 85 percent of the offenders said they had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, from inappropriate touching to rape.
The study, which has not yet been published, is stirring a vehement debate among psychologists, law enforcement officers and prison officials, who cannot agree on how the findings should be presented or interpreted.
The research, carried out by psychologists at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, is the first in-depth survey of such online offenders’ sexual behavior done by prison therapists who were actively performing treatment. Its findings have circulated privately among experts, who say they could have enormous implications for public safety and law enforcement.
Traffic in online child pornography has exploded in recent years, and the new study, some experts say, should be made public as soon as possible, to identify men who claim to be “just looking at pictures” but could, in fact, be predators.
Yet others say that the results, while significant, risk tarring some men unfairly. The findings, based on offenders serving prison time who volunteered for the study, do not necessarily apply to the large and diverse group of adults who have at some point downloaded child pornography, and whose behavior is far too variable to be captured by a single survey.
Adding to the controversy, the prison bureau in April ordered the paper withdrawn from a peer-reviewed academic journal where it had been accepted for publication, apparently concerned that the results might be misinterpreted. A spokeswoman for the bureau said the agency was reviewing a study of child pornography offenders but declined to comment further.
Ernie Allen, who leads the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is mandated to coordinate the nation’s efforts to combat child pornography, said he was surprised that the full study had not been released. “This is the kind of research the public needs to know about,” Mr. Allen said. Others agreed that the report should be published but were more cautious about the findings. “The results could have tremendous implications for community safety and for individual liberties,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic. “If people we thought were not dangerous are more so, then we need to know that and we should treat them that way. But if we’re wrong, then their liberties aren’t going to be fairly addressed.”
Everyone agrees that researchers need to learn more about online consumers of illegal child images. The volume of material seized from computers appears to be doubling each year — the National Center collected more than eight million images of explicit child pornography in the last five years — and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales made child protection a national priority in 2006.
Those who are arrested on charges of possession or distribution of child pornography generally receive lighter sentences and shorter parole periods than sexual abusers. They do not fit any criminal stereotype; recent arrests have included politicians, police officers, teachers and businessmen.
“It’s crucial to understand the sexual history of all these offenders, because sometimes the crime they were arrested for is the tip of the iceberg, and does not reflect their real patterns and interests,” said Jill S. Levenson, an assistant professor of human services at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., and head of the ethics committee of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.
Previous studies, based on surveys of criminal records, estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of those arrested for possessing child pornography also had molested children.
The psychologists who conducted the new study, Andres E. Hernandez and Michael L. Bourke, focused on 155 male inmates who had volunteered to be treated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., according to a draft of the paper obtained by The New York Times from outside experts who want the study published.
The Butner clinic is the only residential program devoted to the treatment of sexual offenders in the federal prison system. The inmates in the study were all serving sentences for possession or distribution of child pornography.
About every six months as part of an 18-month treatment program, they filled out a record of their sexual history, including a “victims list” tallying their previous victims of abuse. Therapists encouraged the men to be honest as part of their treatment, and the sexual histories were anonymous, according to the paper.
The psychologists compared these confessions with the men’s criminal sexual histories at the time of sentencing. More than 85 percent admitted to abusing at least one child, they found, compared with 26 percent who were known to have committed any “hands on” offenses at sentencing. The researchers also counted many more total victims: 1,777, a more than 20-fold increase from the 75 identified when the men were sentenced.
Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Bourke concluded in the paper that “many Internet child pornography offenders may be undetected child molesters.” But they also cautioned that offenders who volunteer for treatment may differ in their behavior from those who do not seek treatment.
They submitted the paper to The Journal of Family Violence, a widely read peer-reviewed publication in the field, and it was accepted.
But in a letter obtained by The Times, dated April 3, Judi Garrett, an official of the Bureau of Prisons, requested that the editors of the journal withdraw the study, because it did not meet “agency approval.”
Editors at The Journal of Family Violence did not respond to phone or e-mail messages asking about the withdrawal.
Dr. Hernandez mentioned the research briefly during testimony before a Senate committee last year. But the bureau blocked Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Bourke from attending some law enforcement conferences to speak about the findings, said two prosecutors who did not want to be identified because they have a continuing work relationship with the bureau.
“We believe it unwise to generalize from limited observations gained in treatment or in records review to the broader population of persons who engage in such behavior,” a bureau official wrote to the organizers of a recent law enforcement conference, in a letter dated May 2 and given to The Times by an expert who is hoping the study will be published.
Some prosecutors say they could use the study to argue for stiffer sentences. While some outside researchers agreed that the risk of over-generalizing the study’s results was real, almost all the experts interviewed also said that the study should still be made public.
Dr. Peter Collins, who leads the Forensic Psychiatry Unit of the Ontario Provincial Police, called the findings “cutting-edge stuff.”
“We’re really on the cusp of learning more about these individuals and studies should be encouraged, not quashed,” Dr. Collins said.
Understanding the relationship between looking at child pornography and sexually assaulting children is central to developing effective treatment, psychologists say.
It is not at all clear when, or in whom, the viewing spurs action or activates a latent, unconscious desire; or whether such images have little or no effect on the offender’s subsequent behavior. But the relationship probably varies widely.
“My concern is about sensationalism, about the way something like this is handled in the media,” said Michael Miner, an associate professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Minnesota who treats sex offenders. “The public perception is that all of these guys will re-offend, and we know that just isn’t true.”
At least some men convicted of sexual abuse say that child pornography from the Internet fueled their urges. In a recent interview, one convicted pedophile serving a 14-year sentence in a Canadian federal prison said that looking at images online certainly gave him no release from his desires — exactly the opposite.
“Because there is no way I can look at a picture of a child on a video screen and not get turned on by that and want to do something about it,” he said. “I knew that in my mind. I knew that in my heart. I didn’t want it to happen, but it was going to happen.”
How many offenders does he speak for? The study may help answer that question, some say.
“The penalties we seek, the vigor with which we prosecute — the very importance we give to child pornography cases — all of these things are affected by what we know about the offenders,” said Leura G. Canary, the United States attorney for Middle Alabama who also leads the Attorney General’s Working Group on Child Exploitation and Obscenity. “And right now we know very little.”
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