Is there a link between 'torture porn' and real sexual violence? | Film

While I haven't seen Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse, I have watched many of the films mentioned in Kira Cochrane's article (For your entertainment, May 1) - and none of them could be said to encourage violence against women. I doubt many readers have sat through I Spit on Your Grave or The Last House on the

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Is there a link between 'torture porn' and real sexual violence?

This article is more than 16 years old

While I haven't seen Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse, I have watched many of the films mentioned in Kira Cochrane's article (For your entertainment, May 1) - and none of them could be said to encourage violence against women. I doubt many readers have sat through I Spit on Your Grave or The Last House on the Left, but neither film, nor any of the others in the article that I've seen, glamorise or encourage rape, murder or misogyny. They may be unpleasant viewing but many of these films actually convey, in their own way, anti-violence messages.

While mainstream Hollywood releases have for years eroticised sexual violence - The Accused springs to mind - many of the so-called nasties actually showed it for what it is: brutal and dehumanising. The same can be said of recent B-movie homages like The Devil's Rejects, Baise-Moi and Wolf Creek. Far from tending to deprave and corrupt, movies like this may have the opposite effect. They don't make you feel aroused. They make you feel sick, and that's the point. Indeed, Kira's piece stirred up memories of the "video nasty" panic that swept Britain in 1983. A year later, the films were effectively banned under the Video Recordings Act. But oddly, acts of violence against women didn't disappear (or even dip). If we take to its logical conclusion Kira's argument that films containing images of women being brutalised could have a negative effect on young men, our choice of films at the Odeon would be limited to The Tigger Movie, The Little Polar Bear and Chicken Little.
David Edwards
Film critic, Daily Mirror

The availability of the so-called toy Rapist Number One - a character from Grindhouse - demonstrates so clearly the links between the prevalence of rape and sexually violent films and pornography. The purchaser of the toy will not necessarily commit rape, but his acquisition legitimates rape. His action, and the availability of this toy, sustains a culture in which rape and sexual violence are not taken seriously; in which sexual violence is normalised and legitimated. We may not have the empirical evidence which clearly shows that watching violent porn makes someone commit rape, but the fact that this film has spawned this sort of merchandise, sold as a "toy", should tell us all we need to know about the harmful nature of this sort of material.
Clare McGlynn
Professor of law, Durham University

"Torture porn" films and videos have been around for many years. Under the late James Ferman, director of the BBFC 1975-99, they were heavily edited. Eight years on, the BBFC has put back in most of Ferman's edits, and proudly edits less and less. Meanwhile, postmodern, ironic, "knowing" terminology is applied to blatant viciousness, which merrily meshes sexuality and graphic violence for young men's delectation. "Censorship" has become the filthiest word.
Michael Bor
BBFC principal examiner, 1993-2000

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