I think about this alot, On the Relationship Between The Arts and Politics (1989) - Xi Jinping

This is just the conclusion, you (everyone) should read the whole thing, its short and achievable

We are a socialist country guided by Marxism. The Party’s knowledge of literature and art should adhere to the Four Cardinal Principles and focus on grasping the overall political direction. The Party should comment on specific literary and artistic views and works, discuss their merits and demerits, and allow the general public and artistic workers to determine artistic taste through regular democratic discussion. We must believe in the people’s artistic ability and aesthetic sensibility. In dealing with conflicts and disputes within academia and in art, administrative orders should be avoided as much as possible. We should study in order to deepen our understanding, and improve our art through democratic and fair discussions.

It is necessary to promote what is correct, to correct what is incorrect, to suppress what is negative and conservative, and to promote the healthy development of literature and art. Through the formulation of relevant rules and regulations, legal provisions, and various economic cultural policies we can develop sound social, material, and cultural conditions and an appropriate public opinion environment.

www.redsails.org/xi-on-art/

I’m using “we” here to refer to most societies as a generalisation. I guess that leans more heavily towards well developed ones over highly under developed ones that have much more serious priorities other than artistic freedoms.

The two aren’t comparable. It is perfectly acceptable to show people being killed on mainstream TV shows and movies. Child abuse is something that is only ever implied, never depicted directly. One is clearly more taboo than the other.

So if someone puts up a bunch of clips from movies of people being killed should we take those down too?

How long does a clip have to be before it crosses the threshold from being snuff to being a movie scene? What other criteria must it meet?

I mean this seriously. Because this is a very real barrier you’re going to run into when dealing with this. I assume you don’t want to prevent killing people from being in any movie or tv show?.. Maybe you do?.. Do you? Real question again. I don’t know and I want to clarify this is not an argument, I’m not really judging or anything. I’m sincerely engaging.

EDIT: Oh and we have to talk about videogame killing too after the above questions I guess.

I do not in fact think people should be allowed to share snuff films anywhere on the internet, simulated or not.

Where do you draw the line between things like grindhouse or other schlocky horror genres and “simulated snuff films”? They’re both doing the same thing, using the same digital or practical effects, to achieve the same crossed-wire response of mixing fear and arousal. You want some kind of “you must be backed by a company at least so and so big to be considered legitimate and thus allowed to produce violent fictional content that also involves or goes alongside some sort of sexualization” standard, the way Amazon does for novels? Maybe an “I trust a judge will know it when he sees it” standard?

Fuzzy subjective lines differentiating “acceptable” storytelling and content that you suspect someone might be enjoying a little too much aren’t good, especially since the context they’re in can wildly change that. There are people carefully documenting every time someone gets eaten in a movie with summaries and timestamped links to a clip of it: that’s literally someone getting off to otherwise normal action/horror movies where someone is dying on screen. How do you deal with that context? Retroactively ban the films because you learned someone got off to it? Ban specifically snipping violent scenes for fear that someone might get off to it?

Like the person the article’s about is shit because he was giving google money (bad), posting fetish content on youtube (bad), and was also openly a racist and presumably every other flavor of reactionary bigot too since those all go hand in hand (extremely bad), not because he was making purchasing highly ritualized fantasy fetish videos involving scary or violent themes.

And since I mentioned the horror genre: yeah a lot of horror movie writers/directors/producers were/are also complete shitbags, but so were/are the writers/directors/producers of a lot of every other genre of movie too. The problem is more with men and particularly men with any sort of influence or status than it is the genre, making all attendant problems entirely a matter of “look at the actual person involved and what they say and do, rather than the sort of content they’re working with, because the worst people are usually doing the blandest stuff for all that you can find monsters everywhere”, with the obvious caveat that someone making content that seems to sexualize children is an immediate red flag and requires closer scrutiny to differentiate legitimate non-sexualizing content (eg fiction about growing up queer and dealing with confusion and repression, or a work criticizing the ways patriarchal society sexualizes and grooms girls towards fulfilling their designated role) from illegitimate sexualizing content (eg Made in Abyss, one of the worst things anyone has ever made).

Isn’t this response more about the AI than the content? I totally understand and agree with finding AI shit and lazy, but you’re literally saying you’ll allow the content if it’s made using better less-lazy tools so it doesn’t actually sound like this is an argument for or against the content itself?

If you’re too scared to post a reasoned position you’re just being a dickhead.