 This response to the Home Office Consultation Document is produced by
Professor Martin Barker, and Dr Ernest Mathijs, of the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth. We write as researchers and scholars who have a considerable
history of work in fields relating closely to the topics in the Consultation
Document. A brief biography for each of us, and list of our relevant
publications in these areas, is appended to this response. In brief, we have
conducted extensive researches on:
- The history of scares and panics over possible media influences
- The nature of ‘extreme films’, their production and reception
- The character of actual audience responses to controversial media.
Much of this research has been conducted under the aegis of public
funding bodies (for instance the Economic & Social Research Council), and
all is available in the public domain. We stress at the outset that this
commentary on the Consultation Document is not a contribution from the angle
of civil liberties. There are no doubt legitimate concerns from that
perspective, but they are not ours, in this commentary. Our comments are
based on our understanding of our own and others’ best researches in these
areas. We do not wish to deny that many of the images and other materials
available both via the Internet and other routes are deeply unpleasant.
However our research leads us to challenge the ways in which these are
described, grouped and given significance in the Consultation Document. We
also identify a number of underlying assumptions in the Document which will
not, we believe, stand up under close, critical scrutiny.
1. Description and categorisation of the materials under consideration.
At a number of places in the Consultation Document, the materials being
targeted are described in ways that is, we fear, misleading. It is not easy
to tackle this part of the Document since few examples are given. This is
now a major problem – only those with certain (legal and moral) interests in
these materials are able to determine the viability of the descriptions and
definitions being utilised in law. Using our knowledge of these sorts of
materials, we would make the following rejoinders:
On page 1, a passing remark is made that the materials under consideration
are “clearly for purposes of sexual gratification” (para 5). We find this
descriptive claim highly arguable. From researches which we have conducted,
we know of many previous cases where it has been asserted that materials are
‘clearly for certain purposes’. However research with actual users of the
materials reveals quite different, and usually considerably more
complicated, outcomes. We mention as examples:
- a. Barker’s (1989) research with readers of the 1976 comic Action.
Critics claimed that it was ‘purely gratuitously violent’. Yet a study
of its readers showed that the violence was understood in a political
framework.
- b. Barker, Arthurs & Harindranath’s (2001) research with audiences
for the 1996 film Crash. Here, it was widely claimed that the sex scenes
in the film were ‘perverse’ and ‘pornographic’. Aside from the BBFC’s
own judgement on this, the research demonstrated that for those
audiences who were most enthusiastic and committed to the film, the
meanings of the sexual materials in the film were the most complex,
involving audiences in considering their own feelings about the
activities being shown, and the place of different sexual orientations
in our society.
- c. Barker’s (2005) study of audiences to the controversial film
Straw Dogs. This is of especial relevance since that film contains,
notoriously, a prolonged rape scene, on the basis of which it has
frequently been condemned for appearing to show the victim’s enjoyment
of the rape. This research showed, again, that those audience members
who most engaged with the film were the ones most likely to seek a
context to understand the victim’s response, and to place the effects of
the rape into the context of her on-going life. Equivalent work,
arriving in parallel conclusions can be found in Mathijs’ research into
the reception of the controversial film Daughters of Darkness, and of
Man Bites Dog (both 2005).
What is common to cases such as this is the following: that the
descriptive claims of critics, and those who dislike and are concerned about
media and cultural materials, are very unreliable guides to what is found
and perceived in the materials by those who choose and enjoy them.
This constitutes a serious problem for the ways in which the Consultation
Document seeks to group and claim meaningful connections between the
materials it proposes to outlaw.
We agree with the Document’s assertion that the emergence of the Internet
and World Wide Web has altered the availability of these kinds of materials.
However, we are concerned that, again, in so describing these materials, all
sense of the context in which these appear is being lost. Again, there is a
problem in that the Document is so unspecific that it is not possible to
check any specific claims. Speaking, therefore, from our own encounters with
these kinds of materials, we would draw attention to the following:
- a) In our experience, a considerable amount of such materials
appears in quite close association with the Internet phenomenon of
fan-fiction websites. These websites have been widely researched. As a
phenomenon, they arise out of organised fan interests in many kinds of
published and broadcast programmes. Typically, such sites take broadcast
story-worlds and extend them in a variety of ways. The most popular way
in which this is done, is by writing further fictional accounts of
possible sexual encounters between story-world characters. These
encounters are both heterosexual (Het) and homosexual (Slash). Many of
them are highly graphic, involving bondage, humiliation, and violence
(frequently accompanied by American cinema pseudo-classifications, for
example, NC-17).
- b) What research (not our own) has revealed is that the great
majority of both writers and readers of these stories are women.
Research, from Sherry Turkle (1984) onwards, has suggested strongly that
many women in particular use online presence to explore and play out
aspects of themselves, and possible identities, for themselves –
including perverse versions of themselves. The appearance of ‘violent’
imagery in proximity with such websites is clearly related to the
fan-fiction phenomenon. Ignorance of this field, and the associated body
of research, seriously undermines the claims of the Consultative
Document.
2. Causal claims within the Consultative Document.
On page 10, following paragraph 31, respondents are asked their responses on
this kind of material “in the absence of conclusive research results as to
its possible negative effects”. This question is highly tendentious, and we
wish to challenge it on several grounds:
- a) The presumption behind the phrasing of the question is either
that the research has not yet proved conclusion, or that difficulties in
designing and carrying out such research are always going to constitute
problems of providing proof. We do not accept this. To the contrary,
many recent careful re-evaluations of the research record in this area
have demonstrated the opposite. Public understanding of this topic has
been seriously distorted by systematic exaggeration, by distorted
presentation of research findings. Perhaps the most important work of
this kind was done by Professor Jonathan Freedman (2002), who
re-examined the entire field of work on the relations between televised
violence and audience aggression. Our own work on the history of claims
about the consequence of ‘dangerous’ media materials have less
systematically, but nonetheless seriously, undermined the public claims
of these ‘dangers’ (see, for instance, Barker’s (1993) evaluation of
Elizabeth Newson’s influential document at the time of the James Bulger
murder trial).
- b) In passing, the Consultative Document refers (paragraph 10) to
the case of Graham Coutts, recently convicted for the murder of Jane
Longhurst. At his trial much evidence was introduced of Coutts’ use of
internet pornography sites. We are deeply sceptical about the way this
is being used. This recent case has not been subject to the kinds of
critical examination that has been possible in other, previously
quotable cases. At the time of the trial of the two boys who murdered
James Bulger, a wave of publicity claimed that they ‘must have been’
influenced by watching the film Child’s Play III. In the case of
Columbine killings, again, it was claimed that the two young men ‘must
have been’ influenced by either rock music in general, or more
specifically films such as The Matrix or The Basketball Diaries. More
recently, in the case of Stefan Pakeerah, it was claimed that he ‘must
have been’ influenced by his playing of the game Manhunt. Repeatedly, on
close re-examination, these causal episodes turn out to be unreliable,
if not simply mythical. Yet the rhetorical force of these claims
remains. This is an example of poor, and dangerously misleading,
argument. Untested anecdotes, given power by publicity, are not the
basis of good law. More importantly, our own and others’ research on the
history of such public campaigns displays how systematically unreliable
these prove to be. (See as instances Pearson (1983), Barker (1984a))
- c) It is not simply the case that the evidence is so far
unconvincing or incomplete. The approach implicitly taken by the
Consultative Document ignores the existence of a considerable body of
work, of which ours is only a small part, which has taken this field of
enquiry into new and much more promising directions. The work of UK
researchers such as David Morrison (1999), David Buckingham (e.g.,
1996), Philip Schlesinger (1992,1998) and Annette Hill (1997), as well
as our own, has demonstrated how much can be learnt about the meaning
and impact of culturally controversial and problematic materials by
using new methods of research and approaching the issues with a
reconceptualisation of the topic.
3. The Consultative Document’s Discussion of ‘Pornography’
It concerns us greatly that the consultative document is inconsistent and
careless in its terminology, and that once again these inconsistencies
reveal assumptions which the research record simply will not sustain. We
note for instance that there are unexplained shifts between ‘pornography’,
‘extreme pornography’, and between ‘consensual’ and otherwise. At various
points the materials which it is intended to declare illegal are named as
‘indecent photographs’, ‘extreme images’, ‘potentially illegal pornographic
material’, ‘extreme pornographic material’, ‘pornography’. Probably the most
ambiguous name used is ‘pseudo-photography’. A substantial body of research
now exists on the significance of the development of digital
altered/enhanced photography, and on the ways in which these processes can
alter the sense of ‘reality’, both of the particular images, and of the ways
in which images as a whole are perceived and understood. The Consultation
Document is entirely unclear on what the supposed dangers of this kind of
materials are. To the extent that this is intended to be a claim about the
relevance of the degree of mimesis, then the research by Mosselmans &
Mathijs, 2000, and Mathijs & Hessels, 2000 becomes particularly relevant.
The Document either is unaware of, or has chosen to ignore, the by now
substantial body of new research into pornography. This has explored the
historical dimensions of this, in ways which far outrun simple discussion of
increases or greater ‘explicitness’ (see for instance the work of Linda
Williams (2004)). This work has constituted, as one writer has called it, a
whole shift in ‘paradigm’ for thinking about the uses to which pornography
may be and is put (see Attwood 2002). As one example, Katrien Jacobs (2004)
has demonstrated the complex role played by pornographic websites in
simultaneously operating a commercial system, and enabling ‘exuberant’
attitudes to sexual pleasure. Other researchers have shown the important
role that pornography has played in resistance movements in, for instance,
South Africa.
As we indicated at the outset of this response, our primary interest in this
Document is in its relation to research. The Document says that the research
does not conclusively prove the ‘harmfulness’ of the materials it seeks to
make illegal. This response focuses on the substantial misrepresentation of
the research record, which not only does not prove such ‘harmfulness’, but
rather indicates that this has been the wrong question to ask. It has the
same status as asking, of a drug, if it should be considered dangerous
because to many people it smells or tastes unpleasant.
We believe that it is simply irresponsible to ignore the now substantial
body of research which has explored, in great detail, the ways in which
materials judged culturally problematic may mean quite different things to
those to whose cultural worlds they are relevant and meaningful. Terms such
as ‘pornography’, ‘extreme pornography’ purport to have clear and obvious
meanings, in the way that a term such as ‘blasphemy’ once claimed these.
This government has claimed on a number of occasions to wish to work within
a framework of evidence-based policy. This is not possible when whole bodies
of careful, validated and often publicly-funded research is not considered.
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