Dear Colleagues
EXTREMELY URGENT
You are probably aware of the Government's current plans to
criminalise the possession of certain forms of pornography designated
'extreme' or 'violent'. There has been no formal consultation of
academics and researchers from within our field for this Bill and its
progress towards adoption moves apace - whereas there has been a
highly one-sided 'Rapid Evidence Assessment' which refers almost
exclusively to work from the most troubling areas of mass
communications research. We have put together a submission for the
Committee to voice concern about the problematic evidence base of the
legislation. We are seeking your support for this submission. The
Committee meets tomorrow Thursday. This document needs to be
with the committee urgently, thus we don't
have time to deliberate about the contents. We would ask that you
simply indicate your willingness to sign up to the principle herein.
If you could also send a one-line statement regarding your status and
publications in the relevant area we will append that to the document
(as we have done below). If you would be willing to give further
evidence to the committee please let us know.
Martin Barker
Clarissa Smith
To the Committee on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
As academics and researchers working in the fields of film, media, cultural studies and social
science we would
like to make the following submission to the committee. In view of the shortness of time to
put our concerns to
the committee, this submission is brief and to the point, we trust that the issues raised will
be given due
consideration by the committee and that a further more detailed submission will be made
possible.
Our concerns relate to Section 6 of the proposed bill on the Criminalisation of the Possession
of Extreme
Pornography and are as follows:
1. The necessity for the legislation appears to rest on an amorphous ‘increasing public
concern’ about
‘extreme’ pornography – the evidence base for this public disquiet is not offered. As
researchers in the field we
are aware that panics about troublesome media forms are not innocent of their own politics
and prejudices.
2. The definitions of the materials to be legislated against are vague. The proposal and its
supporting
documents are littered with vague and problematic terms relating to the production and
consumption of
pornographic materials. In particular, we are extremely concerned by the intention to
criminalise images which
‘appear to be real’. Aside from the bluntness of this instrument, the term demonstrates
ignorance of the vast
body of research which has examined the complexities of viewers understandings and
relationships to the
‘real’.
3. Claims that pornographic materials are easily characterised by being ‘clearly for
purposes of sexual
gratification’ ignores the considerable research evidence that pornography of all kinds has no
such singular
purpose.
4. Previous research into problematic media has demonstrated that emotive terms such as
‘violent’ and
‘extreme’ frequently act as code-words for objections based on moral, political and taste
grounds
5. The proposed law is underpinned by unexamined and unproven causal claims of a link
between viewing
and perpetrating illegal acts – there is a substantial body of research evidence which entirely
refutes these
claims and which the consultation process has so far chosen to ignore.
6. During the consultation process there has been no proper opportunity for the
presentation of alternative
and detailed research evidence into culturally controversial media forms.
7. The evidence presented in the Rapid Evidence Assessment is extremely poor, based on
contested findings
and accumulated results. It is one-sided and simply ignores the considerable research
tradition into
‘extreme’ (be they violent or sexually explicit) materials within the UK’s Humanities and
Social Sciences.
8. The proposers of the Bill have made no effort to seek out research which investigates
how viewers of
pornographic materials understand their practices – the effects of ‘extreme’ pornography are
assumed and
ascribed to ‘problem individuals’ – further research is required which does not presume
effects of a singularly
harmful kind.
9. The supporting documents for the proposed Bill draws on the emotive language and
hyperbole of moral
campaigns, a law drafted on this basis cannot be reliable.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss our concerns with the Committee in detail and
should the
Committee require further information and evidence we would be willing to prepare a more
comprehensive
submission.
Signed
Martin Barker, Professor of Film & Television Studies, University of Aberystwyth – director of
2007 BBFC-funded
research project into audience responses to screened sexual violence
Clarissa Smith, Senior Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland - author
of One for the
Girls: The Pleasures and Practices of Porn for Women, Intellect, 2007
Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Leeds, Director, Cyber-
Rights.Org, and author
of Sex on the Net: The Dilemma of Policing Cyberspace, Reading: South Street Press, 1999,
and Internet Child
Pornography and the Law: National and International Responses, Ashgate, forthcoming March
2008
Dr Jane Arthurs, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of the ?
West of England, author of Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the ?
Politics of Taste (Open University Press, 2004)?
Feona Attwood, Principal Lecturer in Media Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, editor of
Mainstreaming Sex:
The Sexualization of Culture, I.B. Tauris, forthcoming
Dr Petra Boynton, Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences, University ?
College, published works have researched claims of effects of?
pornography and questioned the ethics, methodological approaches and?
conclusions on much of the studies on porn.
Dr Sara Bragg, ?
Academic Fellow in Child and Youth Studies, The Open University, ?
co-author:Young People, Sex and the Media: The Facts of Life.
Prof. Lisa Downing, Chair of French Discourses of Sexuality, Director of the Centre for the
Interdisciplinary
Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe (CISSGE), University of Exeter
Dr Claire Hines, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, Solent University, co-editor of
Hard to Swallow:
Reading Pornography on Screen (Wallflower, forthcoming).?
Dr Ian Hunter, Principal Lecturer, Film Studies, De Montfort University, author of many
articles on cult film,
erotica and exploitation cinema
Robert Jewitt,?
Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, researching new media and
its users
Darren Kerr, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, Solent University, ?
co-editor of Hard to Swallow: Reading Pornography on Screen (Wallflower, ?
forthcoming), and contributor to edited collections Porn.Com: Making Sense?
of Online Pornography (forthcoming) and Peepshows: Cult Erotic Cinema?
(Wallflower, forthcoming).
Geoff King, Professor of Film and TV Studies, Brunel University; Director,?
Screen Media Research Centre, Brunel University; author of numerous books ?
including studies of Hollywood and American independent cinema
Dr. Stephen Maddison, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, School of Social Sciences, Media &
Cultural Studies,
University of East London, author of articles on the politics of pornography in numerous
journals, including New
Formations.
Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism and Communication, University of Strathclyde, author,
Mediated Sex
(Arnold, 1996); Striptease Culture (Routledge, 2002)
Julian Petley, Professor of Film and Television at Brunel University, author of Censoring the
Word (Seagull Press/
Index on Censorship 2007) and co-author with Philip French of Censoring the Moving Image
(Seagull Press/
Index on Censorship 2007)
Dr Nina Power, Lecturer in?
Philosophy, Roehampton University, author of several articles on vintage pornography.
Dr Clarissa Smith
Programme Leader, MA Media & Cultural Studies
School of Arts, Design, Media & Culture
University of Sunderland
Telephone: 0191 515 2708
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