Is it obscene? Part Two

…I guess in my subconscious I wanted to get off with the image of Carrie Prejean. I don't know.

What I do know is that the video that I saw showed a group of men, probably youngsters, atop of a concrete barrier overlooking the ocean. The waves crashed on the rocks and a smaller wall jutting out in front of the barrier. One man jumps. It was a perfect dive. The second one jumps, but he missed. His face hit the wall before landing in the water. Everyone screamed. A rescue boat was then seen picking up what appeared to be a bloody floating corpse. The video then jumps to when the man is in a hospital bed. (What follows is graphic.) His face/head looked like a split nut. Yet, the man was alive! Doctors were using tape to secure his head in place...for surgical proceeding I will suppose. End of video. (End of graphic material.)

This video is in a site where the majority of its content are of a sexual nature, whether explicit or implied. So, why was this video there? Why was it one of the videos featured in its home page? For what purpose? Do people get off from looking at this stuff? Can pain and suffering be sexual? And if it is, until what extent? Where does the erotic end and obscenity begin?

I didn't investigate if the site had any other similar videos nor do I want to know. One was enough.

Had this video, or any similar video involving accidents or suffering, been on YouTube or CNN, it would be "informational." But what happens if the same video is in a porn site, is it still "informational" or does it becomes something else. Has it become perverse or even worse, obscene?

Philosophers have debated on what is obscenity, and like love, beauty and the question of God's existence, there exists no consensus. In the landmark case of Miller v. California, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that obscenity is not protected under the First Amendment. The ruling, however, didn't provide a clear definition as to what is obscene, but they set three criteria that have been in used since then. It's called the Miller Test, and for something to be obscene it must meet the following:

1.       The average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

2.       the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law; and,

3.       the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Number two is easy to understand and it's generally universally accepted. Number one and three are more in the grey area: a 50/50. The average person could be wrong or not all communities think alike even within the same country (i.e. Berkeley v. Colorado Springs). If a work is not sadistic in nature, then who's to say that a work in question is not of value only because it disagrees with mainstream thought.

The question of judging something obscene should be not if it meets the above criteria. Rather, it should be if it does harm. Does it bring harm to the common good like inciting fear, dread or violence? (i.e. suicide bombers, yelling fire in a crowded theater) Does it bring harm to the individual or the people involved when consent has not been granted? (i.e. child pornography, human trafficking, slavery) Does it take the suffering of an individual or people that was deliberately caused for gratification? (i.e. Nazi experiments). Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States famously stated: I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced but I know it when I see it. So, this is how I see it: Obscenity is about harm. Obscenity robs us of our humanity.

So, to answer my original question, has that video become obscene? I think it has. It is my view that it was deliberately downloaded to that site to serve as a medium for deviant sexual gratification and laughter at the expense (and without the consent) of the one injured. And, if we use the criteria ruled by the justices, then I could argue that whatever "newsworthy information" it had was now lost, leaving it with no artistic, literary, political, or scientific value.

That video should have been banned by the owners of the site.

I don't advocate censorship. But I do advocate for the preservation of our humanity and the betterment of our human condition.