Threat levels

'Pornography violates the Aesthetic Distance. What does this mean? When we see the scene of simulated sex we can think only of one of two things: 1) Lord, they're really having sex; or 2) No, I can tell they aren't really. Either of the above responses takes us right out of the film. We've been constrained to remove attention from the drama and put it on the stunt.'

-- David Mamet, Make-Believe Town (Little, Brown, 1996)

'I think that one of the functions of Art (both for the artist and for the perceiver, though not necessarily in the same way) is to furnish a false world which is an analogue of at least some of the aspects of the real world and to explore within that new behaviour patterns that might yet be too dangerous or imponderable in a real-life context.'

 -- Brian Eno (Another False World interview by Ian McDonald, NME Dec 3 1977)

'Any sort of upheaval gratified our anarchic instincts. Abnormality we found positively attractive.'

-- Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life (Libraire Gallimard, 1960)

Been thinking about how many of my favourite things have fallen foul of both official and self-appointed censors. (Including my own work.) Talk is cheap, anger is free and all threats in art are metaphorical.¹

Those threats which one believes can pass from the fictional world and into reality to do real harm (computer games, pornography, modern art, hate speech, fight scenes in movies, Miley Cyrus at the VMAs) tends to be dictated by personal taste rather than empirical evidence.

I could be wrong. The only way to find out is to keep talking about it which, unfortunately, also requires one to keep listening, no matter how much you don't like what you hear. Or watch, or log into, or subscribe to, or buy to read every day, over and over...

(Pics: Existenz (David Cronenburg), Maitresse, Once Upon A Time In America, Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny tease Reddit for The X-Files 20th anniversary)

  ^{1. I think Eno said this but I can't find the quote just now. I propose a law that after being interviewed for so many years all quotes can be attributed to Brian Eno.↩}