The Susannah Breslin Challenge

I was recently reading some articles about legality and free speech (spurred by recent articles about SOPA and GoDaddy's disastrously ass-kissing the fascistic pole issues) and read about Max Hardcore and his jail sentence. My initial thoughts are that this is typical hate-mongering by the right abusing our laws to overcome free speech. I ran across some articles by Susannah Breslin about the Max issue and though I find her views on pornography confusing (she loves to hate it?) one of the points she made was that you need to see it. One of the lawyers she talked to said he didn't need to and she publicly called him out on that. I supppose if it's that offensive it's okay to rob someone of their rights and throw them in jail even if they don't do anything illegal because our obscenity laws are so vague. I think that's fucking bullshit especially cuz there isn't anything in his videos that aren't in a million others, just not so doggedly in every video. I thought to myself that since I haven't seen any of his movies that I should check them out to see if there as bad as she says. And then I'll have to think about what that means to me.

I then decided to take the Susannah Breslin challenge. I went on the net and bought some of his DVD's covering various title types to make sure that I didn't find the "nice" one that wouldn't be so offensive. Though more reading has me thinking that I could of just gotten one since it sounds like they're all the same. They don't sound like anything I would be interested in seeing on my own, in much the same was that movies like Hostel (which I did see after a friend encouraged it) don't do anything for me or perhaps bum me out would be a better way to put it. Funny how the constant barrage of murdered women in horror movies seem more okay than rough sex. But we'll see when the Max vids arrive. I thought it would be hard to find the movies but I guess as long as I don't live in Tampa they're easily procured. Funny that I have the same sense of unease that I had when I rented Hostel or some other horror-butcher movies that I've forgotten.

Part of me wishes I hadn't, I now feel that I've engaged in some conspiracy but hey, the things we do so we can complain about free speech. I don't think I'm going to find anything there to convince me otherwise but we'll see. Looking at Breslin's blogs and writings I sometimes I think that people who spend too much time on the internet get some warped view that the disturbing aspects they find around them culturally have more meaning than they actually do, the ads, the blogs, the online media, the cable tv media. To me it's a mishmash of the worst we have to offer. But then watching Fox News or Fox Entertainment (the arm that holds all the big hate filled talking heads) does makes me sick to my stomach. In that regard I think Max Hardcore is harmless. At best he's an analogy for what Fox News does to the American Psyche on a daily basis. Pissing hate right down into the open mouth of a confused and disenfranchised country.