There’s been much debate lately about the case of Mood Pictures, the Hungarian spanking producers whose premises were raided by police during a film shoot in January. A post with 60+ comments on Adele’s blog was followed by a thoughtful entry on Ludwig’s site yesterday, summarising the current case as follows:

As many of you will know already, the studio of Mood Pictures, the Hungarian CP film producer about whom I have written a fair bit already on this blog, was raided by the police on the weekend of January 23rd / 24th. Fourteen people were arrested at the scene, three of them now face charges. The accusation is that, at a movie shoot in early January, they ignored a model who was repeatedly safewording, asking them to stop a scene, and continued to beat her. Mood Pictures deny these charges. There will now very probably be a court case against them.

Being friends with a fair few spanking models – and having watched my share of kinky movies over the years – I’m following the case and the debate with some interest. I was going to respond directly on Ludwig’s blog, but when I’d written down my thoughts they were far too long to go in a comment, so I’m putting them in an extra post here instead.

First up, there’s the matter of the legality of the whackings themselves – i.e. is inflicting physical harm (marks, weals) on another person acceptable and within the local law. Whilst I’m very firmly in the camp that if all of those involved consent, then it’s clearly acceptable, the law in some places would appear to be less tolerant. The legal question boils down to whether one can actually consent to being ‘hurt’ (even in private play), or whether this constitutes some form of assault. This was at the heart of, say, the Spanner case which set such a dangerous precedent in UK law.

Now, I’d personally defend to the utmost the rights of consenting adults to do what they like in private in the bedroom (or dungeon or whatever) – but I do worry for Mood that, from the reports, Hungarian law might take a different stance.

Second up – the issue of consent. That’s all-important to me. Were all of the participants clear on what was to happen? Had the events that would unfold been fully discussed and agreed? Was there a clear mechanism (a safeword and/or other signs) by which any participant could stop or pause proceedings if they started to feel unhappy? Were those involved responsible, able and empowered to actually halt or pause what was happening if they were in any way uneasy – or felt that other participants were struggling – using the agreed mechanism, or in any other way if that became essential?

So in Mood’s case, if beatings did continue (as per the reports) after someone used a safeword, that’s certainly not acceptable – but I wouldn’t trust everything I read in the media about cases like this, without knowing what actually happened, and Ludwig’s previous posts about Mood suggest that it’s unlikely that this would have been the case.

Where this might be seen to get a little grey is the issue of whether a vanilla model (e.g. one “doing it for the money”, rather than as someone who’s kinky and curious / keen to participate for that reason) can indeed fully consent to what’s going to happen, given she presumably has no idea what a flogging will actually feel like in practice. She might consent to the theoretical idea of being whacked, but if the reality is very different (worse) than she’d anticipated (or been led to anticipate), had she genuinely ‘consented’? I think so – all participants were, after all, responsible adults – but I could imagine this being debated by vanillas and lawyers (especially if they play the – in my view erroneous – card than a woman’s financial dire straits impairs her ‘responsibility’ / judgement).

One could also, incidentally, well imagine a situation in which a vanilla model had gone through a shoot, consenting, with a safeword that she hadn’t used, but where she subsequently regretted what she’d done – but it’s the issue of consent in advance and at the time that would seem to be most important, at least in any legal debate. And one can imagine a situation where a participant needs to invent an excuse (“I didn’t consent / they forced me”) if what’s happened is discovered by someone who disapproves.

Third, there would seem to be an issue of responsible conduct. Even with consenting partners, safewords and the like, it would have to be a matter of concern if those involved acted recklessly, thoughtlessly or irresponsibly during the shoot. Put another way – are the actresses, in particular, looked after properly? It would seem from Ludwig’s past descriptions of Mood’s procedures – e.g. having medical staff on hand to help tend the wounds – that they should be in the clear on this front. (The danger, though, is that those who would condemn them on the first count, of whether someone can consent, would use the very presence of and implied need for medical attention as an argument to condemn).

And fourth, there’s the question of the subject matter. I used the phrase ‘in private’ earlier, and that to me is key when justifying consensual activity. The nature of a movie producer is that their output isn’t ‘private’ – it’s designed for public distribution. This leads to two areas of possible condemnation:

  • the whole “extreme porn” argument, much discussed on the blogosphere (particularly in the context of last year’s UK legislation) – that is, whether there are certain topics that should be taboo and not filmed
  • whether appropriate steps are taken to prevent material from reaching those who shouldn’t be exposed to it (e.g. those under an appropriate / legal age to view it).

I don’t want to rehearse all of those arguments here, as they’re been widely debated – but it does seem that they’re not pertinent to this particular case anyway, as Mood appear to be in trouble for issues relating to the production rather than to the circulation of their movies.

I hope that, if the Mood folks have (as one would hope) operated responsibly and within the right parameters, that they would then have the best wishes of all of the kinky community – and our active support to help them to get through the doubtless difficult times ahead.