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.
Thank you for referencing both private a public scene activities when it comes to informed consent. The latter require a strict and high level of professionalism to avoid the risks from regress.
For me there are both legal and ethical issues surrounding informed consent.
Fortunately, we share and have the experiences of several friends who have made spanking films all over the world. Years ago, Niki Flynn gave me the Czech description which Lupus used to describe the work she did in spanking films as that of a Stunt Performer. In my professional life a stunt performer must complete and sign a Stunt Performer’s Agreement, which acknowledges that she or he is fully aware of the risks involved in performing the stunts fine specified in the Shooting Script. (Template agreements are available on the web). A stunt performer is able to consent to discomfort and potential light injuries within the limits specified in the Agreement and Script.
If the producer causes something to happen not foreseen in the shooting script, the stunt performer has a right to sue the producer within the limits defined in the Stunt Performers Agreement. For instance, I haven’t seen Mood’s work. Wild off-target strokes during canings have been mentioned in other posts. Anything which went outside an agreed target area would break the agreement. The Pro-Dommes I know who cane at high levels of severity, use protective pads to prevent damage to kidney and other vital organs.
The same is true of many contracts governing sports. Be it Three-day-eventing, boxing or cycling, participants have to agree that they will not hold sponsors responsible for injuries sustained.
In the public arena, this is the legal level of informed consent which protects both parties. For filmed scene activities I think an additional ethical layer, which goes beyond the purely legal requirements is just as important: Has the recipient clearly demonstrated that she or he understands the physical and emotional consequences of what she or he is consenting to, that the scene can be stopped at any time (simple safeword) and that the recipient’s well-being is of the utmost importance to the producers?
In private play, we’ve gotten to know each other over months and years, understand limits and the subtleties of body language, tone of voice etc. We cannot rely on these on a film set.
Thanks for providing a reasoned space to debate these issues.
R
… and thanks for adding such fascinating insights to the debate. I’d overlooked the contractual aspect in my post – and you’re right to flag it as a very important consideration.
Thanks. Here’s an example of the pertinent paragraph from a typical SPA (Stunt Performer’s Agreement) I’ve doctored:
Description of Services–The Production Company hereby engages the Stunt Performer to render services as Haron in conjunction with the motion picture entitled “Invasion of The Spanking Writers” (the “Picture”) and to perform such activities as required by the Production Company and further described in the Shooting Script for the Picture. The Stunt Performer accepts such engagement upon the terms herein specified. Terms…
If you want the full example e-mail me.
R
Thank you for a thoughtful post that raises many important issues, Abel. I was going to raise some of these issues myself in my own follow-up post to the one I just made.
Legality
For me, personally, the legality of the Mood / EP videos was never in question – otherwise, I would not have worked with them. After all, they had been in business for the past five years (six years by now), they had shot dozens of videos with literally hundreds of models, and they were doing it all relatively openly (advertising in newspapers, and so on). My thinking was, if there was something illegal about what Mood was doing, wouldn’t they have gotten in trouble with the law a long time ago already? Moreover, there were other BDSM video producers in Hungary who also filmed canings with vivid marks. They didn’t seem to have any legal troubles, either.
Add to this the fact that the Mood / EP videos were not just available as downloads on the internet, but also in the local, “mainstream” sex shops here in Germany, like Beate Uhse. In light of all this, I never even considered the possibility that the videos might be illegal in Hungary (there is, after all, such a thing as EU-wide police cooperation, and the Germans, especially, are big proponents of this).
Well, in the upcoming court case, one will undoubtedly see what the local Hungarian law has to say about it. I’m not a legal expert, but if other jurisdictions are anything to go by, then there is probably a pretty big grey area when it comes to the exact level of injury that one can legally consent to…
Consent
At the shoot I attended, Mood didn’t use any coded safewords (like “Stop it, I beg you, my Lord!”), and Pedro explained to me that they normally don’t. However, they did stop the thrashings when a girl asked for it “out of character” (with one possible exception, see below), or whenever they themselves (the nurse present at the shoot) thought that a break should be given.
In practice, there were between one and three breaks per scene. Rita Goord, the first of two girls whom I caned, was the only one of all who did her scene without a single break (she had done several other videos with Mood before). On the other end of the spectrum, there was a girl who quit after only four or five strokes. There was no attempt to persuade her to continue, they simply untied her and she went home.
There was one single episode during the shoot that I consider “borderline”. It happened at the end of my second caning scene, with Tammy Lange. Tammy had called for two interruptions during the scene, and of course, they were given. We continued when she said she was ready. Then, shortly before the end of the scheduled 50 strokes (around 44 or 45), she was banging her hands on the wooden platform and yelling “Stop, stop, stop…”
I hesitated. She didn’t say anything more – during the previous breaks, she had immediately started a conversation with the director. This time, she was just silent. She didn’t seem hysterical, neither did she seem catatonic. I wasn’t sure if she *really* wanted to stop the scene, again.
I looked over to the assistant director, who was sort of directing me, like he did with all the tops. He gave Tammy a hand siginal, five fingers, as in “only a handful more to go”. I believe she saw it, and again, she didn’t say anything. Then, he signalled to me that I should go on, and I did. I gave her the last five or six strokes, whatever number it was that remained.
Tammy was fine afterwards. Actually, she did another Mood video a month or two later. As for me, I didn’t give the episode much thought at the time – I was happy to see that she was okay when the scene was over, and I was still high from shooting my first professional CP film, anyway. I gave the episode a single-sentence description in my behind-the-scenes report on the blog that probably sounds way more dramatic than it was.
Still, I came to the view later that I had made the wrong decision. It was a moment where I wasn’t sure about the consent, and as brief as it was, and as close as it was towards the end of the scene, I should still have “overruled” the assistant director out of my own initiative and stopped the scene. I should have asked Tammy, “Do you want to go on?” (I am positive that the answer would have been “Yes”), and only then would we have gone on. That way, everything would have been in the green.
As it was, the episode was borderline, and today, I would do it differently. I came to this view long before I heard about the current accusations against Mood, and obviously, I had to think about that moment with Tammy again in recent days.
The worst that I could imagine to have happened at that recent EP shoot would be something along those lines, something “borderline”. However, this is not what the article claims. The article claims that a producer took over the scene and thrashed the girl after the woman orignally thrashing her was done, and that the girl’s pleas to stop were being ignored repeatedly and for an extended period of time. That, on the other hand, I have a haed time imagining.
Also, I just received another email from Pedro today, who claims that the girl who made the accusations was not even tied down for the last 10 minutes of her scene. If this is true, it does of course raise big questions about the truth of the accusations.
Responsible Conduct
While Mood / EP were exemplary in certain areas, like medical aftercare, and while they certainly did care about safety, the one area where they were always much too negligent in my opinion was the shoddy accuracy of some of their tops. I was critical of that in my behind-the-scenes report (if you read my remarks about Lady Jessica), I was critical of it in movie reviews, and God knows I raised the subject more than once in private conversations with Pedro.
Prior to January 27th, if I had expected Mood to get into any trouble, I would have expected it to be about an accident, a stray cane or whip stroke that seriously injures a girl. The accusations as they are made in the newspaper, on the other hand, surprise me, and I have a hard time believing them in this form.
Anyway, thank you again for your interesting post. I will continue to cover the Mood story on my blog, as I’m sure you will.
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@Redhead – I’m sure said agreement would commit Haron to the soundest of punishments, wouldn’t it??!!
@Ludwig – thanks for such an excellent, thought-provoking comment, and for sharing perspectives from your own experience so openly.
Let’s hope that the allegations against Mood prove to be unfounded, both for the sake of the Mood people and to confirm that none of their actors had been put through unacceptable experiences.
One more thought of mine, in reply to a specific point of yours:
“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.”
I think so, too. Also, I find it doubtful that the difference between “vanilla” and “kinky” is as clear-cut here as some people might make it out to be.
Can *anyone* give truly informed consent to a very severe, Mood Pictures-style caning when they haven’t had one before? Sure, you might have had lighter thrashings before, so you will probably have a better idea of what it might be like than the vanilla girl. But do you really know what it is like, can you really give “fully” informed consent, whatever that is? I don’t think so.
The point was raised by my girlfiriend Kaelah when I talked to her the other day. You may have read that we did a very severe caning scene a few weeks ago, Mood Pictures-style, because she wanted to know what that is like. And Kaelah’s judgment is that, even when you’ve been caned before – even when you’ve been caned *fairly severely* before! -, you don’t really have an idea of what it is like.
No matter what previous experiences you have or how hard you try to inform yourself (theoretically) beforehand, consent will always be “blind”, to a certain degree, when it is something you’ve never done before. It may be more blind in the case of vanilla models doing spanking films than in the case of kinky models. But I don’t think that the difference is nearly as big as one might think.
It’s an interesting question – what is “informed” consent, exactly? How informed does it have to be to be “informed enough”?
Sorry friends, but I disagree. The Mood/ EP videos may be legal but hey always had a horrible aura around them I have never seen anywhere else. Cold, merciless, unhuman, anti-erotic and clearlyto see for anybody tjhat 90% of the girls hated it and did it only for money.
That’s not SM at all. That’s paid torture and I am sure the bosses went over the top because it all went so well over the years. They never cared for the girls and thenext logical step is not to care AT ALL when the girls wanted to stop….
@ElTopo – I’m not quite sure what it is that you disagree with! My post was pretty clear that if the girls didn’t give their informed consent to what was happening in the shoots, then Mood were out of line. I guess the debate is whether they did or not, and whether a viewer could reasonably have deduced that the answer to that question was ‘not’…?
Abel – The disagreement seems pretty clear, and isn’t trivial, but it lies outside the terms in which this debate has been conducted, whhich has essentially been confined to the leglity and morality of producing spanking films, and which has taken for granted the principle that all human interaction is acceptable provided that all participants consent to it and it doesn’t cause participants and harm. El Topo approaches it as a lierary critic might: he is shocked by what these beatings imply about the cold inhumanity, as he seees it, of those who dish out the pain. He might well react similarly to a work of fiction which describes such situations. (Dr Johnon couldn’t bear the cruelty of the end of King Lear). But this must be a common dilemma for spankophiles and particularly for non-participating spankovoyeurs – endlessly drawn to seek out images, descriptions and symbols of what they half crave and half fear to winess. (Sorry to state the obvious)
@Krampus – interesting perspective. I see a huge, unbridgeable gulf between knowledgeable consensual play (which I condone) and the scenario ElTopo describes of beatings in which the girls’ preferences aren’t respected (which I condemn). If he and I disagree, it’s over his statement that non-consensual beatings are the next ‘logical’ step, when I see no logical path whatsoever from consent to non-consent.