Wednesday, May 28, 2014

An exhaustive list of things that bother me about a news article covering Canadian content requirements for pornographic television stations

Here's a bunch of things I hate about this story:
  1. The image the National Post chose to accompany the story is vaguely sexual but beyond that has no real relationship to the subject matter of the article. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it is a premature ejaculation stock photo.
    The CRTC may want to check this couple's passports.
    If I had to guess what the National Post is going for with this image I would say that the unimpressed woman symbolizes the ever-watchful nanny state that wants to control what your every-man on the right there does in the privacy of his own bed?
  2. The caption that the National Post wrote to go with the photo makes no sense either. "The CRTC may want to check this couple's passports." What?!? That makes no sense. I can't even begin to guess what the author was going for there. Why passports? Why would the CRTC investigate individuals and not regulate telecommunications? What could this couple stand accused of doing? Is lying in bed not at least 35% Canadian?
  3. The Canadian government acts like there is an abstract concept called "Canadian culture" that somehow matters to humanity and must be nurtured.
  4. The Canadian government thinks it has any active role to play in defining its citizens' culture(s). We can take care of that on our own, thanks. No need to muck up an organic process.
  5. The Canadian government's belief that pornography can be distinctly Canadian, let alone needs to be.
  6. Canada forces its channels to air Canadian content 35% of the time at the expense of viewers and mostly for the benefit of major Canadian production companies, a.k.a. corporations. Because it's not how good a show is that matters, it's that it's not American.
  7. CanCon rules still exist in the internet era when borders matter so incredibly little to how media is produced and consumed.
  8. The Canadian government expends any resources at all on "problems" like where video and audio content comes from and what counts as sufficiently "Canadian" while its responsibilities for things like the poor, health care, and the judicial system could use some extra cash and attention.
  9. The Canadian government thinks forcing Canadian viewers and Canadian channels to buy and consume more content produced in Canada than would otherwise make the grade is a good way of building a robust pornography production industry. I guess the government's reasoning is, "Sure, it's not good enough for the rest of the world's economy (approximate GDP $75 trillion) but we'll make up for that by giving the Canadian economy (approximate GDP $1.8 trillion) no choice but to subsidize it." That makes no sense. Any good Canadian pornography can make large profits internationally. Any bad Canadian pornography will show up exclusively on Northern Peaks.
  10. The CRTC is very diligent when it comes to enforcing CanCon rules against obscure pornography channels. They track things right down to the minute. Meanwhile, plenty of Canadians are cheating on their taxes and drivers can stop on busy roads with impunity as long as they turn their emergency flashers on because the CRA and the police can't enforce fundamental standards of fairness that actually affect the quality of Canadian lives. How much you are allowed to exceed the posted speed limit before you get pulled over is a matter of police officer discretion but the CanCon rules for Skinemax are so sacrosanct that they must be enforced according to the precise letter of the law. Speeding vs Canadian Erotica: One of them kills, the other one matters.
  11. The CRTC also strives to enforce the spirit of the law as well. It chastised one channel for dumping its "Canadian" programming outside of prime viewing hours.
  12. NAFTA doesn't prohibit CanCon even though it is blatant trade protectionism. 
  13. Online porn is not subject to CanCon rules but porn you watch on television is even though the CRTC has some jurisdiction over online video. Why regulate one but not the other? What good does it do to require Canadian channels to buy Canadian pornography when most of pornography's value is derived from the internet that you are ignoring?
  14. Everyone agrees that violence against women is terrible and you can argue that pornography contributes to the problem (or is a form or prostitution which is still illegal) but the government requires that it be produced in Canada.
  15. The CRTC is also reprimanding porn for not being close-captioned. Think about that for a second. Porn. Close-captioned. Because there haven't been enough jokes about how superfluous pornography's plots are and how people don't read Playboy for the articles.
  16. The bizarre claim by an interviewee that making video games and making pornography are similar processes. Here's the quote:

    Porn production is flourishing in Quebec, with Montreal headquarters to such industry heavyweight as Brazzers and Mile High Media. Industry boosters claim the city’s production of X-rated videos is rivaled only by Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

    "We have the big game companies here. We have a lot of well-known computer-graphics generators here. It just stands to reason that some of that would derive into the adult expansions,” Michael Plant, a Quebec City-based adult-entertainment entrepreneur, told The Canadian Press in 2008.



    I think this man is vastly overstating the degree to which computer graphics (or more precisely, "computer-graphics generators," by which I assume he means computers) are a necessary part of pornography. Besides, the skill sets used to make video games and porn are very different. If you randomly chose a sample of video game programmers and 3-D artists then put them next to a randomly chosen group of porn stars, I'm pretty sure you'd be able to tell the difference.
  17. The article's author chose that quote despite it being 6 years old. He must have been desperate for filler when he threw it in there, which raises the question: why not leave it out?
  18. Actually, now that I've read that quote more closely a few times, I think the problem is that the interviewee is being quoted out of context. I'm guessing that he was talking about making pornographic video games and not pornography simpliciter but the preceding paragraph combined with the ambiguity of the term "adult expansions" makes him look like an idiot. Good job, National Post.
Things that I like about the story:
  1. This one line: 
Channel Zero replied, “We currently do not air any programming that would require Audio Description.”

No comments:

Post a Comment