I’m a pretty tolerant sort of gal and I can feel empathy for a wide variety of folks, but come on! They’re men…having sex…with horses!
And it’s apparently the fault of George W. Bush and his war.
In July 2005, a 45-year-old man died of internal bleeding after being anally penetrated by an Arabian stallion during a bestiality weekend in the US state of Washington. The victim, a Boeing engineer working on top-secret defence projects…suffered a perforated colon.
[...]
Independent filmmaker Robinson Devor shies away from prurient imagery, instead enveloping the story in rich photography that gives it a dreamlike beauty overwhelming the sordidness of the subject matter.
[...]
Many reviews have been favourable to the approach taken by Devor and his team. “They’ve crafted a subdued, mysterious and intensely beautiful film that presents bestiality not for the purpose of titillation, but as a way of investigating the subjective nature of morality,” the movie trade magazine Variety wrote.
[...]
Indeed, the only judgement seemingly expressed in the documentary is not on the matter in the stable at all. It is in fleeting radio references to US President George W Bush’s “war on terror” and the presumed complicity-for-profit of big companies such as Boeing.
[...]
John Paulsen, who played Pinyan, said he believed the engineer had been on a self-destructive streak linked to his defence work, a divorce and injuries from a motorcycle accident.
So if the message is too subtle for you - you’re supposed to sympathize with the men having what they claim is consensual sex with horses, and you should find beauty in all this…or you’re a bad person, or something. Also, you should consider that all of this happened because the engineer/victim was working for a company that might have been making weapons for George W. Bush. Got that? He probably wouldn’t have been screwing horses and advocating “mammal-to-mammal love” otherwise.
“Dictatorship of relativism,” take a bow.
Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now, Pope Benedict XVI)
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:12 pm
“you’re supposed to sympathize with the men having what they claim is consensual sex iwith horses, and you should find beauty in all this”
/It would be some help in matters of this kind to develop a certain degree of discrimination between being shocked by the film, being shocked by the reviews, and being shocked by the acts [which, by the way, are apparently not depicted, presumably to keep from shocking us all].
/A demand that the filmmakers editorialize about these men is really pointless. Insofar as such material can be examined in form of documentary film, there is no point in the heavy handed intrusion by the filmmaker in the process of the audience’s judgment. This is, in fact, what so many complain about in the work of Michael Moore [though they think they are complaining about all sorts of things but this], that he is a political commentator masquerading as a documentary filmmaker. We assume that this film form will largely conceal the presence of the filmmaker, or at least understate it. That assumption is usually correct, which is what allows Moore to violate it with such unwelcome force.
/Not having seen the film, I can’t be sure, but it probably is, in this sense, the type of documentary film we have come to expect–low key and minimally judgmental. It may be blemished by a sideswipe at the President, but it does not sound as if the film would change materially if that segment had stayed on the cutting room floor. People in the arts are largely liberal to radical and there is no fixing this–so irrelevant intrusions of this kind are an unwelcome, but unavoidable nuisance in many such films.
/The point of such a low-key treatment is to allow the viewer some space to draw their own conclusions about the men
portrayed. Would you really be any happier if the voice-over naration were written and performed by, say, David Limbaugh? Would it really make it a better film to have him tell you what to think about these men?
/Being shocked by the film critics is far more reasonable, and, insofar as there is any real “dictatorship of relativity” they are certainly the publicists of it. But no one with any sense, and any deep experience of documentary film, takes their vaporings seriously. If the film is not compelling on its own side, it will vanish tracelessly, if it is, the film reviews will still vanish tracelessly.
/The film critics are archetypes of the more serious targets you could take aim at, but, of and by themselves, they are but ridiculous little men and women lording it over their own little specialized artistic hothouse. You can find much more entertaining and important targets for your anger at “relativist liberal tastemakers” than these any day.
/Which leaves us the men. We can regard them any way we choose: with anger, with revulsion, with pity, with sympathy, or with contempt. And we certainly will, each from their own moral code, dictatorship of relativism or no. If the film is as advertised you will get out of it exactly what views you bring to it.
/But any compulsive behavior, externally revulsive or not, is essentially a matter for sadness. I presume, theologically, you believe in Free Will. Cooperating with your own compulsions is indenturing your Free Will to your habits whether gross as bestiality, or subtle as spiritual pride.
/Christ, by all accounts, walked among such as these, breaking the bonds of their Free Will with the command to “go and sin no more”. Can we do anything less than wish this for these men?
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I can be quite capable of feeling sad for the state of these men’s beings and at the same time quite repulsed by the way in which this whole thing is presented and reported upon. As I am. And you don’t have to slash before your paragraphs, anymore, Joseph - the things been seen to, because some of my commenters do insist on making lengthy remarks…I keep trying to explain it to my bandwidth-counting husband.
And while Christ walked among sinners, his message wasn’t, “it’s okay brother, you have your issues, I have mine,” it was “go and sin no more…” Sometimes it was “go and present yourself, and sin no more,” or “go and cleanse yourself as prescribed by Moses, and sin no more.”
Jesus never acted like this stuff didn’t matter…he was clear it did. I don’t know that it is the wisest thing to allow one’s compassion to run so far afield that you cannot understand that this debasement is an extreme that - while not needing an overvoice by some fire-and-brimstone type - also does not need beautiful pastoral scenes that - (quoting the article) “shies away from prurient imagery, instead enveloping the story in rich photography that gives it a dreamlike beauty overwhelming the sordidness of the subject matter.”
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Hmmmmm….
Perhaps I should start making a list, interviewing witnesses, and collecting documents about things that have gone wrong in my life - with an eye towards blaming Bush for it. Think I could get some dough for my own documentary?
Some recents events that seem to be Bush’s fault:
1. A flat tire on my car that caused me to be late for school (fortunately, a substitute was able to cover for me). Tires are made out or rubber and chemical compounds that might have come from oil refineries. Halliburton is obviously behind this - check!
2. A flat tire on my bicycle. Riding a bicycle reduces one’s carbon footprint. Obviously a Bush conspiracy to kill us all by global warming. Check!
3. Recently found a few grey hairs on my head. Worrying about ozone depletion. Bush again! Check!
4. My college alma mater’s baseball team just got swept by their arch rivals this past weekend. Was not Bush the owner of the Texas Rangers at one time? A conspiracy! Check!
5. Speaking of baseball, I have yet to receive any offers to play for a major league team. Even though my baseball experience consisted of two years of Little League, it is obvious that Bush has had me blacklisted. Check again!
That’s enough for now. I am sure that some other dastardly Bush plots will be revealed. I am aiming for $3-5 million for my documentary.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm
W is for Whinny…
It’s all Bush’s fault. Dude decides he likes it “Heigh Ho, Silver” style, and dies after being mounted by his mount? Well, there’s a documentary filmmaker out there who’s ready to draw the necessary inferences: dude works for Boeing, he……
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:15 pm
A pillar of the tryanny of relativism is the primacy of feelings. The reviewer bows to the primacy of feelings when he talks about “the subjectivism of morality”. There are those who would have us become walking nerve endings.
The road of the subjectivism of morality leads from “if it feels good, do it”, to “if it makes you feel, do it.” It appears that the gentlemen who shared intimacies with the stallion had gone far down that road.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:16 pm
That guy was sick in the head and in the a**. Maybe he had them backwards.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Umm…ugh. That’s all I have to say. I mean, I know Catherine the Great of Russia was into that…that’s how she died…but do people never learn?
I’m not disgusted by the film, per se…don’t care enough. But it’s certain I’d vote with my pocketbook-and never see it.
They’re trying to get a reaction. I’d refuse to satisfy them.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:34 pm
I’m trying to imagine how the engineer went about, er, arousing the stallion’s interest, not to say cooperation.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:38 pm
“rich photography that gives it a dreamlike beauty”
That film attempts to make a pig look like Miss Universe… when it’s still a pig.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 am
Shying away from prurient imagery? My God, first they tried to make gay sex seem more romantic (and failed, I might add), and now they’re trying to do the same thing with a guy getting pegged by a horse?! If they were “shying away from prurient imagery” they wouldn’t have made this sick film in the first place.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:13 am
How Could We Not Have Realized This?…
Studious Swillers will recall that equine love affair in Washington (Washington State, mind you; in DC there’s only swine) which we have reported on occasionally in order to fulfill our commitment to Reader Knowledge, but it has taken a far……
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 am
[...] Yeah, Bush is the problem. The Anchoress has more. [...]
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:59 am
Don’t you sometimes just shake your head in bafflement? And, by the way, what will those suffering from BDS do when the same old problems persist even once he’s out of office?
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:29 pm
We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
Well, there is truth to that, but I’d disagree that what troubles these particular folks is the refusal/inability to recognize anything for certain — they seem pretty darn certain that everything can be blamed on Bush.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Stephanie, Catherine the Great of Russia was NOT into bestiality. Her detractors started the slander and it kept going. There’s a pretty good breakdown of the truth about her death and the two myths about it. http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/catherinethegreat/a/histmyths1.htm
I have to laugh at the so-called respectful tone of the documentary. If it wasn’t an appeal to prurient interest, it wouldn’t have sold. Anyone remember the disgusting John Waters flick “Pink Flamingos”?
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Gee, I work at a defense contractor. I didn’t know my colleagues and I were all bent on self destructive streaks due to the stress of our work for the evil overlord Bush. In the same vein, my son went on a class trip today to see the play “The spelling Bee” (paraphase of the title) in NY. One of the biggest laugh lines was that the honeybees are all disappearing and it’s somehow Bush’s fault. What can’t be blamed on him? Will there be a sudden return to sanity in January 2009 or will BDS linger on sort of like malaria? At least I think it’s malaria that recurs every so often.
May 24th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Jean: I remember Pink Flamingos. I nearly vomited up my popcorn when I saw it during my college days.
But John Waters was deliberately aiming for that sort of reaction. Waters didn’t take disgusting subject matter and shroud it in “rich photography” to give it a dreamlike quality. He was going for the gross-out. In that respect, Waters is more honest that the director of “My Friend Flicka, circa 2007.”
May 24th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Ok, Jean, I read the linked article, and then just had to crack up. After the end, was a list of links:
Suggested Reading
* Catherine the Great
* Biography of Catherine th Great
* Horses at About.com
I’m sure it was created automatically by some computer, thereby proving that humans aren’t obsolete quite yet!