An Investigation into the Obscene
When American supreme court judge Potter Stewart was asked to define “hard core pornography” as it related to an obscenity trial he was presiding over, he returned the frustratingly unsatisfying and now famous answer "I know it when I see it". To this day, the US court system still lacks any legal definition for obscenity, despite the fact that it is still legally regulated. Regardless of exactly how you define the word, however, there is no question that in the last 50 years, obscene content has become far more accessible and legally and socially acceptable to produce and consume. Although it is difficult to define the obscene, the type of media which can probably be least controversially placed in the category is pornography. Prior to the 1970s, pornography was illegal in almost every country on earth, and, surprisingly to me at least, it remains illegal in the vast majority of countries outside of Europe and the Americas. Even in the UK, possession of “extreme pornographic images” (which are abigously defined as images which are “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character”). Of the countries where is pornography legal, posession is universally allowed only for people over a certain age, usually the age of consent. These regulations, no matter how lax or restrictive, are almost entirely impotent in the digital age. Any person of any age from any country can fairly easily access any type of pornography they can imagine on the internet. Exposure to pornography or other obscene content such as gore videos at an early age is so common that not only are we all familiar with multiple examples of the phenomenon, but its also likely that several of us experienced it ourselves as children. In this context, attempts to legally limit access to obscene images seems somewhat silly; the cat is effectively out of the bag.
But this trend towards the proliferation of obscenity seems to have happened not as a result of philosophical changes so much as technological changes. So although it may be too late for us to do so, it's worth asking ourselves if we are comfortable with the cultural growth in access to the obscene. To have this discussion, we need to consider exactly what can be considered obscene, how if at all this content affects society, and whether it is the government's role to control which content its citizens can view. Please consider the following questions and read some of the sources provided in order to prepare for this discussion.
How should obscenity be defined and how should the obscenity of a piece of content be determined?
Can exposure to obscenity be damaging to a mentally healthy adult? What about children? What about the mentally ill? What about the broader societal structure?
If we can assume that the availability of obscene content on the internet will inevitably lead to children being exposed to it, does that affect whether obscene content should be legally available on the internet at all?
If obscenity should be legally limited, how practically might governments do that?
Can art be obscene?
Should people have the right to view obscene content, regardless of if it's “good” for them?