Horror Website reviewers, accustomed to gruesome and pornographic films, likened viewing the film to “having [one’s] soul raped” and commented that they would never watch it again.13 It has been described as evil, depraved, and vile; as soul-killing, pure exploitation, and “simply beyond rational certification.”14 However, A Serbian Film has also been hailed as ‘subversive’ and ‘transgressive’ in some film circles, being called ‘intelligent’, ‘fantastic’, ‘brilliant’, and one of the best films of 2010.15 It has been celebrated as ‘art on display’, as substance and therefore justifiably depraved.
The film premiered at the Novi Sad Film Festival in June 2010, held at the Serbian National Theatre. This venue is near the concentration camps where many Serbs really did commit such atrocities, and whose audience likely has perpetrators in it, perhaps reliving their glory days, as rapists and murderers are known to do. The film has won other awards, such as Best Screenplay at a 2010 Serbian film festival at Vrnjačka Banja, and is defended as free speech.16
Think about what is taking place here. A film portrays, as graphic entertainment, the distinctive manner in which genocide was carried out by this country, through sexual atrocities. The film is feted and praised. And these festivities are taking place near the very sites and mass graves of those crimes. In this rewriting of history, the only thing that the film does consider real about the sexual atrocities it portrays is how they represent the suffering of the perpetrators. In the film, it is not their victims who were raped to death but the rapists and those who, in various ways, covered up for them.
An analogy may perhaps help one to appreciate the genocide denial at work in this pornography. Imagine a German film made not long after the Holocaust that depicts, as graphic entertainment, atrocities in gas chambers and crematoria, the distinctive way the Nazi genocide was carried out. Then imagine the film being screened and celebrated near the death camps where these atrocities actually took place. What the film conveys as real is how its atrocities represent the suffering of the German people. They are metaphorically gassed to death and not their victims who really were gassed to death.
In August, 2010, A Serbian Film won awards at the Montreal Fantasia Film Festival where it was presented as part of a ‘Subversive Serbia’ series which also included the recent Serbian hit The Life and Death of a Porno Gang and another co-written by the writer of A Serbian Film.17 Presented in the genre of fantasy, the film accomplishes even more effectively its real work of erasing the reality of the genocide and supplanting it with a fiction. And what the film world now mainly registers about the film is what it calls ‘freedom’ and ‘daring’. Nikola Pantelić, A Serbian Film’s producer, states that “Montreal Fantasia [Festival] is one of the few places left on this earth where artistic freedom and unorthodox cinema thinking still mean something … a Mecca for gutsy and vital cinema today.”18 A court ruling prevented its screening at Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival, but the film still won the Special Audience Award for ‘Becoming a Symbol of Freedom of Speech’.19
Law
In 1992, Natalie Nenadic returned to the University of Michigan Law School where she approached Catharine MacKinnon about representing survivors pro bono for our legal action. In early March, 1993, when Radovan Karadžić, head of the Bosnian Serbs, came to the UN in New York to participate in ‘peace talks’, US Marshalls handed him our lawsuit, charging him with sexual atrocities as acts of genocide, including mass rape, serial rape, sexual murder, forced prostitution, sexual torture and mutilation, and forced pregnancy. Karadžić fled from the US and eventually went into hiding, but he is now on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Our case went through the courts until we finally went to jury-trial in Manhattan in August, 2000, where survivors testified about the sexual and other atrocities they experienced. A judgment found for compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction to stop the genocide.20 There was some indirect testimony at trial about pornography’s role in the genocide, but that role is not yet as explicitly recognized in international law as other sexual atrocities are.
We have some suggestions about how possibly to accomplish such a recognition which in turn could bring more recognition to the harms of pornography in peacetime. In July, 2008, around the time of Karadžić’s transfer to the ICTY at The Hague, there were reports from Bosnia-Herzegovina about the discovery of pornography in relation to him, including pornography that features him in it. However, it has been interpreted as a collection that is part of his private domain.21 In other words, a traditional way of denying the reality of pornography’s harms to women as something private and harmless has also been used to dismiss pornography’s significance in this context.
We had faced a similar problem when word first started coming out about sexual atrocities as genocide in the 1990s. There too, traditional ways of denying sexual violence against women were imported to do their work of denial. So, for instance, mass rapes were referred to as ‘excesses’ and the rape concentration camps as ‘bordellos’ or ‘brothels’ and the like. Feminism gave us a way to break out of this euphemistic and obfuscating language and to name the reality of what was taking place as genocidal sexual atrocities. This in turn made it possible for us to pursue a legal initiative that established an international precedent.
Feminism can also help us come up with a more adequate understanding of the pornography aspect of genocide. This breaks the traditional approach which hides pornography’s harms to women by miscasting those harms as private and benign. With this better conceptual framework in hand, we may bring pornography that is connected to genocide to bear on international legal proceedings, perhaps at The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, or at a case that could be brought at the International Criminal Court or in a civil suit of the kind we initiated in New York. We might thereby get pornography’s role in genocide recognized as it needs to be.
Bibliography
Anderson, Tim,
Arhiva Net (29 July, 2008) ‘Pronašli Karadžićevu pornografsku snimku’,
Armanda, Asja and Natalie Nenadic (November, 1994) ‘Activists Warn Not to be Fooled by Genocide/Rape Revisionists’ Northwest Ethnic News Seattle, p. 2.
Australian Government Classification Website,
Bailey, Fiona (26 November, 2010) ‘A Serbian Film is “most cut” movie in 16 years’,
Balkaninsight (28 January, 2011) ‘Croatia Rejects Call to Withdraw Envoy to Serbia’,
Bitel, Anton ‘Srdjan Spasojevic (uncensored)’,
Brady, Tara (9 December, 2010) ‘It is hell. It is not entertainment’,
Brooks, Xan (27 August, 2010) ‘A Serbian Film pulled from FrightFest’,
Brown, Todd (10 March, 2010) ‘Fantasia 2010 Announces Subversive Serbia!’,
Brown, Todd (21 December, 2010) ‘A Dozen Discoveries from 2010: New Faces to Watch’,
Cashmore, Pete (28 August, 2010) ‘Will this new movie kill off torture porn for good?’,
Court of Bos
nia & Herzegovina (2009) ‘Predrag Kujundzic found guilty of Crimes against Humanity’ 30 October, 2009,
Croatian Times (30 July, 2008) ‘Karadzic starred in his own porn movie’,
Dalje (29 July, 2008) ‘Karadzic Made Porn Video’,
Guardian Film Blog (13 December, 2010) ‘A Serbian Film: when allegory gets nasty’,
Jinga Films,
Knowles, Harry (9 April, 2010) ‘Harry says SERBIAN FILM will be the best film you won’t likely see in Theaters this year!’,
Knowles, Harry (5 January, 2011) ‘Harry’s Top Ten films of 2010!!!’,
Lodderhose, Diana and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010) ‘Spanish court bans “A Serbian Film”’,
MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1993) ‘Turning Rape into Pornography: Post-Modern Genocide’ Ms Magazine July/August, pp. 24–30.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. (2006) Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Movies Online (3 December, 2010) ‘Torture Porn Redefined: Dressing Down A Serbian Film’,
Nenadic, Natalie (2010) ‘Feminist Philosophical Intervention in Genocide’ in James R. Watson (Ed) Metacide in the Pursuit of Perfection. Rodopi, New York/Amsterdam.
Slobodna Dalmacija (29 July, 2008) ‘Žalba nije stigla do suda; Dnevni avaz: Karadžić ima pornić’.
Sun (7 September, 2011) ‘Sick Serbian film hits London’,
Transgressive Cinema,
Wikipedia,
Wikinoticia (5 November, 2010),
___________________________
1 A version of this paper was presented by Natalie Nenadic at the International Stop Porn Culture Conference in Boston, Wheelock College, 13 June, 2010. Thank you to Rebecca Whisnant for the opportunity to present this work and to Lierre Keith, Gail Dines, Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray. The help of R. Demirovic is also gratefully acknowledged.
2 Kadic v Karadzic, 70 F.3d 232, 236–237 (2d Cir. 1995).
3 Asja Armanda and Natalie Nenadic (1994). See also Nenadic (2010).
4 We provided Catharine MacKinnon with these findings which she presented in MacKinnon (1993), p. 24.
5 Balkaninsight (28 January, 2011)
6 Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina (2009).
7 Diana Lodderhose and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010); Australian Government (4 December, 2010).
8 Diana Lodderhose and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010); Fiona Bailey (26 November, 2010).
9 Anton Bitel; Tim Anderson.
10 Anton Bitel; Guardian Film Blog (13 December, 2010); Sun (7 September, 2011).
11 Xan Brooks (27 August, 2010).
12 Movies Online (3 December, 2010); Wikipedia; Transgressive Cinema.
13 Tara Brady (9 December, 2010); Tim Anderson.
14 Pete Cashmore (28 August, 2010).
15 Harry Knowles (9 April, 2010); Harry Knowles (5 January, 2011). See also Pete Cashmore (28 August, 2010).
16 Jinga Films.
17 Jinga Films.
18 Todd Brown (10 March, 2010).
19 Wikipedia; Wikinoticia (5 November, 2010).
20 The judgment was for US$745 million, though it is potentially misleading to refer to that sum without qualification as survivors have yet to see any of that money. For details of the case see MacKinnon (2006).
21 This information was first reported by the Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz in July, 2008. See also Slobodna Dalmacija (29 July, 2008); Arhiva Net (29 July, 2008); Dalje (29 July, 2008); Croatian Times (30 July, 2008).
Ruchira Gupta
Pornography in India
“I put my dick on the mouth of her pussy and pushed my dick into it quickly. She screamed louder ahhhhhhhh ohhhhhhh and I quickly put a pillow on to her mouth so that her family member will not hear her scream” (Indiansexstories.net).
Indiansexstories.net is only one among 15 million Indian porn blogs and Websites; Savitabhabhi.com, BollywoodHardcore.net, IndianPornTube.net, IndianAngels.net, IndianSeduction.com and SanskritPorn.com are some others.
A recent survey shows that Indians contribute most of the traffic to these porn Websites. Take for example, Debonairblog.com. A random survey shows that around 0.2% of global Internet users browsed through this site daily, and 68.8% of this traffic came from India. Before it was banned (see below), Savitabhabhi.com got about 60 million visitors every month with 70% of the traffic originating from India. On average, the visitors spent 10 minutes on the site.
All these sites feature hardcore porn videos, movies, and animated comic strips. Many are written in Indian languages and feature the kind of storylines below:
Story 1 My Girlfriend’s Virgin Pussy1
I kept my cock on her pussy entrance and tried to push it in. Her hole was wet but very tight. I knew that I will pain her a lot first time so I took her lips in my mouth and started kissing her and put my cock on her entrance and gave a hard push, my cock was in pain and I can also feel her pain as she bit my lips while kissing, I continued kissing her and also pressed her boobs and she was relaxed after that then I slowly pushed my cock in her pussy and started movement of too [sic] and fro, her eyes were wet with tears.
Story 2 (Hindi story) Riya Ki Seal Tori (The Breaking of Riya’s Seal)
Kosis ki wo phisal ke bahar aagaya fir maine dubara dalla aur mera lund ka agala hisa uski choot mein ghus gaya aur wo dard se chila rahi please gaurav jaldi nikalo nahi toh mein maar jauge. Aur uski choot se khoon nikalne laga meine apna lund nahi nikala aur mae uske hotho ko chusne laga. (I put my penis into her anus and she started screaming with pain, please Gaurav, pull it out or I will die. She started bleeding but I did not pull out and started sucking her lips.)
Story 3 Savita is the Best Secretary Mishraji Has
Savita has taken up a job and is fucking the boss, Mishraji, to get a promotion. Before every intercourse she insists on giving a full blowjob to her boss who insists on coming in her mouth. Then he usually pulls her by her long hair and fucks her in the ‘bitch’ position.
On all of the sites, forceful sex with infliction of pain on the girl or woman is the norm. Her hair is pulled, her nipples are pinched, she is penetrated any-which way – into her mouth, anus or vagina – sometimes simultaneously. Verbal abuse is showered on her by the man (or men) as they penetrate her. Subjugation and humiliation of girls and women are depicted repeatedly. In fact, some sites blatantly advertise the abuse of girls as their drawcard and openly call themselves, for example, Galleries.exploitedindiangirls.com.
In June 2009, using the 2000 Information Technology Act,2 the Indian Government banned porn cartoons featuring the Internet porn star Savita Bhabhi as a result of a complaint received from a women’s group in Maharashtra who used the Protection Against Sexual Harassment of Women Bill (2005) as the basis of their complaint.3 But the Government has been unable to rein in the growing pornography industry in India
with new sites mushrooming daily. In 2010, India alarmingly moved into 2nd position of Internet porn users in the world, from 5th in 2005.4
A search of the Alexa list of the Top 100 Websites of India on the ‘Web, Advertising and Technology Blog’ (WATBlog.com) in April, 2011, revealed that Websites like Rapidshare and MegaUpload which have links to download porn clips, are the 11th and 16th most popular Websites in India. Also ranked in the Top 100 are: at 21, Xboard – a huge majority of its user activity (90%+) comes from its Masala Videos section; 25, MasalaTalk – a forum similar to Xboard; 37, MegaShare; 41, FreeSexyIndians; 47, DaDesiForum; 74, IndianSexStories; 83, AdultFriendFinder; 92, DesiTorrents – nearly 90% of this site’s activity is seen in the porn video section; 96, Masala4India; and at 99, ChitChatters. At number 14, DebonairBlog is perhaps the most popular blog in the country. States like Rajasthan, Delhi, Kerala and Maharashtra top the list of Internet porn users.5 Already in 2007, WATBlogger Ekalavya Bhattacharya proclaimed: “Boasting of nearly 50 million online users, India will surely be a porn capital in the online world to come” (Bhattacharya, 2007).
Not satisfied with capturing the Internet market, the porn industry has also begun to target the mobile phone market. Rohit Srivastawa, founder of clubhack, claims that 13% of Indians sent or received X-rated material on the phone. Forty per cent of default Websites available at present on mobile phone browsers directly or indirectly take users to porn sites (in Tejaswi, 2011). Service providers are currently in the process of cultivating an appetite for pornography among very young customers so they can reap the benefits later (Tejaswi, 2011). Agreements and business contracts between telecommunication operators with porn portals and porn content providers are generating large profits in the USA and Europe. Playboy licenses pictures and content to mobile phones in Europe, while in France telecom operator Orange provides porn video clips on mobile phones from their wireless portal.
Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry Page 36