Related to PG due to normalization of pedophilia in movies
http://archive.is/Uu8dM#selection-453.17-453.96
BERLIN, February 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A sci-fi movie portraying a sexual relationship between a man and a robot that replicates his lost 10-year-old daughter has prompted walkouts and outrage at its screenings at the Berlin film festival.
The film, titled The Trouble with Being Born and directed by Austrian Sandra Wollner, stirred controversy at its February 25 world premiere at Berlinale 2020, reported the U.K. Independent.
It depicts a child-like android, played by 10-year-old Lena Watson (a pseudonym), who calls her owner “Daddy.”
While much is implied, the movie 'leaves little doubt that the man ... has a sexual relationship with the child robot,' the Independent reports.
The movie also includes multiple CGI nude scenes.
The film evoked disgust on Twitter, with one person calling it “paedophile propaganda,” the Independent reported.
That was echoed by FilmGoblin in a review entitled “Pedophilia gets mainstream nod in The Trouble with Being Born.”
“Who are these people actually kidding?” notes the review.
“Let’s not pretend that this isn’t about mainstreaming the last sexual perversion — other than bestiality — that isn’t socially acceptable,” it adds. “And there’s no argument to be made in defense of the existence of this film by using the ‘Lolita’ defense, or even the ‘well it’s just a robot’ defense.”
Wollner told the Hollywood Reporter, which described the film as a “hidden gem,” that the role was originally intended for a 20-year-old.
However, she decided to cast a child after removing some more explicit elements in the script.
“What I found interesting about it is that we have an android whose only desires are the ones you program it to have,” she said. “I found it fascinating to show the perspective of the world through this machine that does not judge and does not care, and doesn’t need the meanings that we do.”
Wollner added that she was initially “scared” about choosing a child for the part and said that when she was casting for the role, she looked for a minor who came from a “healthy environment.”
It was also necessary that the child come from “the sort of open-minded family who would understand the story they wanted to tell and also allow them to do it,” noted The Hollywood Reporter.
In the end, Wollner found Watson because her parents were known by a friend of a friend.
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-the-trouble-with-being-born-is-a-chilly-rumination-on-memory/
An android whose deep black eyes and waxily smooth skin—evoking the eerie expressionlessness of Christiane’s face mask in Eyes Without a Face—are the very definition of the Uncanny Valley, Elli was built to replicate the father’s daughter, who disappeared 10 years before.
…"Wollner continues to fill her film with too little story...."
That problem becomes more acute once Elli runs away and the story shifts to another android-human relationship. After Elli is picked up by a passing motorist (Simon Hatzl) who then gifts her like a new toy to his elderly mother (Ingrid Burkhard), still mourning the little brother she lost 60 years before. The ease with which Elli is made into a boy—in the world of the film, reprogramming androids is about as complicated as restarting a smartphone—stands in stark contrast to the violent trauma of abuse that still lingers like a ghost in her flickeringly sentient CPU. But while the setting and the primary human character changes in the second half of the film, Wollner’s narrow view of her story means just more of the same glassy expressions and long maundering silences, like Tarkovsky without the existential pain. At some point, the mirroring begins to feel more like straight repetition without any significant revelation.
In the end, The Trouble with Being Born suffers from the same issue as its moody androids: enervation borne out of repetition. There are some attempts here and there to comment on the replacement of human connection with silicone facsimiles. We almost never see people together.
But rather than truly exploring the ramifications of its futuristic conceit, whether from a broader societal or individualistic and relational perspective, the film just keeps looping back to the same luminously filmed but ultimately blank silences.
Presumably in no small part due Sandra Wollner's error in believing "it fascinating to show the perspective of the world through this machine that does not judge and does not care, and doesn’t need the meanings that we do.”
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MaxBlock50 ago
In the near future we'll likely have realistic sex bots. What do we do when people order sex bots that appear 10 years old? Should that be illegal?
kestrel9 ago
Child sex dolls are already available in the world but not legal to be imported into some countries. I would ask if people would care if someone made it look like their dead 10 year that they were molesting. Is that where society is at, no one gives a shit what degenerate people do. Then society is no better than mindless programmed bots.
MaxBlock50 ago
Giving a shit and making it illegal can be 2 different things. If an act or item can be illegal without a damaged party, then anything can be made illegal.
Vindicator ago
Child sex robots are damaging to all children, because they feed the perverted addictions of pedophiles, increasing the demand for child pornography that harms real children.
kestrel9 ago
^^That is why it's illegal to import them in some countries, because while they don't legislate what a pedo feels, they still care enough about the children to recognize the broader societal consequences of CP in all forms and enabling the behavior/addictions. (Although in the UK that's a bit problematic and untrue considering their record of protecting elite pedos/murderers)
Otto- ago
Similar for regulations around viewing CP, or "simulations" of CP, like cartoons, CG, comics. It's illegal in some countries to "obtain" or store them as polaroids or files, in other countries by viewing or searching terms, and it's largely ambiguous/unspecified in the rest of countries. I know the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy, but this is one case where it seems pretty pressing; the more people opt for realistic depictions of child abuse via literature, drawings, computer animations, physical models, interactivity, AI, the more degraded and pertinent the lines of the crime become, and so the obligations to regulate it.
Honestly, thinking about the extent to which people increasingly simulate things in their reality, the more my mind implodes with distorted frustration & confusion. I'm finding it harder to comprehend now, like I'm from an older generation despite being from the 90s.
kestrel9 ago
Great comment thank you.
In the US the simulations and cartoon depictions of CP, rape, gang rape, sex trafficking, are not regulated. That's why parts of Voat have it and there are people here who have no issues sexting each other over this shit. (I reported it but never went back to see if anything became of it). There comes a point where people need to wake up from their wicked ways, there's no law to babysit them into doing the right thing by condemning the sexual exploitation of kids, even in forms that they don't believe "hurt anyone". This includes trans movement and Drag Queens.
Angelis_Solaris ago
There are laws against what they are doing, but they haven't been enforced in many years. Pornographic depictions are not protected under the Bill of Rights or the Constitution of the United States and were illegal in the founding era. These people are outside of the law and justly belong in prison.
kestrel9 ago
Here's some info on the laws in various countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_drawn_pornography_depicting_minors
US laws are not quite cut and dry.
There was this case though:
I'm not sure if that covers anime cp. In New Zealand a man was arrested for having pixie porn (not human depictions). http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8577037/Man-sent-to-jail-for-watching-pixie-sex
One can see that the subject is problematic, we don't want 'thought crimes'.
The subject is further complicated by the problem of cp with real individuals that runs rampant throughout the world, sex tourism, child prostitution (all illegal) and which loli cp porn advocates point out when justifying what they consider a legal and victimless form of sexual depictions. So the issue speaks to that of a degenerate culture, we see the sexualizing of children through the media and commercialism, through transgender movement/drag kids fad.. all legal and all public and in our faces. Kids toys have babies dressed like hookers, dolls that appear like dead sexualized zombies, all legal for children to buy and play with. So as much as the loli rape porn on voat bothers me, it's hidden behind the NSFW setting, it's hidden within subs, (until trolls used it to attack QRV sub, that's how I found out about it). It's up to the Voat management to make that call on a this free speech site.
@puttitout
Angelis_Solaris ago
"But for the purposes of law it is probably important to distinguish between these because convicting someone for their moral views is very dangerous."
This is absurd. No one is being convicted for their "moral views." They're being convicted for their actions and behaviors, i.e. distributing cartoon cp and creating cartoon cp. Someone with such moral views should not be on the streets, as they are compromised, but it's their actions and behaviors that are punishable.