It's a pity, really, that a film with a subject and context like this will probably never be a massive or significant hit. The subject matter is rather important, after all, and far more likely to impinge directly on average peoples' lives than international terrorists, asteroids or genetically-modified killer spiders.
Because this stuff really happens, and not just the once. Here in the UK, the miserable photo-counter twerp picked the wrong person to cry wolf about - she was a major, and pretty universally well-liked, TV presenter. The newspapers had the sense not to spin the story as if there was anything in the accusation, and the TV woman had the finances and personality to go after all the idiots involved with claws out. The photo developer lost a mass of custom, the twerp lost her job, and the police learned to be very careful about doing anything similar again.
Child pornography exists - or so we are told: I've not seen any - but there has to be a difference between kids playing in minimal clothing and actual porn. And even if there are people who would be turned on by those innocent images, that doesn't make the images themselves depraved. Nor should the onus be placed on the rest of us to avoid creating or viewing such images - unless we want to *make* them pornographic in the process. Lewdness is in the eye of the beholder. If someone regards a photograph of an unclothed prepubescent child as ipso facto pornographic, then the problem probably lies with that person. People with non-pathological sexual proclivities are not supposed to find naked children sexually charged, any more than the majority would see sexuality in the object of any other fetishist's fixation.
I thought the film did a good job of showing the key factors and events - especially the awfulness of a normal, law-abiding person having the System suddenly turn against them in such a terrible way, accusing them of being society's most abhorred form of pervert. Having heard of several similar events over recent years, it brought home the horrible reality rather well. I don't know if others find this easier to imagine: I don't have kids, and don't like them very much. The film showed well the horror of a situation in which the apparatus of the State stops helping you protect your loved ones, and begins protecting them from you - unjustly and badly.
CD
Because this stuff really happens, and not just the once. Here in the UK, the miserable photo-counter twerp picked the wrong person to cry wolf about - she was a major, and pretty universally well-liked, TV presenter. The newspapers had the sense not to spin the story as if there was anything in the accusation, and the TV woman had the finances and personality to go after all the idiots involved with claws out. The photo developer lost a mass of custom, the twerp lost her job, and the police learned to be very careful about doing anything similar again.
Child pornography exists - or so we are told: I've not seen any - but there has to be a difference between kids playing in minimal clothing and actual porn. And even if there are people who would be turned on by those innocent images, that doesn't make the images themselves depraved. Nor should the onus be placed on the rest of us to avoid creating or viewing such images - unless we want to *make* them pornographic in the process. Lewdness is in the eye of the beholder. If someone regards a photograph of an unclothed prepubescent child as ipso facto pornographic, then the problem probably lies with that person. People with non-pathological sexual proclivities are not supposed to find naked children sexually charged, any more than the majority would see sexuality in the object of any other fetishist's fixation.
I thought the film did a good job of showing the key factors and events - especially the awfulness of a normal, law-abiding person having the System suddenly turn against them in such a terrible way, accusing them of being society's most abhorred form of pervert. Having heard of several similar events over recent years, it brought home the horrible reality rather well. I don't know if others find this easier to imagine: I don't have kids, and don't like them very much. The film showed well the horror of a situation in which the apparatus of the State stops helping you protect your loved ones, and begins protecting them from you - unjustly and badly.
CD