Adult Films

[cagedwisdom]

When I tried to add Italian Stallion a while back Criticker told me that adult films were not permitted into the database (I've also seen this information at the bottom of the page for adding new films afterwards). This has been nagging in the back of my mind for some time, because I know of certain other films that were added to the database earlier than this (I'm thinking before the layout change, which might be around the time this policy was implemented..) that IMDb would clearly classify as adult.

My question is, why the change in policy? I'm a bit curious about this.. IMDb permits adult films, it just has a filter that is by default set not to show them. Why couldn't Criticker do this as well? There are several adult films that I would very much like to have expressed my opinion about on Criticker (Italian Stallion being one of them), and I can't really see why they can't be added to the database, so long as Criticker itself doesn't contain any of the adult material.

Criticker has quite a lot of films in its database that are borderline pornographic anyway, which are added without question as far as I can tell.. I'm just curious as to where the line is drawn and why.

[mpowell]

Our current policy is that anything that IMDB has classified as an Adult Film doesn't get added to Criticker. I agree that a lot of the films in Criticker probably should fall into the Adult category, but as with so many judgment calls, it's useful to have a line in the sand. IMDB's Adult category serves as our line in the sand, even if a few things improperly classified. We don't have the resources to make case-by-case judgments.

Whether Criticker one day expands to Adult films... that's another question We've thought about it, and could definitely see it happening, but for right now, we would rather leave it alone.

[iceblox]

I like Criticker the way it is - family friendly. I haven't seen anything here yet, which suggests otherwise - the reason I invited my two nieces to join Criticker the other day. I wouldn't be comfortable inviting any of my family members or friends here, or even using it myself, if Criticker is going to be flooded with movies like "Chicks with Dicks Part 23".

[cagedwisdom]

Yeah, I can totally agree with that. On the other hand there are some adult films that warrant a mention simply because they are good filmmaking (as in, they're made for the purpose of making an actual film rather than just the pornographic aspect of it). It just seems a shame that these can't be included. I can see that it would be very difficult to draw a line though, because some adult films just wouldn't have a place here at all.

As I said though, IMDb successfully makes adult films fairly inaccessible unless you're specifically looking for them. You wouldn't be uncomfortable showing your nieces IMDb, right? And again, Criticker wouldn't really be carrying any adult content itself.. Perhaps films with names of a certain level of vulgarity should be excluded or something.. Dunno. Just try to open this subject for debate to see if other people as well feel that some adult films have a place here. If everyone disagrees with me, that's fine.

[iceblox]

iMDB is a big fat database of all things movie-related, while Criticker isn't that. In iMDB, it would be fairly difficult to come across adult movies or performers, unless you are specifically looking for them (iMDB doesn't have any adult movies in any new/forthcoming lists, at least AFAIK). But Criticker is more open about it's movie content - you have your daily added movies RSS feed (if an adult movie is newly added, wouldn't it show up in the list too?), and more over you have people's movie rankings openly accessible. You may be innocently browsing through someone's movie rankings when you may stumble upon a few adult movies he/she has ranked. Here a person has been exposed to those adult movies, even though he/she wasn't looking for them. That's not fair.

If a ton of restrictions/filters can be put in place, which would filter out all the porn content, then I guess it's OK, but is it really worth all the hassle? I mean, I am certainly not looking for adult film "recommendations" when using Criticker, nor am I looking to see if someone else has watched the same porn movies as me. If there are some adult films which are more of actual movies, than the pornographic content in them, then I am sure there are only a handful of them, and can be added on a case-to-case basis, if at all needed.

Otherwise, let's keep this site clean.

[MmzHrrdb]

I've been looking for this thread for ages and have been wondering the real reason why adult films aren't allowed on here, so it's good that I now know. This is what I think on the issue.

Why adult films aren't allowed on this website is totally understandable. I don't personally believe Criticker is a family-friendly website nor do I think it's a "say whatever you want about anything and do whatever" website. Want to know why? Because those websites just plain suck. The first reason why I don't believe straight adult films (no, I'm not saying only hetero porn should be excluded I mean movies which are 100% pornographic with no artistic resonance or reason for showing porn other than to arouse the viewer) should be allowed on here is because the film title is likely to be explicit as most porn titles are and probably not suitable for people who can't handle the sort of stuff. Take the film image for example; what image related to an adult film could possibly suffice that isn't a pornographic image? What, the set up at the start of the movie? I think that if there's going to be any images of a hardcore adult film on the internet it's not going to be of the set up. The mini-reviews that users could give the films could also be 18+ and unsuitable for anyone sensitive to that kind of stuff. I'm not going to go into detail about the kind of stuff that someone might post in their mini-review of such a movie, I'm going to leave that up to one's imagination.

Another reason why porn shouldn't be on here is because I don't really see that big a point of critically analyzing porn. Pornography is the only genre in the film industry which can get away with having no artistic values or reason for existing other than to arouse. And on a website like this in which movies are actually taken seriously by movie-lovers, it just wouldn't fit in. Maybe this is okay on a website like IMDb where no explicit images are ever shown and comments are moderated somewhat strictly before being submitted, but on Criticker it wouldn't work. But why would anyone want to get recommendations on new porn titles? Porn is porn. It should not be taken seriously.

HOWEVER, in my defense of movies given "Adult" tags on IMDb; if a movie, any movie, was created with artistic or expressionistic intentions, however subtle or apparent it is in the movie, it does not matter a single bit about any of the content displayed in the movie. The only reason censorship should exist is to protect young children. There are other exceptions outside the porn industry without these intentions but I guess that's irrelevant. Unfortunately for us, IMDb is stupid enough to tag most movies with sexually explicit material "Adult" whether it is artistically justified or not, and that's just wrong. And I also think this is where Criticker needs to draw itself a line.

I think that if there are any movies tagged "Adult" by IMDb which a user here believes to have artistic resonance in any way shape or form, they should be posted here and considered whether it should be deemed submittable. With the exception of "Porno Holocaust" and "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead", I am currently unaware of any films of this nature because if I was you would have heard from me a long time ago since I think it would be a crime to not include such a film on here, but if there are any that fit this description then I think they should be considered in this thread.

[cagedwisdom]

Alice in Wonderland: The X-Rated Comedy Musical certainly has more artistic vision than, frankly, many Hollywood blockbusters from the 70s. A lot or adult films from the 70s are quite good, hadn't it been for the fact that not a single worthwhile adult film has been made since the mid 80s the genre would probably hold much more respect. You don't come across adult films that serve any purpose any more, so it's understandable that Criticker has reached this decision. It's a shame though, because while Alice is luckily on this website it won't let me add the early softcore Sly Stallone flick Italian Stallion (originally "Party at Kitty and Stud's" or something, I think. Renamed after his latter success.), and that film is truly memorable for it's depths of unintentional hilarity.

[lostinlodos]

Another thing to remember in this discussion is that there is a 20-30 year span in film that the "conservative" mindset is to consider "adult" and the "liberal" mindset considers "just film with sexuality". And it covers every country. Not that I agree with either.
Think:
USA/UK: The Chambers films, the BBB films, the Poppi films, and an entire 35 years of "blue" films.
Japan: The Scorpion films, the Female Yakuza films, Prison Island films....
Italy: hundreds,of films from 1970-1990, in horror, drama, romance,
Brazil: thousands of "B-grade" and "Z-grade" horror films from 1975-today.
The list just goes on and on. Many get an adult tag (or mistag) yet they've even received mainstream awards.

Rather than censor, I believe the "adult" tag should be allowed, allotted, and hidden-away in preferences. Your line, as it is currently drawn, eliminates many, many scores of award-winning films based on one IMDB user's statement of their idea of adult.

[Yomama3]

you should change it back to before. I don't see what was the problem. they are added linked to the adult IMDB title and then just keep the adult titles option in profile. I don't see how this is any better? This was one of the few additional features your site had.

[Dorkovsky]

are they getting removed or is it a weird glitch? i noticed the database lost a good chunk of films and it seems to just be adult films. the filter is still there but when you use it it just shows 0 results?