A national campaign of aggressive idiocy (See No Evil - David Kerekes, David Slater)

Member Name: maz

Product:	See No Evil - David Kerekes, David Slater
Date:	19/12/00 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The last word on this topic

Disadvantages: The reviews make heavy reading by themselves

The British fan press has seen the release of a number of accounts of the video nasty furore in the past few years, ranging from gorgeously packaged celebrations of nasty cover art (Salvation’s ‘The Art of the Nasty’) to John Gullidge’s ‘Seduction of the Gullible’. This, the latest from Headpress publishing outfit Critical Vision, is likely to be the last word on the subject, being an exhaustive study of each of the films to have been listed on the DPP’s notorious ‘nasty’ list. Or at least I hope it’s the last word. Most of the films caught up in the scandal appear to have been shoddy in the extreme, and certainly don’t deserve the attention drawn to them since – a point made by Kerekes and Slater, if disingenuously, considering the nature of the book.

The alphabetically arranged synopses and critiques of the films themselves make up the bulk of the book and work well from a reference point of view even if they’d make for heavy-going reading by themselves. That’s not to say that they aren’t well-written: they’re the most entertaining reviews I’ve seen of most of these films, offering insight into why they fell foul of the law and details of how they’ve fared since – but over 200 pages of them will make all but the most hardened fan blanch at reading them through.

Thankfully, the reviews are put in context by opening a brief history of the video industry and the events leading up to the Video Recordings Act of 1985 and closing with an account of the ‘nasty’ market and related events since the clampdown, including lengthy defences of the material under attack. While the authors convincingly make the point that the mass media itself – and most particularly tabloid newspapers – appear to be far more responsible for ‘copycat’ crimes than are violent films, their reiteration of this point and focus on prot
racted examples of censorious asininity perversely seem to weaken their argument. The facts in themselves are enough to make the censors seem ridiculous – the defensive editorial tone indulged particularly in the latter part of the book smacks at times of desperation. But maybe this is simply due to having come across so many examples of cynical scare-mongering on the part of careerist politicians and a sales-hungry media coupled with massive and enduring stupidity on the part of the British public – enough to make anyone sound desperate.

More on the broader political ramifications of censorship in the UK would have been welcome, although arguably a distraction from the principal focus of the book. Kerekes and Slater stay on track admirably well, in fact – while other, similar books have been padded out with accounts of ‘near-nasties’, or ‘the ones the DPP missed’, here the focus is tight and the research exhaustive and up-to-date, covering the proposed David Alton amendment in all its deranged glory.

Where the book really comes into its own, though, is less in its accounts of the films and the VRA itself than with a chapter dealing with Britain’s burgeoning video piracy scene and its increasingly unsavoury characters. The chapter features a number of first-hand accounts which range from the hilarious to the downright terrifying - from dodgy geezers trading at car boot sales to misguided police stings – which provide a welcome change of editorial tone.

Kerekes and Slater, while being two of the original editors of Headpress (‘the journal of sex, religion, death’ – the third, David Flint, is featured here as victim of an unsuccessful police prosecution) – have also collaborated on a book about ‘snuff’ films, entitled ‘Killing For Culture’. This is a worthy successor, offering as it does far more scope for dry humour and personal accounts
than its predecessor, which offered rather a car-crash approach to enticing the reader. It’s also a better-designed book, and far better value. Creation books comes in at around £15, with shoddy reproductions, a dull design and boasting rarely more than 200 pages; this, by contrast, clocks over 400 pages (featured appendices include interviews with the directors of Screen Edge and Exploited among other exclusive material), is heavily illustrated and professionally designed. Its only substantial flaw is some shoddy proofreading, but this shouldn’t be enough to put you off. Paired with ‘The Art of the Nasty’, this is all you’ll ever need to know about video’s darkest hour …

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