‘Desire’ Director Responds to Child Pornography Criticism… Wait, What?

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Sometimes, you scroll through your Twitter feed on an innocent Saturday morning, a coffee to your side, Hulu’s re-run of WWE’s NXT playing in the background, and you come across something like this:

It makes you want to go ahead and call it a day. “Maybe that’s enough internet for me,” you think while debating on whether or not you want to click the link right before you click the link. Of course you click the link.

Desire, a 2017 Argentinian erotic thriller by Diego Kaplan, skirts the line on what is okay and what isn’t. Many would argue that he went far past the line.

The scene in question involves a young girl riding like a cowboy on a pillow, masturbating in the process.

That’s a whole hell of a lot to take in when referencing children.

Diego Kaplan defended his decision:

“‘Despair’ is a film. When we see a shark eating a woman on film, no one thinks the woman really died or that the shark was real. We work in a world of fiction; and, for me, before being a director comes being a father.

“Of course this scene was filmed using a trick, which was that the girls were copying a cowboy scene from a film by John Ford. The girls never understood what they were doing, they were just copying what they were seeing on the screen. No adult interacted with the girls, other than the child acting coach. Everything was done under the careful surveillance of the girls’ mothers. Because I knew this scene might cause some controversy at some point, there is ‘Making Of’ footage of the filming of the entire scene.

“Everything works inside the spectators’ heads, and how you think this scene was filmed will depend on your level of depravity.”

I’m sort of torn on the whole issue, if I’m being frank, and perhaps that isn’t the best way to feel about it. I’m generally okay with things that make me uncomfortable. Two of my favorite filmmakers are Gaspar Noe and Lars von Trier, for God’s sake. Certain There were times in Nymphomaniac and Blue is the Warmest Color where I didn’t know if I was watching girls of the correct age, though I quickly fired up Google to make sure. The filmmakers were looking for a desired effect and obtained it. I like giving them artistic freedom to challenge the viewer.

But this instance just felt wrong. Releasing a statement to defend your child masturbation scene is a bad look. Having children mimic sexual acts, even if it is unbeknownst to them, is still taking advantage of them. Having their parents there, watching, supervising, almost makes me even more uncomfortable with it, as if the paycheck is more important than the blissful ignorance that serve children so well as a shield from the world and its terrors.

Still, having said that, I don’t really blame Netflix in this instance, though I’m likely in the minority. I loathe censorship with every fiber if my being, and I feel that people should make their own decisions on the merits of the film as long as the subject matter isn’t outright child porno. I even agree that my opinions clash in such a way that can be described as hypocritical, but that’s where I stand on Desire.

If you want to read a good article on the history of child pornography in art house/foreign films, this is a good place to start.

Now, if the world doesn’t mind, I’m going back to my coffee and rasslin.