not all art is safe for all viewers. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Video link leads to the stage performance video of Shia LeBouff by Rob Cantor. Contains simulated, stylistic violence and references to same]
Media Flagging and Filtering is a never-ending job. What's "okay" for one culture is scandalously salacious for another. Even the face can be offensive if that face belongs to a certain gender[1]. There's a lot of churn in the "exposed skin" department.
This one had reached The Theatre. It was a relatively open forum where a multiple number of eyes and minds viewing with their digits paused over so many toggle switches. So far, the media currently in question had reached the level of being safe[2] for average citizens of the Alliance, after passing through safe for all levels of Deathworlder. The theatre invited the kind of people who kept complaining about the classifications to devote their time to making the archives safe for all viewers. The current guidelines alone cause many to turn around on the spot.
This one piece of audio-visual art has been under contention for some time. Exposed skin isn't even half of it. There's the liminal unnatural nature of the stage in an empty theatre. There are spooky children singing in a choir. There are thousand-mile stares into nothingness, but also directly at the viewer. Then there's the content, the actual words and the story that comes with the wrapping.
"You're walking in the woods. There's no-one around and your phone is dead..." A stylistic horror scenario with, an uninitiated viewer might assume, a famous figure as a villain. It hit all the horror tropes up to and including assumed death. It featured dancers wearing gigantic polygonal heads that were the effigy of the titular man. It featured red streamers and confetti in lieu of actual blood.
Of course, it featured Humans moving their bodies in ways that Humans were not expected to move. It hit a lot of buttons. It was disturbing in ways that would be difficult to isolate from each other.
Humans could, had, and would create media that would be classified as "safe" by all metrics, and yet would creep every single viewer out. Nothing in there could be isolated as offense, but put together... Only Humans could obey every rule and break them at the exact same time.
Even those prone to complaining didn't know exactly what they could complain about.
That was when Classifyer Ghen invented a new tag. Human-grade malicious compliance. It matched well with technically correct and practically disturbing.
It was reviewed, defined, debated, refined, and finally adopted. Of all their benefits and flaws, Humanity as a whole could be downright vindictive when forced to follow the letter of the law.
There was no actual violence portrayed. It was clear that the entire video was a performance. There was no malicious intent as the man portrayed on stage with giant heads gave the performance a standing ovation at the end. There was no death, real or imagined. There were no injuries. There was no blood. In all other ways, it should have been Havenworlder safe up to Level Three.
'Should', alas, is not 'is'.
The art piece was the first with the new classification and warning tag. It quickly came to dominate all the weirdest corners of Human Entertainment.
[1] Or who identifies as that gender, or "reads" as that gender with a high enough offensensitivity threshold. Where that border is constantly changes and there are no winners in the eternal battle.
[2] "Safe" meaning, not causing harm in the viewing. "Safe" generally means, "safe, but read the extant warnings to make sure it's safe for you, personally".
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / andreykuzmin]
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