Cinematographic Ethics Within the Autonomy of Art: Empathy With Pedophilia in Cinema

Introduction

In cinema, where the main stream is still determinent, the classical narrative mostly preserves its codes from the earlier stages. It cannot be said that it is on the same grounds contentwise. The spectacles the cinema presents concerning objective decentness, rightness and goodness while telling stories by means of moving images, have become prominent in such a way that the objectivities of the words are ignored. The narratives that are built around simple arguments like the defeat of evil, wrong and ugly and the win of good, right and beautiful have undergone a change comparatively in the course of time. With examples of world cinema, mainly European, that are positioned outside Film Noir and Hollywood, good-bad, right-wrong, beautiful-ugly adversities have begun cohering gradually being no longer a contrast. The films in which bad characters are not solely bad, where their acts are justified are no longer extreme examples nowadays. Bringing to the fore bad characters, which can be considered as radical examples for adult-oriented mainstream films of the 20th century, and moreover the possibility of empathizing with them can even be seen gradually in 21st century in the films targeting youths and even children.

At this point, how cinema approaches or should approach pedophilia, which, in 21st century, has become prominent with ever-increasing incidences reported and discussed, which causes large-scale reactions and agitations from place to place attracts attention as an extreme example. It can be seen that the pedophilia, apart from the argument whether it is a disease or not, is made malicious by being characterized as perversion and has no positive connotations and is even demonized. That the global reactions to actions including sexual harassments and assaults directed at children involve demands for castration and death sentence shows that pedophilia has a malicious reception beyond the other evils. Accordingly, handling pedophilia in art and particularly in cinema due to its power is expectant of much more sensibility. It can be said that pedophilia, which mostly in films is almost demonized by being matched with absolute evilness, is recently being represented with more diversity. There exists films, which handles, discusses and criticizes the topic from its sensitiveness, and ones that mentions it by using it only as a motif. Moreover, in recent years, apart from works that treats pedophilia as a central theme, works, which handle pedophilic individuals and even provide for representations, which shows effort to have the audience empathize with them are being produced.

The Woodsman, directed by Nicole Kassell in 2004, is a film in which a pedophile is chosen as a main character and the whole storyline is focused on this topic. Little Children, directed by Todd Field in 2006, treats problem of pedophilia as a frame of the plot, while at the same time portraying as a side character, the pedophile who caused the trouble. In Nymphomaniac, Vol.2, directed by Lars Von Trier in 2013, there is an extensive scene in which empathy toward a pedophilic character is achieved. Within the scope of the study, through analysis of the mentioned three works, the directors’ choice of representations in the films for pedophiles, who are regarded as evil and satanic in terms of ethics almost everywhere in the world, and their assesment of pedophilia towards which exists a globally same bad perception will be discussed and evaluated. For the purpose of a philosophical framework, the study will advance with Kant’s definitions of evil. Later on the concepts of morality, ethics and empathy will be processed together with pedophilia and emphasis will be put on whether the films in question provide an opportunity or not for collective reception with the autonomy of art concurrently and whether, accordingly, they have visual and audial propositions or not will be discussed. In general, in this study, within the scope of autonomy of art, by means of the example of pedophilia, opinions will be expressed on whether cinematographic ethics is possible or not.