Uproar over Creative Scotland's funding for hardcore porn film Rein highlights hypocrisy in attitudes towards sex and violence – Kate Copstick

As a society, we roar on boxers as they cause serious injuries and sometimes death to one another, but get our moral knickers in a massive twist over depictions of sex

It is difficult to look at social media recently without reading more breathless accolades for Richard Gadd's Netflix show Baby Reindeer. Fifty million viewers globally. Generally, as the praise is heaped, terms like PTSD, “traumatising”, “terrifying” and “devastating” are also used. Deep dark, visceral feelings are being aroused in viewers by this extraordinary piece of television. And, I imagine, bright shiny prizes will be won for it.

The ability to stimulate such feelings in an audience is a powerful thing. We are, I suspect, fond of our basic instincts, the powerful, deep-rooted sensations that can be triggered by fear, by horror, by anger… even by comedy when it makes you laugh uncontrollably without knowing why. We are socially conditioned to be a bit ashamed of most of them, but they are there. And we all seek out our triggers in our own way.

Earlier this month, viewers – live and on television – roared their urgings for their choices to go faster and then watched two horses die on the Grand National course. Not an unusual occurrence, of course, as 65 thoroughbreds have now been killed here since 2000. And 200 die on racecourses nationally, each year.

Injury and death the rum in your cola

But the racing arouses huge excitement in its fans. Look at the faces in the crowds at the tracks. They want more, faster and they do not care that racing is the only place that it is still legal to whip an animal. Real pain. Real death.

As with most contact sports, watching actual injury and death is an accepted – even exciting – part of the experience. The jeopardy involved is, one can only assume, like the shot of rum in your cola.

As with most contact sports, watching actual injury is an accepted – even exciting – part of the experience

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Early in February this year, Kazuki Anaguchi, a 23-year-old Japanese boxer, died after suffering a subdural hematoma in a match in Tokyo. In the ten-round bantamweight fight, Anaguchi was, according to accounts, punched to the ground four times. Watched by a roaring crowd. I have seen how boxing – and pretty much all contact sports – arouses something close to bloodlust in the crowds it attracts.

According to one fan I know, you have to see it live, “you've got to smell it”. Well, different strokes for different folks. Which reminds me: Year on year, 49.8 per cent of boxers suffer significant injury in the ring, most of them head injuries, while the crowds are roused to fever pitch.

Now I do have a point here, and I am getting to it. But we are The Scotsman, and so I have to contextualise what might otherwise sound like an unacceptable defence of rudery of the rudest ilk. It strikes me as unfair going on utterly unacceptable, that all manner of 'performance' which arouses all manner of dubious, violent and atavistic feelings is deemed wholly acceptable and yet anything which gives one positive feelings of a below the waist nature is not.

‘Unsimulated sex acts’

How can devastating trauma, cruelty, real injury and real death be more acceptable than two consenting, professional performers playing Mr Happy Hides His Helmet? In January, Creative Scotland gave Glasgow-based director Leonie Rae Gasson £84,000 of Lottery funding for her video installation, called Rein. The 45-minute, moving-image installation was described as a “pro-sex, pro-sex work/er” project that “immerses audiences in a raucous communal exploration of dyke sexuality”.

I am not entirely sure what that leads me to expect from my experience. To be honest, it doesn't exactly sound like a bundle of fun. But that is not the point. Creative Scotland were happy initially, as... “we support freedom of expression and artists being able to push the boundaries of radical performance”.

But last month it was announced that the grant was being revoked and Creative Scotland said the artist behind the project, had not made clear the work would feature “unsimulated sex acts”.

So because participants onscreen dance the GirlyTouchyFeelyTango for real, instead of depicting it through the medium of concussing each other while running around a field – statistics on concussions in all versions of football are quite hair-raising, but still the 'Beautiful Game' is loved – the funding was withdrawn and Creative Scotland is in the process of trying to claw it back.

The real obscenity

Everyone from the Scottish Government's Culture Committee to campaign group For Women Scotland have their moral knickers in a massive simulated twist because some women were going to be seen having a rummage in each other's undies. We, as a society, have a twisted, hypocritical relationship with the horizontal hokey-cokey.

“An image is ‘pornographic’ if it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal,” says the law. And that means all manner of restrictions. Among which is the legal prohibition on individuals sharing such material with others, even if they are not selling it for profit.

Now I am not suggesting that we do not need to regulate the ins and outs of the industry. As it were. But have a quick look online and see the cruel cornucopia of injury and disaster you can enjoy. Massive race crashes, bones breaking, falls, knock-outs, all offered up as 'highlights' for your viewing.

In the Obscene Publications Act back in 1959, the original definition of obscenity was anything which tended to “deprave or corrupt”. I might just be a morally lax Boomer, but I believe that an appetite for violence is infinitely more depraved than for that which Mrs Patrick Campbell described as “the hurly burly of the chaise longue”.