ok, I know, it's a pretty sick idea but morbid curiosity and a sort of 'it can't really be as bad as people say it is' syndrome kicked in and I thought I'd find out for myself. I thought I would be watching something obviously staged which had an element of black humour to it (very sick black humour maybe but black humour none the less). What I actually watched was about 15 minutes before I turned it off not being able to watch any more, there are a few fights in there with 2 people fighting and a crowd baying them on, sometimes more people get involved, they were mainly just cut outs for the main stuff and although they were pretty sick we've all seen this sort of thing on the playground in our youth and most of the people involved in these fights looked more like frat boys trying to look big than 'bums' being forced to fight. Fair enough I didn't find that part of it funny but then I didn't find it offensive either (I've watched some fairly offensive films in my time and I'm not easily shocked) Now this is the bit that really (I mean really) turned my stomach. They drive down a road with somewhere around 50-100 people sleeping on the pavement, it seems this part of the film is meant to make the viewer realise that they're not dealing with human beings here but some lesser form of life which it's ok to treat like shit. They go up to a few of them and start spray painting their bedding or their clothes then in a section called Bum Hunter they actually wake these people up halfway through the night, tie them up, shine lights in their eyes, shout at them, mark a number of their face with a magic marker and then leave. That's pretty fucked up to start with to be honest but unfortunately that's only the lesser end of the depravity here. They start talking to a few bums, offering them money or whatever to do stupid things like walking into crates etc. One guy has bumfights tattooed on his forehead and gets paid a blowjob from a crackwhore, we know she's a crackwhore as it tells us on the screen. Pretty soon we're watching someone with tattoo all over his body (different guy) saying some pretty screwed up stuff into the camera and confessing to being mentally damaged from his time in the services at which point it seems we're supposed to laugh along with the cameraman. Moving on a few minutes we're watching a guy with some pretty obvious problems smoking crack in the street, a few minutes later the cameraman pisses in a beer bottle and gets a 'bum' to drink it. then we move on to a guy pulling his own teeth out with a pair of pliers and two 'bums' fighting resulting in a broken ankle (more laughter is expected from us it seems even though we're looking at a bone nearly pushing out from the skin). The film just looked like it was going to get worse from there on in and considering that my stomach was already churning I decided I'd best turn it off. Like I said I can handle a lot from films, I enjoyed Battle royale and hold it as one of my favourite films although it's use of violence amongst children is a bit over the top at times, Ichi the Killer was amusing in a twisted kind of way but also quite beautiful in places, Bum Fights is just disturbing, and the most disturbing thing about it is that people actually laugh at this stuff.
Saw a documentary about "Bumfights", and drew the conclusion that a) The bums were avaricious shits; they did anything for money, then complained and sued as soon as they realised they could get more. One of them got $20,000 in damages, and still lives on the street like a twat. b) In spite of the above, the guy who conceived the video is a total ****. You see him and he looks like one, you hear him speak and he sounds like one, and the more he says, the more appauled you are by his bizarre belief that he is somehow making something valid which will Really Make You Think.
well a lot of the 'bums' they were spray painting on etc. had a go at them because they had to go to work in those clothes, they didn't get violent and behaved like gentlemen considering they'd been assulted by a stranger in the middle of the night. There were only a few 'bums' who were actually doing stuff for money and they appeared to be pretty mentally unbalanced so I think that to say they were taken advantage of is perfectly fair.
I dunno, they seemed to know what money was. I'm not trying to excuse what was done, I'm just saying that the two main stars of the show were almost as contemptable. One of them got paid to have Bumfights tattooed on his forehead. He won damages, but did he spend it on getting the tattoo removed? No. He spent it on getting wasted.
well I think that's a bit besides the point really, fair enough the guy was an arsehole but because of his situation and the extent to which he was mentally damaged I think it was more exploitation than a willing partnership, the guy seemed under the impression that he was going to be famous which is a bit of a dream way out for someone living rough, to offer that to someone to get them to be a shit to someone else I call exploitation. I'm not saying the guy was in the right, he certainly wasn't, I'm just saying that without the intervention of a few righ fuckarses he probably wouldn't have been anywhere as bad.
Free tatoos, free beers, money, and a blowjob. Seems like the bums came out pretty good to me. The only funny thing in the movie was the guy acting like a bum hunter. Most of the bums were happy to go along. There's worse things that happen to women in pornos then what happened to those bums. Don't see any of those women suing anyone.
I have this thing called a "girlfriend". I suppose it's kinda like porn, only better But actually, no, I've never watched porn. I find it prettty sad. That's a thread all in itself though
Those women aren't usually drunk. They get paid a lot more too. I've never seen a porn star pull out her own teeth with pliers either. Porn is blatant outright exploitation too, and the only reason it isn't as abhorent is because they get paid more.
Haven't seen the programme but saw the website http://www.bumfight.com/ a while ago and thought that was pretty sick. These are people who are victims of society, mental illness, alcoholism and worse. Not sure if I'd totally compare it with porn though, although it is an exploitative industry (like so many others) some women (and men) have chosen to do this without being vulnerable, made a lot of money from it and gone on to other things. I'd be more inclined to compare it with legal boxing, but still the potential for a better livelihood is there in that industry too. I can't see any "betterment" happening for these poor sods.
The director thinks it highlights the desperation of human society (although I think his exact words were more "how fucked-up everything is", the tosser), and in a way he's right. That something like this could be regarded as entertainment, let alone thought-provoking, is an indication of the decadence of Western culture. It is, to quote a term used in reference to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", the scab-picking of the human spirit.
Well could you imagine the uproar if he thought up "Famine Wars" and went off to Ethiopia to force starving victims to fight each other for food?
so gang banging a girl then making her eat dog food and drink water from a toilet isn't as bad as bumfights. Or giving a woman a enema then making her drink or eat what comes out of her ass is'nt that bad. yeah porn is worse than bumfights. Those girls usually do one film for a 100 bucks or 200 bucks then they never do another one again because it's so degrading. Who knows the girls may be doing it for booze like the bums.
It's all awful, truely awful... Why do people get kicks out of people degrading themsleves? Why is there a market for it? I guess it's Human Nature at some of it's worst.... Only difference these days is that we all get to see it on TV...great I tried to keep away from this thread 'cos the thought of discussing it made me feel so sad I don't know what to say... Some of us humans are so terrible I don't have the words for it... There must have been a market for it for them to have got the funding to make this film in the first place.... I guess shit like this will always crop up, cos some of us people provide the market for it
This world? It's our world... the only one we have... I totally get your point, but at the same time there is a lot of good here too. I could go into a mass monologue, but I don't want to take the thread over Love Clairexxx
That is only at the most extreme end of porn. Most hardcore porn only features normal sex which goes on in mainstream society.
