The Night Porter

2 comments on Hacker News

1. NeutralballadeerJun 30, 2017

   The problem with these online streaming services I face is that I try to use them mostly for one crucial purpose and that is recommendation - and they always fail to recommend anything that appeals to me. I want to find new songs, new artists that I would like. But these services never helped me with that.

   I don't like rap, hip-hop, or metal. I mostly like rock, some pop etc but that too not too loud. I don't really know how much "not loud"; that's where I thought these recommendation engines would kick in. I have found couple of artists/songs that I just love on Bandcamp (awesome place). But Spotify, Apple Music (this one has been an utter disappointment for me), and many other streaming services that I've tried in my country just didn't cut it.

   What have helped me over the years are films, blogs, tweets etc. Something random playing on a bus, or a film soundtrack, a TV show theme song. Like that song A Chi that I heard while watching The Best of Youth. It was in Italian and I didn't understand a word but I just instantly connected to it. I loved it. That German song from The Night Porter - from there I discovered Marlene Dietrich's Lili Marleen. Or Many a tears from October Sky, or that song from Twelve Monkeys. And there are some like Amélie (well, every tune is fabulous in this one) where I disconvered Guilty by Al Bowlly. A friend once, out of the blue, told me to check out Imagine Dragons and later I listenred to Demons like crazy; on repeat. Or a chance hearing of a tune in an Iranian film that was composed by an Iranian artist. It's the best song of melancholy I have ever heard and it doesn't have any lyrics.

   I even found some nice ones on WCD before it was burnt down. I got there late; or rather started exploring late. Its recommendations were a lot better than the streaming serives, at least for me.

   What I find surprising is that I benefit from recommendation services for books, films a lot, but for music I've never been able to find recommendation service that tries to find that nerve or even something close to it that is a person's musical taste and then recommends tunes around that. Maybe unlike books just the lyrics of a song aren't enough and it's very difficult to discern how a tune would sound good or boring to a listener. I've tried a lot and after some time I gave up. Maybe I was doing soemething wrong or I should try services that just to music recommendation, and not streaming maybe.

2. NeutralanigbrowlOct 16, 2015

   I appreciate your taking the time to reply.

   Obviously suggestions of being underage would be hugely problematic. While I don't see anything illegal about an adult performer pretending to be younger in a fictional context (but with the requisite 2257 filings in place) it would certainly border on commercial suicide due to adverse publicity, not to mention international problems (eg UK law is now considerably stricter on obscenity, banning the appearance of various acts as well as the performance thereof in real life).

   Now I can certainly see how a fictional kidnapping and rape could be similarly problematic, and the material I've seen steers away from such themes (but there's some self-selection bias there as that's not erotic to me anyway). But ISTM you'd have a very strong defense under the first amendment notwithstanding the graphic nature of the amterial. I mean, I can watch films like Nymphomaniac or The Night Porter on Netflix or DVD even though they are both graphic and include scenes of sexual coercion. They're not as graphic as a porn movie, obviously, but differences of degree haven't usually been enough to get an obscenity conviction in US courts in recent memory, eg US v. Stevens being found overbroad.

   You mentioned having written some articles and I'd certainly be interested in reading those even if they're primarily aimed at HR contexts. By chance I recently downloaded the Meese commission report to refresh my knowledge of the area so I would be interested in hearing more of your professional perspective (same name at gmail if you prefer). I eke out a living in indie film and have never worked in porn myself, but from a political and professional standpoint freedom of expression is a huge issue for me so I feel obliged to go to bat for other producers even where I find their output distasteful or straight-up trashy.

   Thanks again for engaging with me on a difficult topic.