Consuming Ghost Stories: The Spectre of Snuff Films is Haunting Canadian Obscenity

Abstract

Using a Derridean theory of hauntology and textual analysis, I argue that the spectre of the snuff film and its mythology is haunting Canadian obscenity law and that this is manifested in three interconnected anxieties: 1) that viewers, including police and other government officials, are unable to distinguish fictional representation and authentic recordings; 2) that regardless of whether material is real or fake, the influence of such materials is the same and thus relies upon and reproduces the media effects narrative; 3) again reproducing anti-porn logics associated with the snuff film, that obscene content — whether real or fictional — that content is becoming increasingly sexually violent and thus must necessitate a natural progression to making snuff films real. Building on research on obscenity and snuff in the UK and US (Smith 2016; Olsen 2016), this article contributes an analysis of the influence of the snuff film mythos on obscenity law in the Canadian context. Further, this research also contributes to the current “spectral turn” in criminology (Fiddler et al., 2022, p. 4) by using hauntology to bring into focus an overlooked presence that is the absence of these crimes in Canadian discourses on obscenity.