Message:   Blockbuster invades Denmark

From: Joe     Sent: 11 Dec. 2002     Message 1 of 3

Here's the story I promised about what happened when the American video rental chain Blockbuster arrived in Denmark.

When the video tape rental business first emerged in Denmark it was natural for the rental shops to have a couple of shelves with porno videos. As video rental shops got bigger there is typically a whole section with porn videos. This section is typically back in a corner of the shop, not out in the middle, but on the other hand it isn't in a closed-off back room either.

The porn videos in Danish video rental shops are normally what could be called ordinary porn. There isn't the really extreme hard-core stuff or videos featuring special subjects like fisting. For that you go to your local sex shop.

A Danish family or a Danish couple visiting a video rental shop may well rent one or two main-stream videos and also a porn video. In the case of a family it is understood by the kids that the porn video is something for mummy and daddy after they (the kids) have gone to bed, and doesn't concern them. Natural curiosity is met with more-or-less frank answers, depending on the degree of openness in the family about sexual matters, but the existence of sex is never any secret.

Here's an example of one of the smaller Danish video rental chains called Playtime Video, which has 14 shops across the country:
http://www.playtimevideo.dk/

If you click on "Film Database" and then select Genre: Porno and click on Søg (seek) you can see a list of the current porn videos featured in their shops.

One of the most successful video rental chains in the Copenhagen area was called Christianshavn Video. In around 1995 (if I remember right) the American Blockbuster chain bought out Christianshavn Video. The first thing they did, of course, was to put their name on all of the shops. The next thing they did was to decree that porn videos were no longer available in their shops.

Most Danes who heard about this just shrugged their shoulders and thought, "silly Americans". The competing video rental chains thought it was great, because now they got more business from the people who still wanted the option of renting both main-stream videos and a porn video at the same place.

Five or six years ago Cindy and I were in Los Angeles visiting an American business associate and his wife. They were showing us Hollywood, and I happened to see a Blockbuster shop there. This American couple were well-educated and well-traveled, so I thought they'd appreciate hearing my story about what happened when Blockbuster came to Denmark.

But as soon as I said that Blockbuster had banned the rental of porn videos in their newly-acquired Danish shops the husband broke in, "That's good! Got to protect the children!" My story sort of fell apart at that point. :-(

We experienced it as practically a knee-jerk reaction: if you simply say the word "pornography" a large number of Americans immediately respond, "Got to protect the children!"

Rather than getting preachy I'll just stop here with the request that any reader who does have this automatic "got to protect the children" reaction to the word "pornography" please take a few minutes and think about what exactly it is that these children have to be protected from and why.

Yours,
Joe

PS. Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I'm not advocating that children should be presented with pornographic material. I'm just saying that the knowledge of the existence of pornography and a knowledge of the existence of sex is not harmful to children. On the contrary.