HENNEF, Germany – In the cyclical battle between the generations, there’s no line of demarcation quite like loud noise. Young people seem to thrive on the stuff, while the elderly almost certainly will call the police, eventually, if it disturbs either nap time or their enjoyment of syndicated daytime TV shows.
Whether we’re talking about the raucous late 1960s, when people wearing tie-dyed shirts cranked up hard rock and psychedelic bands to the dismay of the Greatest Generation, or the current crop of EDM-listening glow-stick-wavers blasting computerized toots and squeals until I’m unable to deny the fact I’ve slowly become my father (at least when it comes to my total inability to appreciate the horrid crap those goofy-looking youngsters are listening to these days), there always has been conflict between the generations where volume is concerned.
For the most part, I think people accept this auditory tension as they do a windy day: It’s inconvenient, even irritating, but just another fact of life that loses its disturbing potency the more we drink, smoke, pray or inject ourselves into a stupor that permits us to face the day without putting a gun in our mouth — or someone else’s.
Two things can throw this delicate equanimity into a cocked hat, however. The first is when the person cranking up the noise isn’t some misguided youth who can be forgiven for being overenthusiastic about the trendy garbage he’s blaring, and the second is when the over-amplified noise isn’t music, but the grunting, cursing strains of hardcore pornography.
In Hennef, Germany, these two exceptions to the carefully balanced inter-generational peace accord recently came together in a perfect storm after a septuagenarian raised the ire of his neighbors by watching porn with the volume turned up so loud the folks next door felt like they were on location at the porn set.
Note the folks next door are in their 60s. I believe this played into their outrage, because their expectation was someone in the same age cohort would have more decency, or at least more sense, than to blare porn at full volume.
Making matters worse, the loud sexual noises rendered it impossible for the couple to watch their favorite afternoon TV series (which I presume to be a German translation of Matlock).
When the people next door first complained in 2015, the elderly defendant claimed his neighbors weren’t hearing porn, but the proceeds of his own sexual prowess, which had inspired howls of pleasure from a local prostitute.
“It was not porn; it was live,” the man claimed. He also offered a commonsense defense against the idea he was listening at “full volume,” flatly stating “You do not listen to porn movies that loud.”
The first round of the volume war resolved two years ago in a settlement agreement under which the defendant was required to listen to both music and porn at a normal volume and to “leave out noises of sexual acts,” or face a fine of 500 euros.
The threat of further action kept the aging porn fan in line for a time, but eventually the loud sex noises began to seep through the walls again, leading to the recent complaint.
“It was enough for me,” the woman next door explained to the court.
You might be thinking a pair of headphones could solve the problem, but when the judge suggested such to the defendant, he demurred.
“I have two (sets) of them,” the man told the court. “But when I put it on, I do not hear the doorbell. And I cannot hear burglars, either.”
(The defendant didn’t mention it, but I think the porn noises might serve as a deterrent against burglars. Even a hardened criminal doesn’t want to walk in on geriatric sex, after all, especially if it happens to be his parents having it.)
Had the elderly defendant been thinking a little more quickly, I believe he had an affirmative defense against the complaint that went unmentioned: Perhaps he had been influenced to think watching certain kinds of porn at full volume was justifiable, under the well-established “Freedom Rock” doctrine.
Clearly, if the material at issue was Freedom Porn, then the elderly porn aficionado was well within his rights to “turn it up, man.”
Sadly, we may never know if the loud erotica at issue should have been eligible for the Freedom Porn exception because clearly the defendant was denied competent legal representation. At this point, we’ll only find out if the sexed-up septuagenarian re-offends and retains counsel more familiar with American television commercials from the late ’80s.
Thankfully for the interests of justice, continuing arousal and relative peace in the neighborhood, Judge Peter Buellesfeld, reportedly presiding over the final case of his 24-year career, came to a compromise with which both parties could live: The fan of loud porn must pay his neighbors the sum of 100 euros (about $109) to settle the complaint.
Of course, if I’m right about the offending material being Freedom Porn, this fine is a miscarriage of justice — but at least it got everyone involved home in time for the next airing of “Drei Unternehmen.”
