‘Two Girls, One Cup’ Defense Doesn’t Work
Ira Isaacs gets four years for obscenity
January 17, 2013
First off, if you’ve not seen the infamous video “Two Girls, One Cup,” consider yourself:
(a) lucky
(b) lucky
(c) lucky
(d) all of the above
The sophomoric, nightmarish, raunchy internet project is so hypnotically disgusting that just a few years ago, after millions and millions of people viewed it, the video spawned a whole subset of other viral internet videos that featured people–marines, grandmothers, Kermit the Frog–all reacting with horror while watching the original video. It entered popular culture in 2007, including a cameo on the Fox show “Family Guy.”
According to the Daily Dot, a filmmaker named Ira Isaacs, was sentenced to four years in jail for obscenity earlier this week for distributing films that mimicked the style of the original video, which was created by Marco Antonia Fiorito.
Ira Isaacs, 61, “made obscene videos in which he instructed women to engage in sexual activity involving human bodily waste” and was convicted of producing, selling, and distributing the video, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
In his own defense, Isaacs attempted to explain that his projects were artistic social commentary on par with the likes of Marcel Duchamp and cited “Two Girls, One Cup” in his defense. Isaacs plans to appeal.
We’ll see how that goes.
Update: An earlier version of this post cited a report by the Daily Dot claiming that Ira Isaacs (and not Marco Antonia Fiorito) was the original creator of “Two Girls, One Cup.”
Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.
