Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Public Porn

Here's a must-read piece from Salmagundi about the current cultural "deluge of porn".

I've said before that most porn simply strikes me as eerie- especially in the way that it portrays the most emotional event in most people's lives in a completely unemotional way. But, I don't begrudge the porn enthusiasts; to each his, or her, or his and her and her own.

But, as it's become slowly a part of our public landscape, porn becomes embarassingly hard to avoid. The author, Jim Sleeper, sites "roadside 'Erotic Empire' billboards, bus shelter underwear posters, fashion-cum-kiddie porn ads, commercials for erectile disfunction cures, and the fetid currents wafting suddenly through our homes at prime time." How do we say, "Thanks, but I'm just not in the mood" to a lecherous public sphere? Sleeper suggests that liberals need to be the ones to change and lead the debate about pornographic culture.

Traditionally, cultural conservatives will bemoan vile "gangsta rap" or pornography loud and long and at great length. But, it's just hollow rhetoric. They get very quiet when you ask them: "So, are you suggesting that we should limit free enterprise? That the government should regulate the market?!" Of course not. And the real driving force here is an oinking rush to snatch the last dollar. It's no real surprise that FOX is the sleaziest, most banal and lowering station on public television, and FOX News commentators make a killing complaining about sleazy and lowering media.

And this gets at the problem with porn and Shiessemusik- most of us believe in consumer choice- to each his and her own. Most of us don't want to legislate speech, even if it is crassly commercial and dehumanizing speech.

But, why should censorship even be suggested? Racist literature is generally kept from the public square by public pressure. Sure it exists, and people do sell it, and other people, sadly, buy it. And yet, most people find it to be beneath them. Maybe we need a return of what Coleridge called a "clerisy"- the people who preserve and endorse the highest aspects of culture. I think what we need is an active aesthetic engagement with the public sphere. Is it elitism? It could be. But, perhaps when confronted with something repellent, such as "extreme" porn, or "Bumfights" DVDs, instead of saying, "Nobody should sell this", or "Nobody should buy this", we should be saying, "Nobody with any sense could appreciate this".

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