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fpbWhen I use the word "pornography", I do not always mean the commercial activity that goes strictly by that name; I often mean something larger - the commercial use of the representation of sex to sell materials, especially in the media, and, at one and the same time, the constant pressure to allow further and further representation of further and further sexual activities in pursuit of sales. This is an ongoing process. We have, at present, reached the point where the representation of sado-masochism is no longer challenged or troubling; and since Britney Spears' first success, underage sex is no longer taboo. I have no doubt that this process will continue; in particular, it is only a matter of time before the makers of popular culture latch on the connection between sex and cannibalism, which is already well known on the wilder reaches of the Internet. Cannibalism has been already well and truly made a part of popular culture with the Hannibal Lecter movies; this is the obvious next step.
Anyway, my point is that, in my view, pornography in the second meaning is a dominant factor in our lives. Just think of its reach. Practically everything to do with contemporary fashion is pornography; so is most of television and the press; almost all popular music; practically all cinema not aimed at children (movies, other than for children, without a sex scene, must surely be counted on the fingers of one hand); about half of all advertising; and much of contemporary fiction. The books we read, the programmes we watch, the movies we go out to see, the newspapers we buy, are sodden with it.
I have no doubt that, if anyone bothers to read this page, they will treat this as the rant of a deracinated reactionary. There is little I can do about that, except point out two things: first, that the sequence of events that have shaped popular culture in the last century or two is a fact, independently of what attitude you take to it; and second, that the instinct to laugh at such remarks, to treat them with contempt, is itself a conditioned reflex bred by the atmosphere. Most of mankind, both in time and in space, would not take the same view: they would regard the relentless rise of unrestrained pornography as a grave and important phenomenon, and anyone who paid attention to it as a good citizen with his/her mind on serious matters. Our generation, in our part of the world, has been trained, not only to regard the rise of pornography as a natural feature of the landscape, but also to react with programmed and unreasoning contempt to anyone who brings the subject up. There is no debate about pornography, because any attempt to start one is simply drowned in the wave of ridicule from all sides. One is even afraid to open one's mouth, for fear of looking ridiculous even to one's own friends.
Nonetheless, the study of the rise of pornography - its social significance, its background, its progress, and its effects on the culture - has become an increasing concern of mine, as a historian. For a while now (as readers may verify from my To Do List) I have been accumulating materials for a history of capitalism and pornography. This is not restricted to the last few decades, but certainly much of the most typical and telling material is to be found there.
In the course of my thoughts upon the subject, my attention was drawn to a small number of individuals, whose activities seemed to me extremely typical of some views I was then developping, and some specific kinds of hypocrisy typical of the advance of pornography. I am being deliberately vague, and for a very good reason; I do not intend to give any clues, either to the identity of the people involved, or to their specific activities, or to what theory of historical interpretation I felt I could prove by their behaviour. I will only say a few things: the people involved had their heyday a few years ago, and showed a remarkable inability to capitalize on their temporary success (I can say this, because it has nothing to do with the theses I intended to prove). They had soon shown that floundering so often seen in people who are thrown up in the public's eye by the mechanism of commercial pornography Before my research had gone very far, some events seemed to prove spectacularly, and very much in public, the contentions I wanted to make; although I am now of the view that the evidence was not all that it could have been, and leaves plenty of room for doubt. The media and the Internet, however, acted as though no doubt were possible, and leapt at conclusions which I now find tenuous.
The reason why I dropped the argument I wished to make, using the career of these persons as evidence, is the impact of Internet reactions to events. I am myself not what you would call mealy-mouthed; but I was simply astonished at the ferocity and number of the reactions. Dozens of people would line up to insult these people. Now, you will have understood that my conclusions would not have been positive about the people involved; in particular, I would have had reason to question their self-understanding, and to charge them with actions that the public still dislikes. But faced with this near-universal belch of loathing for what was, after all, a brief and rather pathetic period of limited success, I felt an opposite reaction. When I lambast someone in writing, it is because I think that s/he has done something pretty awful; but what had these people done, that dozens of perfect unknowns should come together to throw verbal stones at them, assassinating their characters, questioning their identities, insulting their looks, their behaviour, and generally anything within reach?
I have a built-in instinct in favour of the weak and defenceless, which kicked in, in this case, about the fourth insulting message - and I read getting on for a hundred. It was also stimulated by the evidence, in the biographies of the people concerned, of early damage, vulnerability, and confusion. They had some of the features of born victims. Whatever the extent of their success, to assault them in this unrestrained way seemed to me like kicking a puppy, and kicking him when he's down. Nor can they do anything serious in terms of fighting back: to hit them is not to hit anyone powerful, but a lay figure. They may have had some fame for some time: they have no power, no position, no ability to do anything about the tide of insults coming at them from all fronts.
The popular reaction was not only vicious, it was incongruous. It was not reasonable. Even granting that these people had done what they were supposed to have done - and there is such a thing as beyond reasonable doubt - what had they done to YOU? Is there any reason to insult them as though they had desecrated your church, defamed your grandmother, and put a kilo of assafoetida in your pizza dough? Above all, is there a reason to attack their appearance, their personality, even their identity? (Some posts included unsubtle and groundless insinuation of sex-change.) I recognized the emotion easily enough; it was vindictiveness, which I am not altogether unfamiliar with. But why on earth would anyone feel vindictive towards a few people who achieved a certain and temporary amount of success in an area that would have gone on whether they had ever appeared or not?
That, to my mind, is an important question. There is a general feeling, of course, that success is resented in itself, but I doubt that. At best, it is a minority passion. People who are felt to deserve their success are generally admired. No, what came through from all those hate-filled posts was a sense of resentment for these people being, in the posters' view, in the wrong place. They did not deserve their success; and that, specifically, because of what was felt to be their inadequate physical attraction. I do not think I give too much away when I say that physical beauty is one of the central features of people who lend themselves to pornography of whatever kind; and in this case what was resented was clearly the quality (or lack of it) of these people's looks. Cruel exaggerations were indulged and repeated, both about their features and about the related matter of their age (they were no longer in their first flush of youth).
Logically speaking, this hardly seems like a sensible explanation for such an outpouring of vindictive feeling. What are their looks, deserving or not, to you, that you should turn such a fountain of poison on them? It seems clear to me that there is an element of personal anger involved, something that goes beyond mere dislike for undeserved success.
The easiest way to understand apparently incomprehensible behaviour from others is to look at oneself. Turn in and ask whether you ever behaved like that, and if so, why. And in this case, I would say that this kind of behaviour, though on the face of it puzzling, is all too familiar to me - to most of us, I would think. To dislike, even violently, particularly successful people on the TV or in Hollywood, on account of their look, and with unreasoning violence, is not a rare feeling. I have heard statements about, for instance, Leonardo di Caprio, which are simply cruel and vindictive beyond belief; and I myself am fiercely irritated by the way that Kylie Minogue has managed to make her long-nosed, buck-toothed, horse-mouthed face pass for a paragon of beauty and sexuality, purely by insistence. One must admit that the annoyance one feels at this sort of thing is personal.
Of course, these persons do obtrude upon our consciousness. It takes some considerable effort not to be aware, at any time, of what Kylie or Leo happen to be doing right now; the media are always so eager to keep us informed. They are thrust on us. But I think it goes further than that.
The essence of the appeal of pornography is that it demands our attention. Our own awareness becomes complicit with it, focussing our attention. I know that when I pass a poster without pornographic content, I may or may not focus upon it, according to a number of different considerations - am I in a hurry, is it or is it not a good piece of artwork, etc.; but when I pass one featuring female nudity, I am drawn to look, whether or not I like it, whether or not I am interested in the product it's selling, whether or not I find the model attractive or the atmosphere tolerable. It acts upon our instincts. It is, therefore, an imposition on our consciousness; and it is, in my view, on that account, that it also builds up a more or less conscious store of resentment and irritation. There is an anger towards people who made their way by beauty, that does not exist to the same extent towards people who have made it by more discreditable means - smarming up to the boss, having powerful friends, even fraud.
If that is the case, it follows that the people most resented will be those who have taken part in pornography in some fashion, that have imposed themselves upon our attention, without really having the beauty, or at least our idea of beauty. I react very differently to being distracted by an undressed Kylie Minogue, as by real beauties such as Charlotte Rampling, Trine Michelsen, or Nicola Cowper. What is unfair about this, however - and symptomatic - is that, in that case, the person who takes the role of Kylie Minogue, the person whose flaunted sexuality impinges on my consciousness without affording me the pleasure of genuine beauty, becomes the target of the stored irritation for the whole of pornography's intrusion upon my consciousness. They pay, as it were, for everyone else. And I think this answers to a real sense of scapegoating in the treatment of such persons.
This, after all, is relevant to my study of pornography, as much as the material I decided not to use would have been. It is not as demonstrable as a mathematical theorem, because it is open to any reader to simply refuse to recognize their reactions and attitudes in this description. You may say that it is I, Fabio Paolo Barbieri, who am an unbalanced sex-hater, and that for this reason I resent what I call the intrusion. You are welcome to do so. However, it is my feeling that the phenomena I described are too widespread not to regard them as natural human reactions. They happen too often not to see as part of the human reaction to certain situations.
There is one last thing to be said. This sort of thing has been happening for as long as showbusiness has existed. The rise of more or less damaged, ambitious people, to great success, often followed by a spectacular downfall and even by personal ruin, and by a savage public attention to every detail of the downfall, is an absolute regularity of this world. It is geared towards it. It cannot, perhaps, be otherwise; it certainly never tries to be otherwise. The casualties are simply take for granted, and the press simply lives in the expectation that one or more shooting stars will soon supply them with more saleable copy, by becoming falling stars. Look at what is happening to Britney Spears now. The rise and fall tradition is simply a part of this cruel business, that raises people before the eyes of millions so that they come to believe they know them, and then casts them down again. It is fed by a diet of constant young hopefuls with beautiful faces and desperate hearts. Showbusiness eats people. Pornography eats people.
Anyway, my point is that, in my view, pornography in the second meaning is a dominant factor in our lives. Just think of its reach. Practically everything to do with contemporary fashion is pornography; so is most of television and the press; almost all popular music; practically all cinema not aimed at children (movies, other than for children, without a sex scene, must surely be counted on the fingers of one hand); about half of all advertising; and much of contemporary fiction. The books we read, the programmes we watch, the movies we go out to see, the newspapers we buy, are sodden with it.
I have no doubt that, if anyone bothers to read this page, they will treat this as the rant of a deracinated reactionary. There is little I can do about that, except point out two things: first, that the sequence of events that have shaped popular culture in the last century or two is a fact, independently of what attitude you take to it; and second, that the instinct to laugh at such remarks, to treat them with contempt, is itself a conditioned reflex bred by the atmosphere. Most of mankind, both in time and in space, would not take the same view: they would regard the relentless rise of unrestrained pornography as a grave and important phenomenon, and anyone who paid attention to it as a good citizen with his/her mind on serious matters. Our generation, in our part of the world, has been trained, not only to regard the rise of pornography as a natural feature of the landscape, but also to react with programmed and unreasoning contempt to anyone who brings the subject up. There is no debate about pornography, because any attempt to start one is simply drowned in the wave of ridicule from all sides. One is even afraid to open one's mouth, for fear of looking ridiculous even to one's own friends.
Nonetheless, the study of the rise of pornography - its social significance, its background, its progress, and its effects on the culture - has become an increasing concern of mine, as a historian. For a while now (as readers may verify from my To Do List) I have been accumulating materials for a history of capitalism and pornography. This is not restricted to the last few decades, but certainly much of the most typical and telling material is to be found there.
In the course of my thoughts upon the subject, my attention was drawn to a small number of individuals, whose activities seemed to me extremely typical of some views I was then developping, and some specific kinds of hypocrisy typical of the advance of pornography. I am being deliberately vague, and for a very good reason; I do not intend to give any clues, either to the identity of the people involved, or to their specific activities, or to what theory of historical interpretation I felt I could prove by their behaviour. I will only say a few things: the people involved had their heyday a few years ago, and showed a remarkable inability to capitalize on their temporary success (I can say this, because it has nothing to do with the theses I intended to prove). They had soon shown that floundering so often seen in people who are thrown up in the public's eye by the mechanism of commercial pornography Before my research had gone very far, some events seemed to prove spectacularly, and very much in public, the contentions I wanted to make; although I am now of the view that the evidence was not all that it could have been, and leaves plenty of room for doubt. The media and the Internet, however, acted as though no doubt were possible, and leapt at conclusions which I now find tenuous.
The reason why I dropped the argument I wished to make, using the career of these persons as evidence, is the impact of Internet reactions to events. I am myself not what you would call mealy-mouthed; but I was simply astonished at the ferocity and number of the reactions. Dozens of people would line up to insult these people. Now, you will have understood that my conclusions would not have been positive about the people involved; in particular, I would have had reason to question their self-understanding, and to charge them with actions that the public still dislikes. But faced with this near-universal belch of loathing for what was, after all, a brief and rather pathetic period of limited success, I felt an opposite reaction. When I lambast someone in writing, it is because I think that s/he has done something pretty awful; but what had these people done, that dozens of perfect unknowns should come together to throw verbal stones at them, assassinating their characters, questioning their identities, insulting their looks, their behaviour, and generally anything within reach?
I have a built-in instinct in favour of the weak and defenceless, which kicked in, in this case, about the fourth insulting message - and I read getting on for a hundred. It was also stimulated by the evidence, in the biographies of the people concerned, of early damage, vulnerability, and confusion. They had some of the features of born victims. Whatever the extent of their success, to assault them in this unrestrained way seemed to me like kicking a puppy, and kicking him when he's down. Nor can they do anything serious in terms of fighting back: to hit them is not to hit anyone powerful, but a lay figure. They may have had some fame for some time: they have no power, no position, no ability to do anything about the tide of insults coming at them from all fronts.
The popular reaction was not only vicious, it was incongruous. It was not reasonable. Even granting that these people had done what they were supposed to have done - and there is such a thing as beyond reasonable doubt - what had they done to YOU? Is there any reason to insult them as though they had desecrated your church, defamed your grandmother, and put a kilo of assafoetida in your pizza dough? Above all, is there a reason to attack their appearance, their personality, even their identity? (Some posts included unsubtle and groundless insinuation of sex-change.) I recognized the emotion easily enough; it was vindictiveness, which I am not altogether unfamiliar with. But why on earth would anyone feel vindictive towards a few people who achieved a certain and temporary amount of success in an area that would have gone on whether they had ever appeared or not?
That, to my mind, is an important question. There is a general feeling, of course, that success is resented in itself, but I doubt that. At best, it is a minority passion. People who are felt to deserve their success are generally admired. No, what came through from all those hate-filled posts was a sense of resentment for these people being, in the posters' view, in the wrong place. They did not deserve their success; and that, specifically, because of what was felt to be their inadequate physical attraction. I do not think I give too much away when I say that physical beauty is one of the central features of people who lend themselves to pornography of whatever kind; and in this case what was resented was clearly the quality (or lack of it) of these people's looks. Cruel exaggerations were indulged and repeated, both about their features and about the related matter of their age (they were no longer in their first flush of youth).
Logically speaking, this hardly seems like a sensible explanation for such an outpouring of vindictive feeling. What are their looks, deserving or not, to you, that you should turn such a fountain of poison on them? It seems clear to me that there is an element of personal anger involved, something that goes beyond mere dislike for undeserved success.
The easiest way to understand apparently incomprehensible behaviour from others is to look at oneself. Turn in and ask whether you ever behaved like that, and if so, why. And in this case, I would say that this kind of behaviour, though on the face of it puzzling, is all too familiar to me - to most of us, I would think. To dislike, even violently, particularly successful people on the TV or in Hollywood, on account of their look, and with unreasoning violence, is not a rare feeling. I have heard statements about, for instance, Leonardo di Caprio, which are simply cruel and vindictive beyond belief; and I myself am fiercely irritated by the way that Kylie Minogue has managed to make her long-nosed, buck-toothed, horse-mouthed face pass for a paragon of beauty and sexuality, purely by insistence. One must admit that the annoyance one feels at this sort of thing is personal.
Of course, these persons do obtrude upon our consciousness. It takes some considerable effort not to be aware, at any time, of what Kylie or Leo happen to be doing right now; the media are always so eager to keep us informed. They are thrust on us. But I think it goes further than that.
The essence of the appeal of pornography is that it demands our attention. Our own awareness becomes complicit with it, focussing our attention. I know that when I pass a poster without pornographic content, I may or may not focus upon it, according to a number of different considerations - am I in a hurry, is it or is it not a good piece of artwork, etc.; but when I pass one featuring female nudity, I am drawn to look, whether or not I like it, whether or not I am interested in the product it's selling, whether or not I find the model attractive or the atmosphere tolerable. It acts upon our instincts. It is, therefore, an imposition on our consciousness; and it is, in my view, on that account, that it also builds up a more or less conscious store of resentment and irritation. There is an anger towards people who made their way by beauty, that does not exist to the same extent towards people who have made it by more discreditable means - smarming up to the boss, having powerful friends, even fraud.
If that is the case, it follows that the people most resented will be those who have taken part in pornography in some fashion, that have imposed themselves upon our attention, without really having the beauty, or at least our idea of beauty. I react very differently to being distracted by an undressed Kylie Minogue, as by real beauties such as Charlotte Rampling, Trine Michelsen, or Nicola Cowper. What is unfair about this, however - and symptomatic - is that, in that case, the person who takes the role of Kylie Minogue, the person whose flaunted sexuality impinges on my consciousness without affording me the pleasure of genuine beauty, becomes the target of the stored irritation for the whole of pornography's intrusion upon my consciousness. They pay, as it were, for everyone else. And I think this answers to a real sense of scapegoating in the treatment of such persons.
This, after all, is relevant to my study of pornography, as much as the material I decided not to use would have been. It is not as demonstrable as a mathematical theorem, because it is open to any reader to simply refuse to recognize their reactions and attitudes in this description. You may say that it is I, Fabio Paolo Barbieri, who am an unbalanced sex-hater, and that for this reason I resent what I call the intrusion. You are welcome to do so. However, it is my feeling that the phenomena I described are too widespread not to regard them as natural human reactions. They happen too often not to see as part of the human reaction to certain situations.
There is one last thing to be said. This sort of thing has been happening for as long as showbusiness has existed. The rise of more or less damaged, ambitious people, to great success, often followed by a spectacular downfall and even by personal ruin, and by a savage public attention to every detail of the downfall, is an absolute regularity of this world. It is geared towards it. It cannot, perhaps, be otherwise; it certainly never tries to be otherwise. The casualties are simply take for granted, and the press simply lives in the expectation that one or more shooting stars will soon supply them with more saleable copy, by becoming falling stars. Look at what is happening to Britney Spears now. The rise and fall tradition is simply a part of this cruel business, that raises people before the eyes of millions so that they come to believe they know them, and then casts them down again. It is fed by a diet of constant young hopefuls with beautiful faces and desperate hearts. Showbusiness eats people. Pornography eats people.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-19 03:28 pm (UTC)I wish I knew what you were talking about in regards to the thing that the internet backlashed against. I felt it weakened your arguement by not being able to talk about the incident directly.
I feel the same as you when it comes to both Leonardo Di Caprio and Britney Spears... I don't care what the media and people around me say about both, I honestly don't and I had to speak up for both in the past. Unfortunately our culture, that is to say North American culture is based upon the studying of our idols... if there is any indication that people put idols before their gods, that is it. They love to see someone ordinary succeed and they love to see them fall, again, much like ordinary people fall.
Back to your assessment about pornography... pornography isn't going anywhere, I do believe that it's been around since the dawn of man. However I do wish our society would be more open about it... it's like outlawing booze back in the 1920s only made it so that people had to go underground into a world that is unprotected and not over seen by the government to get their alcohol. While I have absolutely no problem with pronography and such sexual things, I find it disheartening that the powers that be turn away. Instead of protecting young women (and men) in the porn industry from being exploited/abused, people instead look down on it with contempt and turn a blind eye, while secretly partaking in the product in secret. This is not right, but as of right now I can think of no way to rectify the situation. Perhaps by teaching our children that people in the media are merely human beings not gods to be put on pedistals would be a step in a positive direction... who knows?
Interesting rant/essay by the way. ;)
~Marie