> It's not that. It's that commercial culture articulates desire in a
> particular way. I mean, we all get hungry, but commercial culture
> tells us that nothing less than giant macs, giant fries, and giant
> crap will suage that hunger. We all get horny, and commercial culture
> tells us basically that sex is a product to be bought and sold.
> Prostitution is NOT a "natural" expression of sexuality. I'll argue
> this to my dying breath.
To me, this whole "corporate porn" controversy (and I sometimes sympathize with Kelley's son, who said "I thought your friends talked about politics and stuff") comes down to the concept of "safe sex," i.e., "properly controlled sex." The problem is, sex is always, and always has been, "dangerous," i.e., out of control, so people have always tried to make it "safe" in one way or another. To lefties, "safe" means "not exploited by big corporations"; to religious fanatics, it means "not before marriage"; to the health-minded, it means "performed with the proper prophylactic measures."
Expecting commercial culture to keep its dirty mitts off of sex, or off of food, or anything else it can sell, is truly utopian. What kids in this society need to learn, in my opinion (as a father of two boys now 17 and 22), is that they are surrounded by people trying to sell them (or their parents, if they are kids too young to handle money) all kinds of stuff, and they need to learn how to defend themselves against these pressures.
This issue of commercialism is different from what kids need to learn about sex; for that, I agree with the usual conventional wisdom, I think -- answer their questions in age-appropriate fashion, don't bore them with lectures about the birds and bees, etc.
BTW, it's always interested me that sex is about the only subject that parents can't teach their kids about through practical demonstrations. If you want to teach your young ones how to build bird houses, you sit down with them and build bird houses. But sitting down with them and teaching them sex is incest, which I doubt any of us wants to promote. So instead, we have to resort to lectures.
> When I was a teenager, the "sexy" women I wanted to grow up and be
> like were Anna Magnani and Rita Hayworth; these women were partially
> commercial creations, but they did not basically define themselves as
> whores, as women whose worth was determined by how much they could
> fetch on the market.
I don't understand anything about this contemporary youth culture that seems to be built around images of whores and pimps. Where did it come from, and why does it (apparently) generate billions of dollars of income for companies that seem to want to appear respectable, safe investments to the adult world? I certainly don't remember anything like it from my youth -- kids wanted to be baseball players, ballerinas, policemen (no policewomen then that I can remember), etc. Now they all seem to want to be whores and pimps. I guess I lost track somewhere along the line. (BTW, despite watching their quota, at least, of MTV, my sons don't seem to have the slightest interest in pimping as a career choice.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)