RHETORICAL ANSWERS: February 2005

Sometimes we’re just wonderful in our ignorance. As racing insects on our big round ant farm we can truly achieve greatness in the lowest points of our collective cravings. Despite an admirable move here and there, it seems to be our low points that define us. We achieve this deepening definition by listening to our cravings, and by crafting lives around distractions and cosmetic pleasures that are questionable at best, but represent our worst, without question. This is not say that cravings are entirely a bad thing. Some of the greatest endeavours in all the tunnels of human history have come about from the counsel that little voice that sits on your shoulder, and whispers in the ear opposite to the angel.

The grandest of all cravings, and the sweetest that voice ever sounds, invariably involves sex. At tiniest level of that thing that makes you you, where soul meets cell and mitochondria dance with DNA, there is a spark that keeps that nucleus turning. That spark is sex. Say it out loud to your computer screen… right now. The best damn word in any language and the best reason to get out of bed in the morning is more than penis and vagina, than conquest and surrender, than sweat, steam, orgasm, and is great at the same time for being so much less. Say that word again. Sex is the spark that turns the universe and gives humans the fury to invent and destroy. The very reason that devil stands on your shoulder is to make sure that you seek out that spark. The unfortunate thing about a devil’s influence is it’s a little too focused on the prize and tends to be horribly near-sighted.

The quintessential example of that little devil’s wonderful ignorance is Pornography. What a funny web we’ve woven worldwide with this stuff. The embodiment of tawdry, titillating, and depravity has become a wonderfully sad metaphor for just about every craving we seek in our modern culture: automatic, non-nutritive, and cosmetically enhanced.

Have you ever really thought about the role that pornography portrays in our society? What can be gained by these ludicrous but arousing scenarios and performances? What have we got to lose? Of all the disposable nonsense on which we spend our money and display in our finely tuned vessels of purchased identity, porn has to be the one entity that has best exploited our cravings while hiding beneath a virtue. We accept it, and frankly we revel in it, because it is tawdry and contrived it is an exhibition of the dirtiest thing we’ll never be too clean to love. We permit it, because we believe that in some weird way we are engaging in sex. Despite an obvious lack in acting ability, porn has managed to fool us all.

This is not to say that I am against this medium, which tends in its exhibition to be related more to large than medium. I happen to be a big fan. I think it can be a healthy addiction/distraction, if not an entirely sexual one. Like anything worthwhile in our accented age, pornography offers a sustained fantasy, a window through the fence into a yard where the grass is not only greener, but also covered with horny naked girls. In its purest form, that puts pure to rest, the average pornophile is seeking a vicarious thrill akin to that which he seeks from an action movie or a football game, and for the gender less likely to file under this ‘phile, this ‘ography can be like a gentle romanticography or that channel that shows nothing but makeovers.

It may be confusing at this point on which of your shoulders I’m standing. The obvious argument, to defend the relevance of girl on silicone girl action and faking fake orgasms, is that it provides a safe and healthy outlet for its subscribers, largely the male gender, to ‘express’ themselves.

All right, it’s pretty much all the male gender.

Though the outlet theory may be true, it is not sex that drives us to this, our favorite hedonistic altar. What fills your pornophillic eyes when you pop in that tape that you hide under the mattress is not quenching your thirst for coitus, but your need for voyeurism. Incidentally, this is also in the domain of the guy on your shoulder with all the fun things to say. Though ‘doing yourself a favor’ is definitely a sex act on certain levels, it’s voyeurism that stimulates your arousal on those most private of occasions.

This is not a question of morality. I believe morality to be a subjective thing. Everyone has their own humane idea of right and wrong. If you’re okay with something then I don’t think that something can be wrong. When a diabolical Enron type executive bilks thousands from people who are going to lose their homes, he is not necessarily breaking commandments, but somewhere in their own tiny plastic moral code they know they’re doing wrong. A pornophile, depending the depravity of choice, is most likely conducting HIMself, I’m not going to bother implying both genders here, well within HIS own acceptable parameters and therefore doing nothing wrong. This being said, isn’t it interesting how we promote the aspects of our sex in our appearance and demeanour but hide our voyeuristic tendencies in shoeboxes and under our mattresses?

Think about what sex is for a moment. Say it out loud one more time and think of the elements that float in its universe: unity, passion, conquest, intimacy, ecstasy, fluid… voyeur, fetish? If we attempted to list all of the elements that exist adjacent to this universe, we’d be here long enough to make boobs boring.

We are by nature voyeurs, there is no doubt. Nor sadly is there a purpose. What end can possibly be served, in an anthropological sense, by observing other members of the species in moments that really should belong to them? I can see a purpose in vanity, makeovers, conservatives, lying, farting, fleeing, feeding, fighting, and certainly fornicating, but voyeurism, and in a smaller scale pornography, smaller of course depending on the kind of film you prefer, has no purposeful value that I can detect.

Sex is about the virtue of life itself and your own experience. It’s about your heart pumping, while various other organs pump in kind. It’s about the biology, chemistry, and spark of the human body doing what it is intended to do. How can sex be about viewing the portrayal of sex? Arousal is merely one segment of the biological equation that turns our space. If arousal were all it took, sex would be no more important than shopping… perhaps not the best example. But seriously, there is plenty of sex in shopping, but there is no shopping in sex… wait…

Don’t sell sex short, it’s so much better long.

Since we now know that porn is a four-letter word unworthy of four-letter-wordom, the only question remaining is: Where is the line? When is sex sex and when is sex confused with a dirty little window?

If your actual partner is not present, does a picture suffice? Could that picture be of a potential partner? Could that partner ‘s potential be on the weaker side of likelihood? Could that potential partner’s portrait perhaps include a substitute for yourself? Could that portrait then be several portraits, put in motion and set to a raunchy bass?

Bow chicka bow bow.

With anything adrift in the sex galaxy or concerning the counsel from the devil on your shoulder, putting lines in the sand does little more than get your hands dirty. And in our finer moments, dirty hands can chafe.

Just remember, the next time someone tries to defend the virtue of pornography on the basis of healthy sex, they’d better be better at acting than those they're defending. You’re a voyeur, but don’t feel bad you’re voyeur in vast company... hopefully not during one of those ‘favourable’ moments.

Besides, porn never asked to be defended and has scarcely claimed to be virtuous.

Now if you’ll excuse me…

Chicka bow bow boooow.

Buck Hughes

PORN - Now That I've Got Your Attention...

Help me, Rhonda