Malcolm Muggeridge once said that sex is the ersatz religion of the 20th century, and so far I see no reason why the 21st century is any different. From Catholicism to Protestantism to Islam—all the major players in world affairs at the moment—sex still plays a definitive role in culture and politics. Of course, it happens largely in the absence of sex. In other words, the repression of sexuality has made us both great and perverse. And to the extent that our present world dilemma is a clash of civilizations, it is a clash of sexual repressions. It is hard to say which society is more repressed: the one that requires women to wear head-to-toe burkas, or the one that had a collective cow when Janet Jackson flashed the Super Bowl.
I know this is all water under the bridge, but I have to laugh at FCC Chairman Michael Powell’s sophistry on the subject. He’s been working tirelessly for months now to bring the hammer down on broadcasters who step over the line with vulgar language—he wants a 1,000 percent increase in fines for transgressions. He claims this will be a more effective deterrent against the Howard Sterns and Tom Barnards of the world. While I applaud the effort to muzzle morons like those two, I guess I know better than to listen to talk radio in the first place.
There are a lot of things to be more bent out of shape about than sexuality on the airwaves. How about blatantly lying to the public about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and using that as a pretext to institute the most fascist foreign policy of “intervention” since Mussolini? How about generating the single largest federal deficit in the history of the world—under the “conservative” pretext of “less government”? It used to be the Democrats we could accuse of promoting the nanny state. Now it’s the Republicans.
Anyway, I find it mildly hilarious that the appearance of a single, astonishingly saggy breast at a Super Bowl halftime show could set off such fireworks of moral posturing and finger pointing (hardly where I’d look for a touch of class, let’s be honest—have you ever felt edified by a Super Bowl halftime show?) Who doesn’t like boobs, no matter what the size or shape?
We like to think that people are basically devolving—that we as a culture are just getting sicker and more debased with each passing year. But in fact, the only thing that has really changed is the method of delivery. I’ve said before that I am a fan and a consumer of good pornography—or erotica, if you insist on a word that makes you feel morally blameless. I’ve argued before that there is a huge difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly—and that this can only be determined on a case-by-case basis. (Ironically, I’d have to agree with Powell and his federal blowhards that Janet’s exposure was both bad and ugly, because it just wasn’t sexy at all. There is nothing wrong with the breast itself, nor even that silly “nipple ornament” she had premeditated. But the “flash” was ultimately about as sexy as getting mooned by the nerd in math class, and that’s an abuse of her position of power, in my eyes.)
Anyway, what I was saying is that hardcore porn is not harder today than it was a hundred or even a thousand years ago. I have on my coffee table right now a wonderful copy of a new anthology of “Tijuana Bibles,” the pornographic predecessor of comic books.
Now, there is a great deal of misogyny and even bestiality depicted in these crude comics (think Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, neither of whom wear pants). I expected my precious to go ballistic when she saw the thing, but I give her a lot of credit for having both a sense of humor and a healthy libido. She shocked me by saying these extremely explicit and yet juvenile drawings turned her on.
It just made me realize that no matter how hard you work to repress these baser instincts, they will find a release somehow, and I can’t help feeling like it might come out twisted or damaged or otherwise morally suspect. Consider that most of Europe has no such hangup about bare breasts on network television—even in the notoriously priggish UK. And consider the fact that today’s nine- and ten-year-olds not only know every dirty word in the book, but they know how to conjugate them as verb, noun, and adjective.
Just how far are we willing to carry this institutional repression and hypocrisy? Note to Michael Powell: Sex feels good! People like to feel good! People like sex! In fact, one might plausibly argue that without sex, “family values” would have no meaning whatsoever.
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