Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: Let’s do the Wilde thing

May 25, 2006

Let’s do the Wilde thing

That is to say, let’s consider these words from the preface to Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” In Wilde’s day as well as in ours, glorification of evil in entertainment was often blamed for evil in real life. But in that preface, Wilde builds a wall of separation between ethics and aesthetics analogous to Thomas Jefferson’s wall between church and state, a wall that can serve as a similar bulwark against tyranny.

Liberty has its price, however: if art and entertainment can’t be forces for evil, then they can’t be forces for good, either. (If it’s not clear why this necessarily follows, please read this article by Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh.) Just as I reject the claim that Playboy pictures turn men into misogynists, I have to dismiss D. Bell’s “philosophy of female beauty” at Body in Mind [not work-safe], which regards the splendor of the female form as the source of literally all good in the world.

Bell has good taste in cheesecake. The “Grapevine” section in the back of the June Playboy rightly tips its hat to the sweet, sexy images on his site. But his ethics and politics are sheer demagoguery. As with most people who brag about how moral they are, his passionate intensity casts a shadow of hatred. For him, “those who belittle or outright attack female beauty mean to destroy beauty and all human values [emphasis in the original].” Worse yet, his insistence on the immaculate goodness of looking at naked women can upset the delicate ecological balance between respectability and naughtiness that makes Playboy so much fun.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 5:52 PM

  • Blogger Orikinla Osinachi. left this comment at June 1, 2006 6:54 AM  
    I can't remember the last time I read Playboy.

    I agree with your premise on the erroneous and ambiguous analogy of anything immoral with evil.

    All the "The devil made me do it" excuses given by countless offenders and criminals when they were caught are as I said excuses for their own sins and crimes.

    If I want to commit fornication now and I do it by my own free will, why should I blame the devil or watching "Desperate Housewives"?

    Yes, pornography can lead people astray. But you can still refuse to be led astray.

    God bless.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at June 1, 2006 11:24 AM  
    Orikinla Osinachi,
    Thank you. The Internet has made the world smaller, especially among those with a language in common. By chance, my first two commenters were Australian. Now I’ve had at least two comments from a Nigerian.

  • Anonymous Bean left this comment at October 12, 2006 2:53 AM  
    I'm not sure I'd agree that art and entertainment don't have the potential to be harmful or helpful when particular individuals are exposed to them but I think their influence is often vastly overstated. I think everything we experience can affect us in positive or negative ways but it's a cumulative thing and art is probably not the most powerful catalyst for certain behaviours, I'd say education and social interaction have that honour.

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