think of pornography’s lies. the pornographer would have you believe that the come-hither smile of the naked model is real, that she truly values your mysteries and your minerals, that she will comfort you in times of agonizing club-defeat and will radiafy your health with devotion and sunshine care. in reality, since the pornographer and the stripper aim for silver, she employs her sparklo-smile solely your dollars to gain, your emotions nil, your dreams mute and will then move on to the next lust-sloth once your cash has been taken. another lie that the soft-core pornographer propagates is that the photograph of the naked femme stares only at you, that her bliss-treasures are only for you to enjoy, that she is your prize, your moon, your ocean and your lighthouse, that you have worked hard, purified yourself of metallic habits, have rendered yourself clean and fit for responsibility. is it healthy to engage any entertainment that builds its foundation on the lie? does it truly have your interests at heart? or is it much more likely that it wants only your capital, your finance and your silver?

Labels: AesthEth, ArtEnt, BlaSla, Cintv, MorPa, OthBlo, Rom, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:11 AM

January 29, 2007

The cultural right and left agree: misery loves company

What do The Atlantic’s Jon Zobenica and National Review’s John Derbyshire have in common? Probably without knowing it, both of them invoke George Orwell’s essay “The Art of Donald McGill” to justify their moralistic views on sexuality. If he knew I existed, Zobenica might think I appreciate his use of that reference to describe Playboy as essentially the lightsaber to Maxim’s blaster. (Star Wars analogies can go surprisingly far here. I recently told an attractive female friend that she has Jedi powers over the weak-minded, i.e. most of us guys.) But on the contrary, I take his essay as an unintended lesson in humility for all us Playboy freaks.

Zobenica wants us to know that he regards his youthful Playboy-ish days with embarrassment:

Looking back, I realize it’s not only the clothes that make me laugh. The restaurants we went to were “classy” at best. And none of us particularly enjoyed those New Orleans strippers (one looked like a rheumy sharecropper’s daughter). But there was, in all of it, a deliberate effort at contemporary maturity, an effort that was encouraged by Playboy magazine. Maturity was the key to that great Playboy Club of life—your all-access pass to the jumping realm of adult pleasures and preoccupations. We may have come of age clumsily, but no one doubted that it was the thing to do.

Where did those days go?

One need not be clairvoyant or trained in counseling to suspect him of misremembering those days. If the clothes, restaurants, and strippers were really as unimpressive then as he now says they were, why didn’t he ditch that scene immediately? Zobenica’s boomer exceptionalism makes Playboy a lonely voice for the inherent moral superiority of “commitment” in a lad-mag wilderness of Peter Pan complexes. He scolds an article in FHM for urging its readers to stay single, naïvely thinking that this message distinguishes the magazine from Playboy. I’m no fan of Barbara Ehrenreich’s crypto-Marxist feminism, but I give her credit for documenting Playboy’s original concept as the Maxim of the 1950s in her book The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. Although I’ve found more aesthetic value in Playboy than in Maxim or FHM, I cannot honestly claim moral superiority for it as a consequence. Oscar Wilde warned against conflating aesthetics with ethics. To paraphrase that brilliant aesthetician, there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral men’s magazine. Men’s magazines are well published, or badly published. That is all. However sincere and deeply felt, my wish for Playboy to outsell the competition has no more ethical weight than my support for any given sports team.

Besides, what’s so bad about the pro-bachelorhood message? It may be simply rational for a heterosexual man to put little of his energy into romance these days. In 2007, many American women still see their relationships with men as fixer-upper projects. And isn’t it interesting that both conservatives and establishment feminists find ways to justify this condescension? The preferences of the male of the species are widely presumed wrong whenever they conflict with a female agenda. Thus, for example, are paternity suits not recognized as a hypocritical restriction of male reproductive choice in a society that is slowly learning to tolerate abortion. Women protest to liberate themselves; men whine to avoid responsibility—even though the U.S. hasn’t been functionally patriarchal since 1920.

(Hat tip to Playboy assistant managing editor Matt DeMazza, who made me aware of Zobenica’s article by email.)

Update, 3:23 p.m.: A subsequent email:

Well, you took away from it something a little different than we did (we see it as a nod to our more-mature approach to being a man vs. the frat boys of Maxim/FHM/Stuff, etc.), but hey, any way to get more people to read it is fine with us!

Thanks, Brian.
Matt

Labels: AesthEth, ArtEnt, ArtPic, BGC, Femi, Lib, Lit, MorPa, MR, UCL

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 1:52 PM

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.

Labels: AesthEth, Lib, Lit, MorPa, NPH, OthBlo, TaoGlam

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 5:52 PM

March 9, 2006

Hipsters can be square about breast implants

The Guide To Getting It On! is, without a doubt, the ultimate sex book. We’re not talking textbook-style, junior high health class, “Miracle of Life” stuff here. You won’t find sex continually referred to as “coitus” or “copulation.” You won’t find diagrams that resemble the charts and posters hanging in a gynecologist’s office. You won’t find a lecture on what is morally right or wrong.

—from a review posted on the publisher’s website

Oh, no? I found a lecture on page 537: “Here in America men with plastic brains are attracted to women with plastic chests. What a perfect combination. What a sad perception of womanhood. [fourth edition, 2004]” Whether or not author Paul Joannides would admit it, his tirade on the “sheer ridiculousness” of breast augmentation surgery is pure moralizing.

The book bills itself as a hip, progressive sex manual for generations X and Y. For those who seek tattoos or body piercings, it advises caution but politely refrains from calling them stupid. Joannides, like many left-leaning hipsters, is a body-modification hypocrite.

Moralism breeds intellectual laziness, which is why so many intelligent people believed the greedy lawyers and scientifically illiterate journalists who said that silicone breast implants pose an impermissible risk to women’s health. Joannides could have researched this topic a little better. For example, he could have read this article by Virginia Postrel on the real sociopolitics behind the breast-implant controversy.

Labels: AesthEth, ArtPic, CosSur, Femi, Lib, MorPa, Sc, UCL

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 12:30 PM