Der Pornohass
by Jonathan Quince
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 18:09:25
Through the magic looking-glass of sexuality, I have seen humanity at its highest zeniths and its lowest betrayals. In the visions of my mind, in the eyes of the people around me, and through the screen in front of me as I write, I have variously seen the essences of purity and the putrescence of utter filth. Sex, indeed, may reveal what lies in the hearts of men more surely than any other simple test; for no other inborn characteristic ubiquitous amongst all people spans the full spectrum from our primal ancestry to the potentials of our future, all the while touching on our very purpose in life. It is small wonder that societies from the dawn of history have kept sex so tightly bound and leashed, for its secrets are revealing, and its falsehoods tell no lies; and there is no doubt in my mind that for humanity to be redeemed from its current form, sex must be cleansed, freed, and rightfully embraced.
My naïve a priori assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding, that is not what is happening in the world of porn.
If I must watch another empty-eyed drug addict being monotonously, mechanistically drilled by another tattooed ex-convict, I may well find the necessity of removing my eyeballs and soaking them in bleach. Were I to take a random sample from the general opera of our august porn industry, the viewing experience would approximate the following pattern: Start playing scene. Briefly check out faces and attitudes of performers. Skip to next scene. Lather and rinse visual cortex, and repeat. Nine times from ten, the first few moments of cursory examination will suffice for judgment that there is to be no slaking of thirsts here but through drinking from a sewer; and if I persist, the results are certain to be less than healthy or fully satisfying.
Earlier in my transition from joyful innocence to stony understanding, I presumed Sturgeon’s Law to be the sole cause. Later, I realized that other factors magnify the effect, with the 90% rule recursing at least twice again; I shall fully explicate these matters in some future treatise. It shall suffice for the moment to note that in the present-day marketplace of sexually-explicit material, perhaps one in one thousand parts may meet the minimum criteria for acceptable enjoyability. The distribution is not entirely random, and somewhat higher rates of reward may be sought in certain genera, such as some niches of sapphic bent; but across the board, porn in general is a sea of disgusting and abysmal human failure. Even the very best producers meet the lowest standards no more (and usually less) than one time in ten. And for the curious, “alterna-porn” is usually more promise than panacea.
Part of this change in my stated judgment stems simply from reviewing a larger sample, and from eliminating confirmation bias (pesky and pernicious as it always is). And partly, I have better learnt how to read the faces, eyes, and attitudes of humanity, so as to infer from momentary examination a variety of characteristics. Overall, however, identifying the problem has required discovery of a whole new realm of reality. At first, my eyes were blinded and blurry; then, they were closed; and finally, I have with full sight undertaken study of the picture. Where before I lacked proper hypotheses, now I have tested theory.
As to what actions could constructively ameliorate this problem—and what could not only be minimally acceptable, but superlatively beautiful—yea, the future awaits us again. In the mean time, anybody possessed of decent standards yet semi-reliant on porn for sexual satisfaction faces an unpleasant reality in the ambient world. Suspension of disbelief (or willful self-delusion) helps, for those who are capable of engaging it over even short periods of time; so does a vast library through which to sift, although doing so is as tedious and anhedonic as panning for gold in a Superfund site. Today, alas, I have tales of woe but no quick fix.
Perhaps all of this is merely a logical extension of my general standards for people, which are high (and some may say impossibly so). But for myself, I will keep my standards. For the present, the leading lights of Porn Valley and its simulacra can wallow in their odious creations; and I shall mourn the few of some real potential who may occasionally become entangled in their web. As I have said of other subjects, they can proceed without my moral imprimatur—a pox on all your houses, say I, with no irony whatsoever. And for the future, I can only hope and dream—dream of hope, and hope for dreams.