Pornography’s Effects on a
Modern Society
I’ve heard many political and entertainment commentators in this country talk about the degeneration of American culture. One of the biggest staples in their argument is always the high distribution and surging popularity in pornography. With the invention of the biggest pornography distribution medium ever, the Internet, pornography has reached an interesting status in American popular culture for the first time.
This newfound interest in pornography, to me at least, means one thing: it’s easier to obtain now and in a much less degrading manner. The fascination in porn by men and women were was always there, however, it was always sold in a manner that was humiliating to the customer. Stag films shown in creepy theaters in Time’s Square, beta tapes, and VHS’s sold in scary stores with paper all over the windows that sat next to KFC’s in a strip mall. So now anyone everyone is free to look and find out what the big deal is, what was always considered so taboo, in the privacy in his or her own home.
So now that now brings us to our current state: many people are watching porn so now many porn stars are becoming recognizable. Porn stars are starting to pop up everywhere—snowboards, sneaker ads, TV dramas, action figures, and VH1’s top 100 lists. Is this so wrong, though? For the first time people have stopped their the demonization of these women and started to understand their plight more, not to mention the fact that in the first time in the porn industry these women are not being exploited finically and have the opportunity to become millionaires. This isn’t a problem, however; we’re not all awful people because we recognize a name or a face. We’re not going to go to hell like the 700 Club tells us every Sunday and we’re not going to fall into the greatest social dilemma this country has ever seen, according to Bill O’Reily.
Celebrity comes from people being able to recognize a specific person., And once they have achieved celebrity, sell a product. The American public now has a new medium that embraces pornography, and the American public highly embraces the new medium, therefore, whether you like it or not, the American public embraces pornography. The most important fact is that the pornography industry embraces the American public. Without us, all they have is North Korea’s Kim Jong II to keep their jobs afloat. So what the porn industry does is try to emulate American popular culture to try to keep us interested.
Obviously porn’s biggest vehicle right now is the Internet, so they’ve skipped the oversized boxes and just went right to digital video. Suddenly there’s a rise of interest in reality television and the exploitation of the “normal person,” so the porn industry makes itstheir own stake at the rReality gold mine. The results are websites that take advantage of just that in the forms oflike the Bang Bus and Chick Trick. These websites showcase female actresses who play innocent young women who just happen to fall for the camera man’s shtick and wind up in sexual relations on tape and then are kicked out. Now if everyone knows that this an act, why does it still generate thousands of hits and thousands of dollars a day? It’s a curiosity that has been burning within this country that needs to be released.
Like any fad in America, the recent interest in pornography will eventually die down, although it will never disappear. As long as humans have existed there has been an interest in all things sexual. Despite what commentators might say, we’re no different than we were in the 1950’s. The only thing that has changed is our access to the product.
