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SAY, WHO PLAYED IN THE SUPER BOWL?
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"Indecency" is back in the news and boy, am I surprised. I thought the
whole concept of such a thing had been abandoned long ago and we were in the age
of Anything Goes. So it came as a shock when Michael Powell, son of Colin
Powell and chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, got mad about the
vulgarity of the half-time show at the Super Bowl in January and demanded that
the television producers responsible clean up their act. The cleanup has now
extended to the Howard Stern show, which resists it like a Gulf Stream gamefish
hooked in the mouth, making spectacular leaps in the air and sudden dives to
the ocean bottom.
Chairman Powell didn't act alone. He was supported by millions of Super Bowl
viewers and others who thought the exhibitionists had finally gone too far
and needed to be roped in. He was not of course supported by the ACLU, the
media, college faculties, or any of the other free-speech fiends, who keep their
own hands clean, but are glad to serve as the enablers of the pornographic
profiteers who incidentally use the services of ACLU-affiliated lawyers and
advertise heavily in the media (up to recently my local newspaper on Long Island
carried two full pages of prostitution ads every day of the year). When battle
is joined between the porno lobby and the People, the People generally lose, so
I'm not expecting an FCC victory in this one. At best they'll get a
face-saving deal paying lip service to the idea of a cleanup, which will be abandoned
as soon as the polluters think no one's looking.
What caused all this furor? Why did people suddenly decide things were
slipping out of control and that we were heading for something that has never
before existed in the world -- a completely promiscuous society with no sexual
rules at all? Public nudity as demonstrated by Janet Jackson was certainly an
outward and visible sign of this. It was already everywhere -- in every
kind of show and publication, but most strikingly at every beach and pool
throughout the country. Every year women's bathing costumes shrunk some more. Women
were now being obliged to display their buttocks and most of their groin if
they wanted to be in style. Men responded -- it was now permissible at least
in films or shows to handle women by their buttocks or their breasts. There
was still plenty of room for more of this because the dividing line between
outright pornography and mainstream entertainment hadn't yet been completely
broken down. But it was being erased.
And what was all this in aid of? The same old objective that had occupied
male daydreams since the dawn of time -- women as communal property. Every
woman, theoretically at least, to be accessible to every man all the time. No
rigmarole about marriage or courtship or "relationships", just one-night
stands world without end. Utopia at last! Women would realize that it was just
unreasonable for them to coquette and flirt and tease men when it was all so
simple. Sex was natural and there couldn't be too much of it, and if you were a
little careful, there'd be no consequences and if there were, well there were
ways of taking care of them too. But the Pill took care of everything anyway
and there was no more need for anyone to deny themselves the health-giving
benefits of a really fulfilling sex life.
All this has its attractions, at least to people in the bloom of youth with
hard-driving hormones. There are some hitches though. It's all right to
instruct people to take care and take precautions, but sex isn't like flying a
plane and making sure you've complied with all the rules before takeoff. No one
carries a checklist into a bedroom. There is such a thing as spontaneity and
there will always be people who value it. The Sexual Revolution may be a big
success but it will always have some casualties at least.
Possibly the most powerful weapon for getting the women into line was just
plain old language. Previous generations recognized that words were weapons.
Certain words had a high sexual content and were under the ban, for the reason
that words are synonymous with ideas. Introduce the words into a conversation
and you've introduced the ideas. Getting the ideas on the table means opening
up new possibilities between a woman and the man who's slipped them in.
Formerly the woman had the option to get them withdrawn; today she's a hopeless
square if she blinks at the worst obscenities. She knows why they're being
used, though. It's claimed that a lot of women don't mind, they're into sex
just as much as the men. Granting that this true up to a point, the fact is that
a generation ago, it wasn't true of the majority of women. Have they changed
that much? Men haven't changed at all. By the way, when I say that the
breakdown of standards has as its objective the collectivization of women, I don't
mean there's a plan behind it. That's not needed; just a shared desire
among males for sex without limits or costs is enough to drive society to the
goal, whether conscious of it or not.
Women are under pressure as never before. Fear of pregnancy used to be a
convenient reason for refusing sex -- and holding out for marriage -- but
abortion and the Pill have nullified that excuse. But they've liberated women?
Yeah, from marriage and families and normal lives if that's the kind of
liberation they're looking for. Many of them seem to have doubts about it.
This brings us back to the indecency question and its bearing on the bigger
issue, or Topic A as it's often called. Commissioner Powell wants to impose
censorship on the networks. He doesn't accept the idea that society has no
right to prevent public obscenity. And he has the same understanding as myself
about where it's leading. Yes, the Constitution says Congress shall make no
laws abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, but that was written at a
time when no one imagined that obscenity was a legitimate form of speech
entitled to protection under the law. To say that censorship was barred by the
First Amendment when in fact self-censorship made it unnecessary is like saying we
have no right to ban nudism because we never bothered with a law against it
at a time when everyone wore clothes even to the beach. We didn't bother with
a law against same-sex marriage either, but we will now.
The First Amendment didn't stop censorship of the movies up to forty or so
years ago, when every film was marked "Passed by the National Board of Review".
No moviegoer turned a hair at this or imagined that his constitutional
rights were being infringed. They weren't, but shyster lawyers and judges, eager
for pornography money, changed all that. Their argument was that it was "
realistic" to introduce obscenity, depravity, and perversion into print and film
because these things existed in real life. It was "realistic" yes, but was it "
real"? No, because only a camera on 24-hour watch could present "reality".
"Realism" was something else. It presented a realistic view of life in
exactly the same way as a Dumas or a Hugo presented a romantic one -- by
selection of details. But the rights weren't equal because the realist selection
had a tendency to debauch life by corruption of the language and imagination of
the people, in short, the furniture or the ambiance of the world we live in.
It's not enough to say we can avoid this degradation if e want to; we have a
right to fight pollution where we find it. And don't worry, artistic freedom,
and yes, realism, will continue to exist as they have for centuries. So will
sex.
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