Mary KennyWe need some straight talking about values, writes Mary Kenny
The mainstream media has become very worried about the amount of pornography available online – especially since a younger generation, highly skilled with technology, can access it so easily. It has been known for children as young as eight to download the most disturbing pornographic images – on their smartphones.
Boys, particularly, are being introduced to the experience of sex through distorted values about women, since the porn models are nothing like ordinary, real, women – and neither do the porn actresses present such inconvenient baggage such as emotions, ethics, shyness or concerns about relationships.
Young teens commonly search for – and see – images of bestiality, sadomasochism, gang rape and child pornography. In the Sunday Independent, the reporter Joanna Fortune witnessed two teenage boys watching porn on their smartphones while travelling on the Luas. One said to the other: “Check that out, I would so rape that.”
Super-sexualised
Women are being objectived and super-sexualised, and such words as ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’ and ‘rape’ are typed into search engines to access degrading images of females.
Biological scientists have found evidence that the teenage brain is highly susceptible and malleable – the human brain is not finished developing until about the age of 25 (which makes rather a nonsense of votes at 16.) But what goes into your brain during your teenage years really, really matters: it gets embedded in the prefrontal cortex and influences all the choices you will make in later life.
So the exposure of teenagers, and even younger children, to gross images is a matter of bona fide concern. What we can do about it is, of course, another question.
Values
Maybe the first thing we should do is to start some straight talking about values. Isn’t the media – and I write as a veteran journalist who has been part of the media all my working life – just a tad hypocritical about the values which have been purveyed, and which have opened the way for this internet porn?
Hasn’t sex been used to sell, and hype up, just about everything in the world of communicaitons? Hasn’t sexual liberation of every possible kind been welcomed in our world? Isn’t any form of ‘repression’ considered negative, unhealthy, reactionary and ‘right-wing’? Hasn’t any form of ‘censorship’ been regarded as unacceptable?
I do not favour censorship myself because I saw what happened in the Soviet Union: state control of the citizen is invidious. But I believe in being honest about this issue just the same.
If you advance an agenda of ‘anything goes’, don’t be surprised if ‘anything’ does flood the electronic field. If you use the antics of such as Madonna or Miley Cyrus, or applaud the success of Fifty Shades of Gray, as the media has done, don’t suddenly go into a Victorian swoon because teen boys will take it all much further. Face up to the consequences of untrammelled freedoms.
I also saw the late Lord Longford, along with Mary Whitehouse, catcalled, jeered at, mocked and disparaged when they warned that porn would target the young and corrupt the vulnerable, and there would be an inevitable slippery slope. And now we’re beginning to sing their tune, appalled at what young kids are looking at.
Are we worried? Yes. Did we ask for it? The truthful, if regrettable, answer is – yes.
An Irish West Side Story
The Irish tour of the musical West Side Story looks terrific: it’s a great Romeo-and-Juliet story and features such energetic, vigorous musical and dance numbers.
The original book, or libretto, was written by Arthur Laurents back in the 1940s: he, with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins, originally thought to make the gang rivalries between young Catholics and Jews. They worked hard on the idea, but for some reason they just couldn’t get it to gel. (There had been an old New York popular play called Abie’s Irish Rose which was on this theme.)
Laurents put the libretto aside for a few years, and hearing some Latin American music, had the idea it would be better to have Latino gangs versus American ones. And maybe avoid some knotty theological points too!
Originally the musical was to be called Saturday Night. Titles matter and West Side Story triumphed.
Despite the narrative being about juvenile delinquents, the composers avoided bad language because of the values of the time.
American debt shame
The ëTea Partyí Republicans in America have been represented as some kind of uniformly ghastly red-necks who hate any form of state welfare. This is not a balanced picture: some are simply distressed by the trillions of debt that the US now owes. This derives from an old Protestant tradition of regarding debt as shameful. Their tactics arenít always wise, but not all their motives are bad or wrong.