When we were kids porn came from only a few sources- your uncle’s playboys hidden in the attic or under the bed at the cottage and Xavier Hollander’s Happy Hooker read outloud at slumber parties.
Today porn is readily available and even impossible to avoid. My daughter did a grade one French Immersion project on Castor Canadiense (beavers) but did her research in English- say no more.
-not airbrushed
-not always fabulous
-not all the same in what we like, want, respond to
-not always ensured a happy ending – sorry or you are welcome, for the pun
Porn removes the best part of life- the individual and its human side. It reduces all of us to a single dimension and a cliche. Excess of it is said to dismantle our instinct towards and ability for intimacy.
None of this maybe matters if you have a grip on reality and have had some real experience with real live human beings and appreciate the difference between the two. The problem with the consistent exposure of porn for our teens is that it becomes their only frame of reference. As it was so well put in an interview on CBC- it is like a “Highlight Reel”. Pardon the pun.
Say you had only watched your favourite sport through a ‘highlight reel’. A hockey game, for example, with non- stop, edge of seat excitement, with all of it not only looking beautiful and choreographed but also shooting only to score. I can’t resist the puns.
Then you go to your first game- it is cold, and the guy behind you bumps you hard and you spill your draft down your front, your hot dog is nasty, the lighting makes you look green and the game is disappointing and boring.
Any of that compare to the first time you had sex?
If we must watch some Hollywood we need BBC as well- where the people are human, their frailities, they idiosyncracies, their bad teeth, their pot bellies, their ugly moments and the harsh reality that, at times life is, well, just life.
For teens, they are not going to have any idea that real life isn’t ever the same. The experts tell us we should deconstruct it with them- remind them that it is all lighting, acting, makeup and fake. The shooting of a porn movie is like any movie- after you get over the fact that everyone is naked- the shoot is actually long and boring and anything but stimulating.
One of my all time favourite movies is, I have said before, LOVE ACTUALLY – it opens almost surprisingly on the shooting of a porn movie. The two actors are awkward and shy and it is anything but sexy. It is clumsy.
( Embedding was disabled but you can see part of the clip here)
They are two people sharing something intimate but it is far from intimate. And that is a great place to start the discussion.
Love “giving birth to a cucumber”. YIKES. Hard to erase that from their memory bank.
That’s precisely the scene missing…
Before you embark on said research, remember the german shepherd.
And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
Nancy, your first paragraph describes my adolescent “education”. My uncle’s Playboys under the bed in the basement bedroom at my grandparent’s house (I think he was still in university) and discovering (and then stealing!) a copy of the Happy Hooker from my great-aunt & uncle’s house in Montreal one summer.
Oh, those were the days. Today it’s all you can do to keep your kids from stumbling upon it by accident. When in grade one, my oldest daughter told me, “Mom, when I was at Jane’s house yesterday we searched up barbie on google and then there was a video of a lady giving birth to a cucumber”. OMG. (And is it wrong that my first reaction was relief that the accidental peep during unsupervised computer access happened at a friend’s house and not at ours?)
I, too, love Love Actually and you’re right – those scenes with Martin Freeman are a good place to start the discussion. My girls are so used to seeing him as Bilbo Baggins now that it’ll make it even more awkward – bonus points!
lengthy empirical research
I really should write it… but what kind of research might that involve, hmmmm?! 😉
I need to get you a new copy- or maybe you could write it…
Well, that IS the problem with porn… or the steady diet of it, anyway. Porn doesn’t bother me, in it’s essence given it’s purpose – I mean, it doesn’t offend me (much) but I don’t look at it very often. And given my age, I’ve had “real” experiences, so of course I know what is real and what isn’t. But, I wasn’t raised on a steady diet of the stuff, unlike many people, now aged 25 or 30. I often wonder how that changes people and their attitudes towards sex. (With real people, I mean.) It can’t possibly always be positive. #Steubenville
But, as is the case of many things, the pendulum swings back in the other direction eventually… one day something more shocking takes it’s place – and that shocking thing might be downright puritanical! One can only hope.
PS – Someone kept/stole my original copy of The Happy Hooker I had when I was all wayward and teenaged, and I’ve not been able to replace it’s “first edition” content since then. All the new versions are suspiciously “edited”. Boo! Hiss!!