The following is a transcript of a live presentation given at the Cyber Secrets Conference on Pornography at Brigham Young University on February 7, 2001.
Cyber Secrets: The Problem of Pornography:
The Consumption of People
Dr. Lane Fischer and Dr.
LaNae Valentine
February 7, 2001
Dr. Lane Fischer
I'm pleased to share this time with Dr. Valentine who is the Director
of our Women's Services and Resources. My task is to briefly articulate
the underlying roots of pornography from a sociological and spiritual
basis and to illustrate the eventual manifestation of those roots if they
are allowed to grow unchecked and highlight one protective factor. Dr.
Valentine will illustrate the subtle manifestations of pornography in
everyday life.
As President Bateman stated at today's conference, pornography is defined
as any sexually oriented material intended primary to arouse the reader,
viewer, or listener. When pornography can be demonstrated to be obscene,
it can be judged to be illegal. The legal standards result from the courts
attempts to balance public safety with the free speech provision of the
constitution. We believe that the logic used to determine legality of
material is insufficient for the greatest spiritual and social welfare.
Rather than base our judgment on obscenity or sexuality, per se, we propose
that the standard of impropriety should be the objectification of people
in the service of consumption. Any material that portrays another person
as an object to be consumed should be eschewed.
Rather than discuss sexuality or obscenity, let me trace the roots of
consumption in America very briefly. Two authors are very important relating
this history: Max Weber and Amitai Etzioni. They've articulated the evolution
of capitalism emerging from 17th and 18th century protestantism. Etzioni
picked up where Weber left off and chronicled the shift from capitalism
to hedonism in the 19th and 20th century America. Early protestant immigrants
to America believed that work was good and represented service to God.
The byproduct of hard work and frugality in America was that material
goods became plentiful. Over time, the purpose of work shifted from a
desire to serve God to a desire to accumulate material goods. Etzioni
called this early capitalism. He next chronicled the development of late
capitalism by noting the shift from the accumulation of material goods
to the conspicuous consumption of material goods. The subsequent shift
from late capitalism to modern hedonism is typified by the reactionary
counter culture movement of the 1960s that, as you recall, decried the
establishments consumption of material goods, but replaced it with the
consumption of sensory experience. The free love and drug culture germinated
in the fertile soil of material consumption, but merely replaced the object
of consumption with sensory experience. Hence, the proliferation of terms
we are so accustomed to such as: what a rush, bummer, and adrenaline TV.
Americans have become obsessed with pleasant sensory experience. In modern
hedonism, sensory experience has become the product to be consumed. We
are all familiar with the throw-away mentality in America. We throw away
material. We throw away people. We throw away relationships and many of
our sensory experiences are ephemeral at best.
Latter-day Saints do not believe in asceticism. We do not denigrate the
body nor sensory experience. We believe that God has provided the beauty
of the earth as a gift to us. The scripture is plain in section 59. "All
things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the
benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the
heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen
the body and to enliven the soul. And it pleaseth God that he hath given
all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used,
with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion."
Clearly God wants us to utilize our senses to enrich our experience here
on earth. He does, however, place bounds around the use of all things
good and beautiful. In this case, in section 59, keeping the sabbath and
fasting are the boundaries that keep the senses alive and the soul grateful.
Excess and extortion violate the boundary, compromise the gift, and deaden
the senses. Again, in the scriptures the Lord warns us regarding the use
of the gifts of god. In section 46, "Wherefore, beware lest ye are deceived;
and that you may not be deceived seek ye earnestly the best gifts, always
remembering for what they are given; for verily I say unto you, they are
given for the benefit of those who love me and keep all my commandments,
and him that seeketh so to do; that all may be benefitted that seek or
that ask of me, that ask and not for a sign to consume it upon their lusts."
The phrase, "consume it upon their lusts" is the key to understanding
the misuse of the gifts of beauty, sexuality, and sensory experience.
Moses instructed us that men love Satan more than God. "And men began
from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish." There is a
big difference between being sensuous and being sensual. "Sensuous" means
being aware of sensory stimuli, being awake and appreciative of beauty
and having appetite and sensation. "Sensual" is related to the term "consume
it upon their lusts." The body is good. Sexuality is good. Beauty is good.
They are to be appreciated within certain bounds and relationships. When
the body is treated as an object, it becomes something to be consumed
upon ones lusts. As Elder Neal Maxwell has so eloquently stated, "Carnality
is always such a profound contraction of life. It destroys even that which
it pretends to focus upon."
Perhaps our title "The Consumption of People" sounds harsh to you. There
is evidence of the worst case scenarios of such consumption in the ancient
scripture and in modern observation. Mormon reported a heinous example
of the consumption of people. He wrote, "And notwithstanding this great
abomination of the Lamanites, this doth not exceed that of our people
in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have
they taken prisoners;" And, in my words, they raped them. "And after they
had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing
their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour
their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts;
and they do it for a token of bravery."
The Nephites were so hardened that they no longer saw people as people.
They saw them as objects to be consumed to satisfy their various appetites.
They consumed them for sex. They consumed them for entertainment. They
consumed them for a feeling of power. They even consumed them for food.
Let me give you a modern example. Ronald Holmes in his text, Sex Crimes
documented several examples of anthropophagy. These perpetrators captured
young men and women. They sexually assaulted them. They killed them. They
cut them up into little pieces. They ate them. They stored them in their
freezers. Clearly it happens now.
The Nephites murdered the daughters of the Lamanites to gain power over
their enemies. Cain murdered Abel to gain a false sense of power and freedom.
"And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that
I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called master Mahan, and
he gloried in his wickedness. And Cain went into the field and Cain talked
with Abel, his brother. And it came to pass that while they were in the
field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him. And Cain
gloried in that which he hath done, saying: I am free; surely the flocks
of my brother fall into my hands."
At some point Cain stopped seeing Abel as his human brother. He only saw him as
an objective impediment to his acquisition of wealth. The revelation repeatedly emphasizes that
Abel was a human brother, not an object. It says, "Cain talked with Abel, his brother."
And "Cain rose up against Abel, his brother." When the Lord confronted Cain he said, "Where is Abel,
thy brother?" And Cain answered, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Lord knew where Abel was. The question
was a rhetorical inquiry designed to bring certain things into Cain's consciousness. The Lord immediately
emphasized to Cain that Abel was his human brother. In the same way, Mormon emphasized that the young women
that the Nephites consumed were the daughters of the Lamanites. They were human children. They were part
of a family, not objects to consume to satisfy appetites.
You might think at this point that I'm referring to extreme examples of
murder and cannibalism for shock value. In fact, these are the empirical
extensions of a process that begins long before such extremities are manifest.
The root of the problem is the objectification of people in the service
of consumption. How subtly we are desensitized and brought step by step
to such extremities! A step along the way appears in last month's addition
of GQ Magazine. In an interview with a celebrity, they asked her, "You
are stranded on a desert island with the cast of Friends. Whom would you
eat first?" And she says, "like cannibalism?" "Yeah." Rather than being
repelled she said, "Well, I would eat Jennifer Anniston first, she looks
the most appetizing to me." "Really? She is kind of bony." "No, she has
meat in the right places." Now that question is clearly an example of
total objectification. Objectification leads to that kind of question.
It is inappropriate, but it sells magazines. And we are not shocked by
it. We are desensitized step by step by step.
Popular commercial images that market products by comparing them with
sexual images thrive on objectification. They are a baby step away from
material in which the only product is the sexual image. In the first case,
sexually stimulating images are used in the service of selling a product.
In the second case, the sexually stimulating image is the product. The
person whose body is used in either case is only treated as an object
to arouse the reader. Do not be deceived. Steady desensitization to such
objectification and consumption only leads one way. Setting boundaries
on the process and becoming sensitized to people as part of the human
family rather than objects to be consumed is the road back.
Dr. Lanae Valentine
. . . they that are wise have received the truth and have taken the Holy
Spirit for their guide and have not been deceived. (D&C 45: 57)
I hope to illustrate the ideas that Dr. Fischer has just presented with
examples from our everyday media and advertising. I also want to emphasize
that I have really tamed down these images and that all of them can be
found in magazines one could buy at the grocery store or in fact at our
BYU bookstore. My desire is to illustrate with images we see everyday
the objectification and consumption of people. Many agree that our mainstream
media and advertising are becoming a form of soft porn (Pipher, 1999).
In her book Deadly Persuasion, Jean Kilbourne describes advertising as
America's pornographer. We are growing up and expected to thrive in an
increasingly hazardous cultural environment, one made more toxic by advertising.
The many facets of the media no longer simply influence our culture, they
are our culture.
From the time we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep at night,
we are exposed to hundreds of images and ideas not only from television
but also from newspaper headlines, magazine covers, movies, websites,
photos, video games and billboards. It's estimated that the average American
views 400-600 ads per day. Unless we live on a mountaintop we cannot escape
today's media culture, anymore than we can escape air pollution or pesticides
in our food.
These images constantly surround us and they are powerful forces in shaping
our attitudes and beliefs. Kilbourne stresses that we are a country deeply
corrupted by advertisers and that our complacency to this fact leaves
us vulnerable. In fact, much of advertising's power comes from the belief
that advertising does not affect us. They want us to believe that advertising
is fun and games, silly and trivial so that we will be less guarded and
critical than we might otherwise be. Thus, while we're laughing and sneering
the commercial does its work (Killing us Softly III, 2000).
If advertising didn't work, why would companies spend over $200 billion
a year on slogans, jingles, images and campaigns? Why would they be willing
to spend over $250,000 just to produce an average television commercial
if they did not get results? For "big" events such as the Super Bowl,
companies gladly spend over a million dollars just to produce a commercial
and over ½ million dollars to air it (Kilbourne, 1999).
Perhaps, they're hoping to experience the same success as
Victoria's Secret during the 1999 Super Bowl. After a 30 second commercial
during which they paraded their models across the screen clad in their
underwear, one million people turned away from the game and logged on
to the website promoted by the ad. As Kilbourne states, "Make no mistake:
the primary purpose of the mass media is to sell audiences to advertisers.
We are the product." (Kilbourne, p.34)
Most people know by now that advertising often turns people into objects.
Although men are beginning to be objectified in the ads, it's usually
women's bodies that are dismembered and packaged to sell products [ ads].
Most people don't fully realize that there are terrible consequences when
people become "things." Hiding or severing a person's features, particularly
facial features (which often reveal cues about a person's identity and
uniqueness), enable the observer's attitude to shift towards objectification
- treating and thinking about the person as an object without needs, feelings
or humanity (Dittrich, 1999). We forget that behind the glossy images,
the naked and used women are real people - reducing them to objects rapes
them of their dignity, intelligence, personality, gifts and wisdom.
This phenomenon can be illustrated with a couple of recent advertizing
campaigns. Benetton conducted a campaign where pictures of men on death
row were yoked with their overpriced sweaters. There was a protest from
the public that Benetton was pushing the limit by exploiting the tragic
situation of these men who were, in fact, real human beings. Calvin Klein
displayed similar marketing excess during a campaign which portrayed children
clad in underwear placed on billboards in the busy sections of New York
City. Likewise the public was outraged protesting that the images were
approaching child porn and the children were being exploited. Calvin Klein
canceled the ad campaign. However, both Benetton and Calvin Klein got
what they wanted - shock value, attention and increased sales.
I am heartened that the public was outraged that the men and the children
in these ads were being exploited for shock value in order to draw attention
to products. However, it's curious that there is not the same outrage
when women are exploited in the media to sell products? How can we be
outraged by these ads and not by these ads. If an animal were portrayed
in this manner, people would be up in arms. Yet, women's bodies are violated,
dismembered, objectified, sexualized and exploited all the time in advertising
in order to sell anything from chain saws to fishing line.
The eroticized imagery of women has been part of the general cultural
landscape for the past fifty years or so. We're not really shocked by
it because we're desensitized to it. Women's bodies are not only used
to attract attention to the product in increasingly absurd ways.
Again, most of us think nothing of these ads. We think the marketing strategies
are harmless, silly, maybe even clever attempts to catch our attention.
We don't realize that we are in the early stages of denial and desensitization.
Thus, in order to get the same effect, advertisers have to push the envelop
and make the ads even more shocking, more extreme, more pornographic -
as well as move into the new territory of exploiting men, adolescents
and children. Speaking about the advertising trend of more shocking images,
advertising executives told the Boston Globe, "You have to push a little
harder . . . to hold, to shock, break through. Now that the competition
is fiercer, a whole lot rougher trade takes place. Today, business wants
even more desperately to seduce . . . It wants to demolish resistance."
(Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth).
We must face the fact that these ads are indeed breaking down our resistance
- slowly desensitizing us to the value of other human beings, relationships,
real intimacy and connection. We are becoming more tolerant and more accepting
of material that is having a deadening and numbing effect upon us. In
addition, the objectification of people and the association of our innate
and natural desires with objects - is related to addiction and substance
abuse in ways that are complex and that we do not fully understand.
Advertisers spend enormous amounts of money on psychological research
and understand addiction as well as any group in our society. Addicted
people make great consumers. They want us to become addicted, to desire
something we don't really need, to consume products that aren't even good
for us, to impress people that we don't even like all the while creating
a climate of denial where all kinds of addictions can flourish. They do
this with full intent. Their job is to use all of their powers of persuasion
to not only sell a product, but to influence how we think and feel (Kilbourne,
1999).
Even though the aim of advertising is to make money, not necessarily to
create addicts - they can't do the one without doing the other. Even though
the ads may not necessarily cause addictions, they create a climate of
suggestion and acceptance where addictions are more likely to flourish.
An effective strategy they use is to equate rebellion, maturity and freedom
with behaviors like smoking, drinking and impulsive and impersonal sex.
They encourage us to confuse addiction with liberation and enslavement
with freedom. Certainly, we are not free when we are consumed by our appetites.
It is through a balanced combination of relationships with other people,
themselves, their community and a spiritual power greater than themselves
that people get healthy emotional nurturance. Advertisers would have us
believe that relationships with human beings are fragile and disappointing
- instead we can count on products, especially the addictive ones.
["Until I Find a Real Man, I'll Settle for a Real Smoke," declares a rather
tough looking woman in a cigarette ad - chocolate, ice cream, cheese cake,
etc.]
[An ad for Briones cigars features a man on a balcony smoking a cigar
while an angry woman far below looks up at him. The copy says "It doesn't
argue. It won't talk back. And it has no opinion"] [Conclusion: cigars
are more desirable that a woman - unless the woman is passive, always
agreeable and doesn't ever speak up or express her opinion] These subtle
messages influence individuals to become attached to products and to develop
a pathological love and trust relationship with objects. In truth, addiction
increasingly corrupts and co-opts every desirable outcome of real connection
with a real person.
Images that trivialize and eroticize violence to women are also frequent
messages used in advertizing. Many ads imply that women want forced sex
and trivialize battering and images of brutality. The body language portrayed
in these ads is that women are to be passive and vulnerable, women are
there for the taking, always waiting, whose only purpose is to please
sexually. [Fetish Perfume ad: woman looks like she has been beat up, has
two black eyes: the copy reads "Apply generously to your neck so he can
smell the scent as you shake your head , NO."] [In American society crimes
against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate
and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime (de Becker, 1997,
p. 64).] Certainly violence against women is another example of the damaging
effects of objectification and the consumption of people. [the Fetish
ad was pulled]
Advertising and the popular culture define human connection almost entirely
in terms of sex, thus over-emphasizing the relative importance of sex
in our lives and under-emphasizing other important things such as friendship,
loyalty, fun, children, and community. Never in our history has a culture
been so obsessed and consumed by sex. Sex is increasingly being used to
sell products of every kind.
Sex in advertizing is about a constant state of desire and arousal - never
about real intimacy, fidelity or commitment. This not only makes intimacy
impossible - it erodes real desire.
"Sex in advertising and the media is often criticized from a puritanical
perspective - there's too much of it, it's too blatant, it will encourage
kids to be promiscuous, and so forth. But sex in advertizing has far more
to do with trivializing sex than promoting it, with narcissism than with
promiscuity, with consuming than with connecting." In order to catch our
attention, more and more the media are borrowing images from the world
of pornography - which is a world of violence and utter disconnection.
According to Norman Cousins:
"The trouble with this wide-open pornography is not that it corrupts,
but that it desensitizes; not that it unleashes the passions, but that
it cripples the emotions; not that it encourages a mature attitude,
but that it is a reversion to infantile obsessions; not that it removes
the blinders, but that it distorts the view. Prowess is proclaimed,
but love is denied. What we have is not liberation, but dehumanization."
Usually the people in the ads are grim and boring [grim and boring couple]
- there is no humor, no quirkiness, none of the history or individuality
that defines a person's character. The people in these ads aren't loving
- they are the users and the used.
"This notion that sexiness and sex appeal come from without rather than
within is one of advertising's most damaging messages. Real sexiness has
to do with passion for life, uniqueness and vitality." (Jean Kilbourne)
Another dangerous message portrayed and accepted by so many is that love,
happiness and respect are guaranteed when we dedicate our life to our
external being. Men and women (especially women) learn from TV, movies,
and advertising that their appearance is the most important thing about
them. We are flooded with images of impossible to attain standards of
beauty and perfection. These images aren't good for men or women. They
prevent us from seeing one another as we really are . . . in suggesting
a fantasy in place of a real person. They have a numbing effect, reducing
all senses but the visual.
Lastly, one of the most damaging effects of advertising is that we're
subjected to a steady barrage of messages telling us that all that matters
is the immediate fulfillment of our needs and desires. "We are hedonists
and we want what feels good," declares a NIKE ad. In truth the immediate
gratification of our desires leads to the erosion of them. Could there
be a connection between images of constant sexual gratification and passion
and the increasing burden on marriage and long term commitment? Rarely
do television, movies, magazines and advertisers show us images of the
work and effort required in maintaining relationships or for the successful
completion of any worthwhile endeavor. All we see are images of ease and
convenience.
Perhaps what we become most addicted to is the compelling myth of convenience
- the great American dream of getting from A to Z - desire to fulfillment
- without having to do any of the work in-between. This point is well
illustrated in a story featured by NBC about college students - men and
women - who regularly make a practice of getting drunk together, then
"hooking up" with whomever happens to be nearest at hand. One student
interviewed afterward said it was a great way of quickly getting his sexual
needs met without the "time-consuming" hassle of actually dating and getting
to know somebody.
Mary Sykes Wilie observes that those who buy into this illusion believe
"The best possible world would be one in which all process, all preparation,
all actual doing to get something done could be eliminated - in which
all human desires were accomplished without the tedium of actually accomplishing
them. In fact, wouldn't it be convenient if whole classes of active verbs
could be eliminated - study, build, learn, make, write, paint, not to
mention, plant, water, weed, pick, or stir, chop, mix, boil, steam, bake
and serve?"
Certainly these illusions run counter to our understanding of why we are
here upon the earth. Much of our mortal experience consists of working,
waiting, learning, feeling, growing, forgiving, and repenting which enables
us to acquire the attributes of Godhood - kindness, patience, tolerance
and love. If we buy into the suggestions to deaden our senses with addictions
and quick fixes to our problems we forfeit much of our mortal experience.
The most terrible consequence of allowing these images and messages to
consume us is ultimately a loss of our capacity to love. Our awareness
of others shuts down thus making us more and more alone. We see others
as mere functions or objects to be used - or to be ignored - not as humans
to be helped, to be loved, or to be listened to. WHAT CAN WE DO ?