Do you think the world has gone mad? I don’t.
I know it’s gone mad. More and more the human race
resembles a heard of lemmings, rushing towards that final precipice. I am
the little girl looking at life’s absurdities, shouting, as the parade passes
by, that the emperor is naked. Nonsense, the mass response comes: he is
just beautifully dressed!
Speaking of nakedness, I have
porn on my mind at the moment, specifically the dire Fifty Shades of Grey by the talentless E. L. James.
Who buys this appalling rubbish, I wonder? What purpose does it
serve? Is its bewildering success a measure of just how empty the
emotional and sexual life of middle aged women has become? Is it an indictment
of middle-aged men? Alas, I fear it must be. More than that, I fear
its commercial success shows just how stupidly gullible a great many people
are, how stupidly gullible most women are, particularly women of a certain
age. These are the people who look before and after and pine for what is
not. Actually they pine for what has never been, for what they have never
had, true erotic fulfilment. All they can do is feast on it vicariously,
dining on fifty shades of boredom.
E. L James is really Julia come
to life. Surely you remember Julia? A pledged member of the
Anti-Sex League, she is Winston Smith’s lover in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
When she’s not having extra Anti-Sex League sex she works in Pornosec, Muck
House, as it’s colloquially known, a sub-section of the Ministry of Truth, which
produces erotica for the masses. Specifically she works on the novel
writing machines, turning out boring, ghastly rubbish, as she puts it.
Still, it’s important to
recognise that rubbish, particularly pornography, serves a purpose. It’s
often a way of mopping up all sorts of residuals energies and frustrated
libidos. How prescient Orwell was to make an outwardly orthodox member of
the Anti-Sex League a functionary in the manufacturing of muck! For porn,
it might be said, is really just a form of anti-sex, judging real sex to be
contact between real people, people who are emotionally and physically engaged
with one another. Who knows? Without porn to compensate for vacuous
sterility hordes of frustrated and under-fulfilled proles might cause social
chaos. “The people have such empty lives”, the queen is told. “Let
them read Fifty Shades of Grey”, she responds.
The underemployed members of the
European Parliament really should be told that they close down Muck House at
their own peril. This week, you see, they will be voting to ‘ban all
forms of pornography.’ This will include yet more censorship of the
internet in an attempt to “eliminate gender stereotypes” that demean
women.
Our MEPs, the dear old things, are
also proposing the establishment of an Anti-Sex League. No; what they
actually want is for governments to set up state sex censors with “a mandate to
impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the
sexualisation of girls.” Would that include girls, I wonder, promoting
their own sexualisation?
The
charge is being led by Kartika Liotard, a left-wing Dutch feminist MEP,
bedecked with the characteristic red sash of the Anti-Sex League, who
wants "statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in
the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic
products and sex tourism.” So, Amsterdam’s red light specials can -
excuse the profanity - get fucked!
There are of course unenlightened
people (aren’t there always?) who see this as just another erosion of free
speech. The accusation has been given added weight by the fact that the
parliament has blocked the orgasmic rush of protest emails that followed when
news of the measure emerged. Criticism in any form, the vox populi itself, is being treated like so much
rubbish, dumped straight into the Memory Hole by the spam filters.
Yes, indeed, we move ever forward
into a modern version of Orwell’s super state. It is not governed by
malign forces, though, just those who act for our own good; those who know what
is best for us in their magnificent condescension. The anti-porn drive
comes soon after a report urging tighter press regulations, including the right
of Brussels officials to control and supervise national media, with powers to
enforce fines or sack journalists. Censorship is clearly the wave of the
future in our brave new – sexless - Europe that has such people in it.
I have little or no interest in
porn. I agree with Julia - though not E. L. James - that commercial
erotica is boring and predictable. I do not want to read about sex, still
less watch other people having sex. I’m far too hands-on for that.
No empty and unfulfilling fantasies for me, thanks ever so much; I leave that
for the mummies and all others who are past it, assuming that they ever drew
alongside it in the first place. No, I could not care less about porn,
but I do care more about freedom. I will speak as often and as loudly as I can
against Big Brother, or Sister, in Brussels, whose creeping tyranny does not
creep any more. Freedom is the freedom to enjoy pornography, even if it
is something as banal and lifeless as Fifty
Shades of Grey.
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