First it happened with “obscene.” The word evolved from its traditional association with profanity and pornography, and began being used to describe things that are truly evil.
Item: A California State University faculty member referred to the state’s “retention of obscenely profligate corporate tax breaks, despite the severity of the budget crisis.”
Item: The creator of a new Coney Island sideshow attraction, the Waterboard Thrill Ride, asked, “What’s more obscene, the official position that waterboarding is not torture, or our official position that it’s a thrill ride?”
Item: In a review of The Stoning of Soraya M., Los Angeles Times movie critic Kevin Thomas wrote, “What is so compelling ... is the way religion can be exploited in the most obscene and hypocritical manner by those in power to oppress others—and how total power over others can corrupt totally.”
Lately, the same semantic phenomenon has been happening with the word “porn.” In recent months, it has been used as an adjective for things that really do harm people.
Barbara Ehrenreich has written about “recession porn,” the story of an incremental descent from excess to frugality, from ease to austerity. Another writer came up with a related phrase, “pessimism porn,” which refers to the fear of economic doomsday.
Then there’s “org porn,” which is used to portray someone who is addicted to home organization. A recent book, Everything (Almost) In Its Place, states that “Org porn is that glossy, air-brushed fantasy world where everything is pristine, serene and perfectly in order, sort of Playboy, but with chore charts and name-plated cubbyholes. Org porn is everywhere these days: in magazines, coffee table books, advertisements and TV shows. And when consumed in excess, it can lead to feelings of inadequacy, binge spending on organizational product, and even marital discord.”
In a review of the four-part MSNBC series Future Earth: Journey to the End of the World, Los Angeles Times television critic Robert Lloyd wrote, “If the news is bad—that we can only hope to mitigate the damage we’ve already done—it does provide an opportunity to drown New York and Shanghai in computer-animated oceans rising faster than a bathtub fills. Here the science melts into speculative fiction and what might be called Apocalypse Porn.”
The irony is that there are those who believe actual porn is leading to the Apocalypse. This is best summed up by “Rosie,” who commented on the website of Don Dodge, director of business development at Microsoft: “I think that something needs to be done,” she wrote. “The Internet is, in my experience, a horrible creation. Maybe it was a good thing before the perverts got hold of it, but now it’s 98 percent porn soup.”
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg addressed the problem in more political terms: “The argument from supposedly liberty-loving liberals goes like this: ‘We protect extreme and unpopular speech because if that is safe, they’ll never get to our core liberties. If they can ban smut,’ argue the slippery slopers, ‘what’s to stop them from banning criticism of the politicians?’ ”
At the other end of the spectrum, we have Democratic adviser James Carville. In 1996, he introduced The People vs. Larry Flynt at a screening in Washington. In his talk, he said, “[director] Milos Forman lost his parents in the Holocaust. The first thing a totalitarian state goes after is pornography, and when they do, the public applauds. It gets worse from there.”
In America, porn continues on its horny way into mainstream acceptability. For example, Sunset Thomas, who appeared in more than 300 porn movies, has now written a novel about the industry, titled Anatomy of an Adult Film. A reporter asked her, “The book is a big step to ending your adult film career after 18 years—is that a long time to be in the business?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Most porn stars only last three or four years. I have been making movies for so many years, I now want to focus on my book, I want to start directing movies and doing the reality show.”
Meanwhile, the word “porn” continues to reside in a variety of contexts. The Good: Grow magazine talks about “marijuana porn.” The Bad: There’s “bad-parent porn,” “bad-relationship porn,” “bad-friend porn.” And the Ugly: Times pop culture commentator Patrick Goldstein reports on the premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France: “My favorite assessment of the film comes from director Eli Roth, who plays Sgt. Donnie Donowitz in Basterds. He defends the film’s narrative conceit about tough Jews getting revenge against Hitler, describing it as ‘kosher porn—it’s something I dreamed since I was a kid.’ ”
In Strange Bedfellows: How Late Night Comedy Turns Democracy Into a Joke, Russell L. Peterson writes, “Truth Porn: fantasies that exploit our naïve notions about the political efficacy of honesty.” And don’t forget “food porn.” In fact, it’s all just one big bowl of porn soup. Eat heartily.
Paul Krassner is the author of In Praise of Indecency, and he publishes the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, available at PaulKrassner.com. This article originally appeared in the October issue of AVN.
