I suppose we could get moralistic about it again--and it's not wrong for someone to do it--but I need to be real about another aspect: the pornification of our culture only has been successful because we are in fact sexual beings. Not as some uncomfortable concession that slips out into view when the 12 kids burst forth from the matriarch's long skirt, mind you. Every titan of lechery you could name knows that he's trading in something the vast majority of us desire. And that desire itself is good. It's twisted all over the place, and we could write monstrous tomes about the damage this disordered desire does.
If our culture made an icon, well, it would look like the '50 Shades' movie poster. But the first step in desiring the good instead, and the highest goods, is to acknowledge that this counter-appeal has an appeal. There's nothing prudish about most of the people I know, but "Hollywood" aren't aliens from the planet Zaltan; they are us. They might be particularly broken versions of us, but they are us. Perhaps even perpetrators of great evils, but then, so have I been. I don't have the right to speak the name "Harvey Weinstein" or "Polanski" or whomever, as though I haven't needed to go to Confession--actually--in 20 years. Quite the contrary.
Fair enough, I will never be arrested, publicly shamed, and excoriated for anything I've ever done, and I pray it will always remain so. But I understand these perverts; these perverts are me. It's not the hottest of hot takes, but it will have to do.
If our culture made an icon, well, it would look like the '50 Shades' movie poster. But the first step in desiring the good instead, and the highest goods, is to acknowledge that this counter-appeal has an appeal. There's nothing prudish about most of the people I know, but "Hollywood" aren't aliens from the planet Zaltan; they are us. They might be particularly broken versions of us, but they are us. Perhaps even perpetrators of great evils, but then, so have I been. I don't have the right to speak the name "Harvey Weinstein" or "Polanski" or whomever, as though I haven't needed to go to Confession--actually--in 20 years. Quite the contrary.
Fair enough, I will never be arrested, publicly shamed, and excoriated for anything I've ever done, and I pray it will always remain so. But I understand these perverts; these perverts are me. It's not the hottest of hot takes, but it will have to do.
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