Flutterby™! : David Steinberg on Yahoo porn 2001-05-03 17:53:22+00

David Steinberg on Yahoo porn

2001-05-03 17:53:22+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

Because people are too embarrassed to openly and proudly enjoy pornography, Picasso's sexy work or, for that matter, any kind of reputedly unconventional sex, the myth that "nice people don't do that" manages to stay alive and well, fouling everyone with sexual guilt and sexual shame. As a result, life -- not just sexual life -- becomes a little smaller, a little less vibrant, a little less profound, and a little less genuine for all of us.

One might ask what this debate really has to do with Pablo Picasso's erotic works, other than the sad fact that museum exhibits are brought in on loan depending on several factors, most admittedly financial.

Aren't we witnessing the same old shuck-and-jive as usual in the Great Debate over Yahoo!'s recent foray into porn agentry? On the one hand, we have the Promise of Pornography, one of the greatest money-generators on the web. On the other, we have one of the premiere dot-coms in recently narrow straits attempting to tap into this multi-million dollar business on the entirely canny instinct that sex in America is big business (if you can get away with it and at the same time retain your middle-class user base).

It's quite easy to point one's digit (whichever digit, it matters not) at Yahoo!'s desperate attempt to up the quarterly earnings and its subsequent retreat into Grundyism in the light of news reports concerning this optimistic foray into Flynty-eyed profit-generation. Like many organizations groping their way through the 21st century, Yahoo! is obviously suffering from the normal schizophrenia that any large organization suffers when attempting to strike a balance between the utilitarian Disney aesthetic and that of the True American Pulse, from whichever credit card it may beat.

Does this really have anything to do with eroticism (or the denial of such)? Except in the grossest sense, I think not. We should really examine the quality of what our major new organizations tell us what we should be objecting to, and laugh out loud. In terms of erotica, the goods in question appear to have been the usual fare, lacking any instinct of what makes humans tick sexually, and weighted toward the usual bangy t / a & d served up on mediocre late-night cable and dreary rows of porn-shop displays.

Too bad for Yahoo!, but even worse for the American public. To paraphrase the Counsel for the Army during the McCarthy hearings, we might ask ourselves At long last, have you left no sense of quality?

But as long as we marginalize the erotic, the goods in question will always be the "usual bangy t / a & d". Because unless we admit that "hey, this stuff turns me on!", we'll always have to make light of it, be able to joke about it, and the best way to do that is to make porn a bad parody of the erotic.