This is one of those editorials that requires a fair
warning about the forthcoming content.
Usually my subject matter is something of an issue I picked up on during
the day, maybe while driving home from work, maybe standing in the shower
trying to wake up, maybe even walking around in the mall. Once in a while I pick up on a news story or
two and try to connect them in a ‘big picture’ kind of way. Sometimes I just write whatever comes to mind. This one is about what most would call
disturbing incidents in the media.
Again, I try to put it into perspective with the world around us,
because everything fits in the big picture if you angle the pieces
properly. I’ll be exploring the
depravity of the human mind via a number of well-documented exhibits. I won’t shy away from describing what took
place, but I’ll attempt to do it with decorum and dignity. The way I see it, people prefer to just ignore
any subject that instantly makes them uncomfortable, and that’s part of the
problem. Regardless, I’ll be discussing
certain aspects of human deviant behavior, so if you suspect that you’ll get a
little queasy, read no further. With a
preamble like that, those of you who do decide to continue must ask yourselves
where you fit in the big puzzle.
When I first decided to become a teacher, I decided it
might be best to volunteer in an elementary school classroom just to be sure I
was making the right decision about my future vocation. After that first day, I knew I would really
like it, and after volunteering for about six months, I was sold. The kids really responded to me in a positive
way. I think it was that feeling of
acceptance from the kids, or maybe that they were so eager to just listen to
their teacher, to be educated, that clinched it for me. I will never forget one little girl, who I
was told lived in a home where she was unfortunately exposed to situations and
circumstances no pre-pubescent child should ever see. Her attitude at school was nonchalant at
best. She struggled with her grades as a
result. She was constantly thinking
about the boys—who, I can assure you for having once been one this age, were in
no way interested in her. I immediately
wondered what would become of her in the next few years, when older boys would
take notice of her, and with such a low self-esteem, she seemed to me destined
to a life of teen-age promiscuity, and maybe even pregnancy. One day, she wore a t-shirt to school that
read “I need an above-average man”. She
wasn’t even 10 years old at that point.
I have no idea what became of her.
Now that I’m in the system as a teacher in my own right, I could
probably find out how she turned out, but I just don’t want to know. I’m afraid of what I’d discover.
This young lady, only a girl when we first crossed paths,
was likely exposed to sexuality in a way her peers weren’t. However, she needn’t have gone any further
than the local shopping mall to be exposed to far more than I had ever been at
that age. If, for some reason, I were to
have been hypothetically interested in girls at the age of 8 or 9, I’d have
flipped through the most recent Sears catalogue to the women’s lingerie pages
for cheap thrills. How shocking, women
in bras. My grandfather had pin-ups of
sexy ladies in his garage as far back as I can remember, so I’d be browsing in
the toy section of the Sears catalogue instead.
Of course, as a rite of passage for the teen-aged boy, someone in our
group would come across a porno mag, which of course taught us all how to be
Cassanovas by the age of 13. We were all
Hugh Hefner in our minds. Then, by the
time you actually got to engage in tawdry behaviour with a girl, you quickly
realized you knew absolutely nothing about the opposite sex; that relationships
were nothing like the soft-core porn flicks you ‘accidentally’ found on the
old-fashioned satellite dishes, the ones that you had to click twelve different
buttons and wait for ten minutes for the big 10-foot diameter plate to grind
into position while the whole neighbourghood could immediately tell what
channel you were really w/atching.
Still, that whole awkward adolescence dance wasn’t so
bad. Eventually, we all lose our
virginity. Most of us wish that first
magical moment were more memorable, or at least adequate for our partner in
that first dubious deed. We get over it,
have some relationships along the way, and some of us eventually meet Mr. or
Miss Right. Mr. or Miss R. remains
elusive to some, often by their own choice, which is fine if that’s what you
like. What I don’t think is the same
from our generation to the present one is that this one is in a hurry to skip
all the above-mentioned pratfalls and shenanigans of the ritual of growing
up. While we were all peeking at dirty
magazines, clumsily chugging for second base, or praying that the satellite
dish didn’t have to grind that loudly, we were learning about ourselves. Our sexuality makes up a really big part of
who we are. That’s why straight people
are initially uncomfortable with the notion of homosexuality; if you aren’t
gay, you can’t really ‘understand’ being gay I suppose. I once asked a gay friend if he could ever
have sex with a woman. He served that
back to me, asking me if I could ever have sex with a man someday. Point taken.
When I walk through the local mall, I see a number of
shops designed to market sexy clothing to young girls. Worse still, there are often huge
banner-sized photos of very young models wearing their wares, as if they were glowing
neon signs advertising for any passing pedophile to ogle their images for
future dirty thoughts. My disdain for
these kinds of clothing shops isn’t far from my absolute abhorrence of beauty
pageants, particularly those where girls as young as 5 or 6 dress like
supermodels, and even wear bikinis. I
was a young adult when Jonbenet Ramsey was killed, but what shocked me the
most, rather than the fact a small child was murdered, was that she was forced
to be a beauty queen when she should have been playing with dolls. Then I think the dolls with which she would
have been otherwise playing wouldn’t have been much better, and I feel even
worse. From as far back as they can
begin to think for themselves, girls are in the cross-hairs. They have to be perfect for everyone, until
they hit puberty, then they’re eye-candy for society’s perverts. If she doesn’t put out, she’s a prude. If she does, she’s a slut. If she goes half-way, she’s a tease. I don’t know how girls make it into
adulthood. Just look at the
entertainment world around us, and look at who the role-models for young women are. Britney Spears? Where do I begin. Lady Gaga?
When has meat ever been so alluring?
Paris Hilton? Yes little Suzie,
you too can be the star of your own film. You can’t even watch wrestling without
watching two or more bimbos ripping each other’s clothes off. There are NHL teams that have scantily-clad
women dancing like cheerleaders to entertain the fans. Hulk Hogan’s daughter even sings the anthem
at Tampa Bay Lightning games. I remember
being entertained by the actual game,
but I won’t get started on how bad hockey has become in this piece.
In the last few years, there have been a number of
high-profile incidents or cultural phenomena that prove to me beyond any doubt
that the world in which we live is too obsessed with sexuality and/or
sensationalism. We can’t avoid our
sexuality, of course, nor should we, but we find ourselves entertained with more
and more deviant acts that there’s no wonder the Christian Right is armed to
the teeth with ammunition to push us right back to the Victorian age. Even the ones that aren’t supposed to
entertain us keep us glued to our iPads in anticipation of the gory details,
which makes it a form of entertainment if you ask me. Here are a few notorious
incidents, and while you read, you must ask yourself these questions: a) what makes this scenario news-worthy; b)
do you find it amusing or perhaps entertaining in some way, whether it’s the
scenario itself or culture’s reaction to it; c) how has the world changed
because of it?
·
About five years ago, a video went viral
called ‘2 Girls 1 Cup’. A co-worker told
me very excitedly one day that I had to go home and look it up right away
because it was hilarious. I did.
I urge you not to do the same.
Why? The term ‘coprophagia’ means
ingesting fesces, and in this case, for sexual gratification it becomes known
as 'coprophillia'. If you’ve seen the
video, you know what I mean, and you aren’t shocked that I brought it up. If you haven’t, this bullet has made you
queasy, and I think that that is the proper reaction. If we have reached a point where we’re
comfortable with this kind of thing, we’re in real trouble. When I saw the video, fortunately I was home
alone. I am still embarrassed for those
poor girls and myself for having seen it.
·
A few weeks ago, a guy allegedly took some
unidentified drug, and stripped naked on a Miami freeway. He ran until he came upon a homeless person,
whom he immediately assaulted and then began to actually chew on his face until
he had gnawed it almost completely off. Dubbed
the ‘face-eating zombie’, this guy took four bullets before his adrenaline ceased
to support him. The homeless man, by the
way, was a university graduate with a near-genius IQ, whom his family had
thought long-dead. To me, the more interesting
story is with the victim, not the drugged-out naked would-be cannibal. Speaking of the ‘face-eater’, I wonder what
his family must be going through in the wake of this terrible news. And yes, the video for that is going viral,
but I won’t be fooled this time.
·
At the funeral of late jazz legend Etta
James, Christina Aquilera performed what would have been probably a lovely
tribute to her idol and a cultural icon.
That should have been enough for anyone.
But no, our sex-crazed society immediately had to know what that
mysterious liquid trickling down her leg could have been. Use your imagination. It turns out that she had been using a
spray-tan product that had begun to condense in the heat, and that it just happened
to have been spotted in an unfortunate location. Forget trying to identify the substance—why were
we so fascinated with X-tina’s body while a major milestone in pop culture was
taking place? Why was she dressed in so
revealing an outfit at a funeral in the first place?
·
While I’m singling out Ms. Aguilera, why not
take a stab at her biggest rival, Britney Spears. I always felt the media was out to ruin her,
which seemed so unfair given the near-God status the same journalists had
previously bestowed upon Madonna. Still,
she didn’t do herself any favours when she crawled out of that limo with Paris
Hilton revealing to the whole world that she was going commando. I don’t know a man (gay or straight) alive
that wouldn’t love to see Britney in a centerfold pin-up, but this just wasn’t
sexy at all. It came across as juvenile
and pitiful. My female readers out
there, I’ll ask you this: If you were
photographed stepping out of a vehicle with your cha-cha exposed, even with
underwear on, how would you
feel? It is convenient that we distance
ourselves from the notion that the celebrities we worship have feelings.
I’ll stop the list there, partly so this blog doesn’t
drag on any further, but mostly because there is no conceivable end to this
kind of thing. The four examples above
have very little in common, except that they have become sensationalized in
some way for our consumption. As much as
we don’t want to admit it, we are drawn to scandal. As long as we can sit a safe distance away,
we have no problem ingesting the shit.
What was the term for that again?
We’re raising our children in a world where sensationalism isn’t like it
used to be, back when you cried when the Beatles came on stage. Now, elementary-school children can sing ‘Sexy
And I Know It’, and can do the dance better than any of us could do the ‘Thriller’
dance sequence. Kids are no longer kids.
They’re mini-adults that are surrounded by adult content, whether it’s an
Aeropostale mannequin or a spam ad for hot Russian girls, but they don’t know
the first thing about the big picture. They’ve
become automatons, zombie-like in their consumption of the culture we’ve
allowed them to discover. One of the two
girls with the cup might have worn a shirt like the girl I met a few years ago
did. Where do they go from there? It’s kind of like seeing all your co-workers
at a nudist beach, then having to look them in the eye again Monday
morning. We have no trouble watching the
train wreck, oblivious to the fact that our young are incurring unprecedented
and irreparable damage all the while.
How will they ever save face? Pun
totally intended.
