No sex please, we’re a Theocracy!
It seems like the main complaints the American media gets from fundies these days is that everything they broadcast is soft porn. Entertainers such as Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Janet Jackson, 50 Cent and Kelis are among many troublemakers who have been accused of soft porn, not to mention the many advertisers who have also been accused and blamed of pushing soft porn onto children.
So, what is soft porn?
Trying to find a clear definition of soft-core pornography is very difficult. When searching for a definition on Internet dictionaries I kept getting redirected to definitions of other terms that reference soft-core porn. The definitions for other pornography-related terms like erotica and hardcore pornography usually define themselves by differentiating themselves from soft-core.
The basic definition that I’ve been able to muster from this is that soft-core is somewhere between erotica (artistic nudity) and hard-core pornography (extreme un-edited images of sexual activities). It’s like ordering a medium drink from McDonald’s… not to little, not too much.
The only way to find a more in-depth definition of soft-core is to reference intellectual texts published on the Internet. The following definition was taken from an essay about erotica:
Soft porn: “pin-up-style pictures of semi-naked or naked women and men, close up pictures of female genitalia, oral and genital sex up to including ejaculation.”
Therefore, it seems by this definition that there has to be a certain degree of nudity (at least a nipple) in the image that actually shows sexual acts. In other words, this is the kind of film that we teenage Montrealers growing up in the mid-nineties used to watch every Saturday night on Bleu Nuit.
This is far from the term that Christian fundamentalists have been using to describe certain commercials and entertainment recently. I can understand their concern over sexually-charged images in Britney Spears’ I’m a Slave for You and Christina Aguilera’s Dirty videos, but calling Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton soft-core porn stars for washing cars in their bathing suits is simply ridiculous.
The fact is: none of these women are actually soft-core… sure, they may have stripped down to their undies for a few men’s magazines, but their professional careers have not been tainted by exposing themselves completely in their television acts and making professional porn films.
I believe that Christian fundamentalists are trying to warp the meaning of the term ‘soft porn’ in order to further constrict what we can and cannot see and do. They want to further society’s porn paranoia in order to take scantily-clad women off the television… which is even more restrictive an idea than the regulations that were in place back when Gilligan’s Island was on TV!
In the sixties we were making headway; moving forward towards a more open society that allowed miniskirts and bikinis. Now the fundies are trying to push us back to the dark ages. Why do I feel as if we’re living in a new-age version of the McCarthy era? How can we be free if they are regulating our bedrooms?
April 10th, 2006 at 1:17 am
Great article. I am just sad I dont know how to reply properly, though, since I want to show my appreciation like many other.