The Iron Fist of the War on Porn
I heard it a million times from my mother growing up: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, does it mean that you have to follow?”
Well, it looks like Thailand thinks so. It’s been just over a month since President Bush declared a war on porn and now the Prime Minister of Thailand is jumping off the cliff to follow him:
At long last, social problems are gaining the attention of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Speaking on his weekly ‘’Meet the People'’ radio programme last Saturday, the prime minister said he would launch a ‘’D-Day'’ against social problems on Dec 1. The month-long campaign will target pornographic materials now available in shops, roadside stalls and on the Internet. Internet cafes which promote online gambling and sexual encounters will also be eliminated.
This isn’t what the world needs… the world needs people to strike out against child porn and human trafficking, not adult consensual entertainment.
President Bush has opened a whole can of worms by declaring a war on porn. By declaring this a ‘war’, he has basically said that other things like child porn and human trafficking are less important. How would he feel if his two drunken party-girl daughters were kidnapped and sent to work in brothels in Eastern Europe, servicing at least a dozen men a day?
This article was obviously written by someone who is very much against pornography, but it is interesting to see how far the Prime Minister is willing to go to obliterate porn in his country. The Prime Minister actually stated that he would “remove government officials if they fail to tackle social problems in areas under their jurisdiction“.
Gees… I really hope Bush is oblivious enough not to find out anything about the Thai’s iron fisted model!
October 27th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Interesting thought - is it really a “war on porn,” or a culture clash between victorian, religious and oppressive views of sexuality, vs. a more “enlightened” clutural revolution? Or is it really the beginnings of what amounts to industry reform that in effect legitimizes the industry?
From a cultural perspective, we went through something like this in the 60s, the so-called “free love” movement… then for some reason, we “grew out of it.” Love wasn’t free anymore. Or so it seemed to me, anyway, child of the 70s and 80s that I was. And that was well before AIDS reared its ugly head. The worst you could end up with was a case of the clap.
Porn per se treads a grey, ragged line between pure self-expression, and and physical and sexual abuse and exploitation of men, women and children. They aren’t really connected, but there is a rather high correlation between the two, an unavoidable occupational hazard as it were, due to their close proximity in the subject area.
And it used to be that way in the movie industry, too, without the sexual overtones until child labor laws and an inevitable breakdown in the “studio system” legal lock on performers sort of broke the culture. It’s still there, in a different form. The exploitees are generally plied with a lot more money and are more-or-less free agents. Recall that the three stooges and the kids in “the little rascals” basically got shafted, completely, by the studios in the end.
So is the “war on porn” really a misnomer? If we had a “adult screen actors guild” out there defending reasonable wages for porn performers, and enforceable laws preventing outright abuse and exploitation of performers, would it really be all that different from any other movie production?
Interesting question. There are a few movies, e.g. “Original Sin,” “The Color of Night,” “Showgirls,” etc. that have “love scenes” in them that are for all practical purposes porn. All they would need is one good penetration shot and they’d be right there - and with A-list acting, to boot. In the end, what’s the difference? Enforceable labor laws, enforceable contracts that defend the “rights” of performers - and actors’ guilds that have teeth.
The christian right may be leading the charge “against” porn based on morals, but in the end, the thing that’s actually happening to the real fundiment of the legal framework is in effect a legitimizing of the “legal” and economically defensable aspect of porn as a mode of self-expression. It’s a double-edged sword. One that they may not, in the end, fully appreciate.
They may win a battle or two, but in the end, I think they’ll lose the war - and legitimize the industry as a whole. By their own hand.
November 17th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
[…] Every country has a different way of treating pornography. While it’s banned in India, and those caught watching are punished with humiliation, the United States and Thailand both declared an all out war on it this year. […]
January 13th, 2006 at 10:15 am
[…] Besides, don’t forget that Thailand joined the war on porn… so this story is a perfect front for the Thai Prime Minister to validate his battle to eliminate all pornographic materials in Thailand. […]