A place where everything is something.

Potential-president Romney’s onto something, and it’s not just his embrace of the “corporate personhood” concept championed and re-championed by the U.S. Supreme Court. If a corporation can be a person, like Romney says, then so can a host of other non-people people, too.

Weather. How many times do you hear some knuckle-headed weather people say, “This weather stinks,” or, “I hate the rain?” It’s pure discrimination frankly. Who decided that Old Man Winter was bad and that Aestas, Goddess of Summer, was good? It sounds a lot like the guys who’ve determined that Mexicans are bad and Anglos are good. And we can’t stand for that, can we? We need anti-discrimination-in-meteorology legislation, ASAP.

Fire. You know what the height of injustice is? The ongoing persecution of arsonists. We all know that it’s the fire that actually burns down the building, not the mere pawn who ignited it. If someone as mainstream as Ron Howard can understand this (and then make a B/B-minus movie about it), then we have to accept it. It’s simple logic, really: we blame the corporation for redistributing wealth from poorer to richer, not the fat cats who run the corporation! When a corporation implodes, you don’t punish the man at the helm; you give him a bonus and thank him for a great year. When you catch an arsonist, you give him a cup of cocoa and a warm blanket; the hero just survived a fire attack!

Traffic. There are all kinds of traffic these days – foot traffic, web traffic, drug traffic – and we should see this diversity as a sign of traffic’s inherent humanity. Imagine the accountability you’d inject into state departments of transportation if you were able to sue traffic for making you late and torpedoing your productivity. You’d see a flood of funding into public transportation, just so that the state could avoid costly lawsuits! Corporate personhood allows one to sue a corporation; gridlock personhood lets you take it to the streets.

Electronics. This personalization serves as a kind of amnesty for slow-running computers, pixilated cable boxes, and skipping portable audio players. Sure, it feels nice to throw a malfunctioning printer out the window, but isn’t that being a little harsh on a single, insignificant particle that constitutes but one tiny fragment of the electromagnetic web that encompasses us all? Just as it’s not your fault when your laptop runs a little raggedly after you’ve dropped it on the floor, it’s also not the laptop’s fault that it’s beholden to a unwieldy technological entity – i.e., electronics – that can’t evolve to the point where being dropped on the floor has no deleterious effects on functionality at all. After all, many animals can survive being dropped on the floor; it’s about time our technology caught up.

War. With gods like Ares, Woden, and Huitzilopochtli, the ancients were on the right track here. I mean, these days, what are those damn peace-niks actually protesting? A fusillade of bullets? The chemical commingling of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpetre? How could any chemistry buff hope to get behind a movement that disdains a classic oxidation-reduction chemical reaction? Redox makes the world go round! We definitely need a lightning rod here. But for our purposes, instead of having a war god, it’s much more practical to invest in a war person. We were close before; perhaps No. 43 is worth trotting out for a second encore?

Foods. We already do this with liquor and ice cream. “Jose Cuervo really kicked my ass last night,” you say; or “I have a date with Ben & Jerry tonight.” Foodies love to talk about the “character” of cheese, or wine, or coffee, but what if they were characters in and of themselves? Imagine the spate of excuses that would open up: “I can’t go to your three-hour a capella jam; I already made plans with [Monterrey] Jack.” Or: “I’d love to watch the Pawn Stars marathon with you, baby, but my Boy[Ardee] friend is coming over.” Sure, sharper minds may call you a cannibal, but, then, they’ve probably never spent a solid night drinkin’ and gamblin’ with the Man in Black himself, Cash[ew nuts].

Image: Mittromneys

The post In Defense of Non-Human Humanity appeared first on EcoSalon.

Could the 2012 presidential campaign be more ripe for Oscar gold?

We’re down unofficially at least to two candidates for this year’s Republican presidential nomination, and each is a compelling figure, a larger-than-life character whose story begs – hell, practically demands – for Hollywood treatment. While a buddy comedy (Newt & Mitt, or G ‘n’ R) would seem to be the most obvious vehicle for these two, I depart from my editors and offer a subtler, more arthouse-y approach to the candidates. No biopics here: Each movie presents an aspect of the candidate to which audiences could(somewhat) reasonably relate. The final scene of each, of course, shows one of our heroes entering the Oval Office, settling down for the first time as your No. 45.

In the Mitt Romney movie, we’re presented with a Gothic horror story in which Mitt is actually a split personality portrayed by two different actors. It’s a coming-of-age story – a bildungsroman, if you will—in which our hero is tempted by his dark side before discovering his true identity. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except that in Mitt’s case, Mr. Hyde has more perfect hair.

First off, I hire a nice wooden rocking chair to play “Jekyll” Mitt. This is homespun, “Sure-I-made-$21 million-last-year-but-I’m-still-just-like-you!” Romney, the guy who tied his dog to the top of the car like Joe Six-pack and Edward Fortyhands, aka you and me. Sure, the whole “Mitt is wooden” thing is overplayed, but that means that it’s no longer played, which is really all you’d ask or expect a rocking chair to do.

“Hyde” Mitt is played by a Herman Miller Aeron chair. It’s cool and sleek, just like Mitt’s debate hair, with enough mesh to provide the most amount of style with the least amount of substance. It’s also an $800 chair, generally available to none but the most chair-happy spenders among us. This Mitt constantly tries and consistently fails to relate to Six-pack and Fortyhands. He’s got all
sorts of knobs and levers that let him contort into any imaginable position; there’s no zero, no firmly grounded center. If you’ve got no backbone, you can use his. And correlatively, he can dial down his spinal tension and elegantly lean on you when he doesn’t know what he thinks you want.

Ultimately, the two Mitts clash in an epic battle for soul-selling supremacy. They trade insults, throw jabs and hooks. Rocking-chair Mitt develops cracks he can’t afford to repair under Aeron Mitt’s health-care policies; Aeron Mitt can’t find the appropriate mechanical placement for his seat. Finally, Aeron manages to coat his enemy with chair grease and burn him to the ground, a stunning victory for modern design and a testament to the strength of a lack of conviction.

Befitting its subject, the Newt Gingrich movie is much more of a romp, with a lot more sex and a lot less Mormonism. It’s sort of a frat-house farce in which Newt is the house mom who’s always shooing scantily-clad chicks out of the house and scolding “her” boys for vomiting in the urinals, occasionally while vomiting into one himself. But at the end of the movie, Newt realizes he’s more SigEp than schoolmarm and leads the entire house in a naked raid on the university president’s house. It’s more fun to be chastised, our hero learns, than to do the chastising yourself.

House-mom Newt is played by a bunch of radishes. Red-faced and slightly spicy, you know he’s good for you but you’re also aware of his more complex, sinister side. Ancient Roman philosopher Pliny called the radish “a vulgar article of the diet” that has a “remarkable power of causing flatulence and eructation,” and some people just flat-out can’t stand them. Just like Newt. I cast radishes as Newt because of their more dualistic qualities. They’re polarizing vegetables. Take, for example, the radish’s reputation for curing flatulence (when combined with salt and pepper). And think about it: when Newt gets his hair right – that is, with just enough pepper to temper all that salt – he’s definitely a good prick with which to pop pontificating gasbags. Provided—and here’s why we gave the role to the radishes—he’s not acting the pontificating gasbag himself.

They might not win the Oval Office, but maybe we can get them an Oscar instead.

Image: Dave_B_

The post Box Office Gold: Newt & Mitt’s Excellent…er, Amazing…er, Entertaining Adventures! appeared first on EcoSalon.

What does your ringtone say about you?

As if ringtones weren’t annoying enough. Now they’re annoying and racist. Private bigotry used to be like a private conversation in the pre-mobile phone years – well, private (unless you were around other racists). If you wanted to tell a racist joke, you were better off waiting until you got behind closed doors before letting it fly. But perhaps we’re collectively suffering from “tolerance fatigue,” and we’ve decided that, as long as the bigotry isn’t coming directly out of our mouths, then it’s not really ours. They’re called “smart” phones for a reason; anyone with a new iPhone knows that Siri’s apt enough to differentiate acceptable from objectionable. If the phone’s acting racist, the apparent line of thought goes, then the person holding it isn’t responsible.

For some reason, on the Best Seller chart for ringtones, Asians take the most flack. The silver medalist, second-most-popular ringtone in the comedy genre (after Stewie from Family Guy) is “Asian Ring Ring Ring.”

(Although these are not the actual clips detailed below, you’ll still get the idea by listening to the samples.)

“Asian Ring Ring Ring” starts with an obligatory Chinese gong followed by everyone’s favorite 9-note “Oriental Riff.” Then, in a voice that would make Breakfast at Tiffanys’ Mr. Yunioshi (or Sixteen Candles’ Long Duk Dong) cringe, comes the kicker: “Your phone linging. Your phone linging! You pick up phone. How come you not pick up phone yet? You pick up phone! Pick it up! Pick it up!”

Now, I tend not to answer the phone until I get somewhere I can actually have the conversation, so it is possible that the Asian badgering could spur me to answer more calls and thereby become more productive – but I’m not so sure. But, if you don’t want to be ordered to answer the phone by a fake Chinese accent – but you still need your anti-Asian fix – you can opt for the #6 most-popular, “Asian Sister Calling.”

Again, the cliche “Oriental Riff.” Then, in a falsetto male voice, “Your sister calling-gu. Ooooh. You talk to sister. So nice. Your sister love you. You love your sister. Talk to your sister on the phone. Talking to sister, making nice. She love you. You talk to sister.”

It sort of sounds like someone doing a bad Adam Sandler doing a bad Asian man doing a bad Asian girl. Unsettling.

But funny ringtones are equal-opportunity offenders. Take #11, “Mexican Text Alert.” This one features a stoned-sounding Speedy Gonzalez and pistols-at-dawn Mexican-standoff music:

“You have a text message, fucker. Hey fucker! You have a text message.” In the truest SoCal cholo tradition, “fucker” is pronounced “folk-er,” and “mess” part of “message” is drawled out slowly, the “age” tacked on at the end ornamentally. How calling the recipient of a text message a fucker makes anything more Mexican is beyond me, but then, that’s one of the prerequisites of ringtone-writing that I probably won’t understand until I try it myself.

Naturally, there’s more to offensive ringtones than just racism. In #35, we get inappropriate Asian sexuality, which, if you bite your tongue hard enough, is actually quite a treat. The Asian voice on this one is very keyed up about fellatio and peniuses, getting “clazy” about doing things with them and, well, you get the point.

For $1.29, an Asian voice can also tell you about a call from work (#52), or your father (#68); or you can go generic and opt for a hysterical alert about a “terrophone carr” (#91). For calls from your mother, though, the Mexican version (#87) is more popular than the Asian; perhaps it’s because it’s recorded over the main riff from “Tequila.”

Yet despite the ringtones’ high marks on the Best Seller list, I’ve yet to hear one of them in public. Could our smart phones be smarter than we are?

Image: esparta

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You don’t want it or need it but somebody will convince you otherwise.

The economy is in the toilet, and people are buying less stuff. The point of advertising is to entice people to buy more stuff, even if—especially if—they don’t want it, but failing to add an addictive element in your product, means a rough road for anyone trying to hawk merchandise. Out, then, with traditional merchandise, and in with new stuff, stuff that’s easy to sell and even easier to buy.

Benneton is leading the way in this field, aggressively advertising a product called UNHATE across the world. Benneton doesn’t actually produce UNHATE, they make clothes, but in this economy, why not serve up some bullshit and then market the hell out of it? It’s not really fair to advertise for the lack of something that doesn’t actually exist materially anyway—I mean, I don’t hate yellow mustard now the way I did when I was sixteen, so does Benneton get credit for the “sale” there? I’m not so sure, but you’ve got to applaud their efforts.

In New York, Manhattan Mini Storage is selling political progressivism, albeit with a decidedly pro-remote-storage agenda. As with UNHATE, Manhattan Mini Storage’s advertised product doesn’t really have anything to do with the product it sells (i.e., mini-storage), but these days, lest we forget, It’s the economy, stupid. This campaign even implies a kind of stick-to-your-guns or at least a stick-to-your-stuff conservatism generally associated with the political right, but in such a Democratic city, well, who cares?

Patagonia, no stranger to socially conscious salesmanship, might just take the anti-marketing cake. This holiday season, they’re instructing consumers not to buy stuff at all. (I know, the campaign is about buying less, but you’ll have to buy all of nothing at least few times in order to achieve that less-ness.) Ironically, this works in Patagonia’s favor, as few of their items come bundled  eschewing the desire to buy more actually leads you back up the mountain. Brilliant!

In 2010, Nike launched a campaign aimed at normalizing the societal status of a big butt. As a sample taken from any mall will show you, the rump chosen by Nike here is by no means normal, but given America’s obesity epidemic, male and female, it would seem that most people are happy to accept anything, big asses included. Bear in mind, of course, that Nike isn’t selling the actual big asses themselves – Nike is marketing their acceptance.

Finally, there’s this from Bjorg Jewelry, which can really only be summarized as ennui-cum-sociopathy. Granted, the spot is titled “Heresy,” and this season’s “anti-marketing” certainly embodies a heretofore heterodox form of capitalism. But where Benneton asks you to kiss your enemy if you can’t afford their stuff, Bjorg asks you to immolate a beautiful young woman. Since fewer people can afford Bjorg than Benneton, it’s only a matter of time before we see sacrificial pyres erected from sea to shining sea. Yikes.

Image: Keoni Cabral, psfk, Nike Blog, AdRants, Alltop

The post Marketing 101: Out With The Old, In With The New appeared first on EcoSalon.

The fleecing of America begins with savvy marketing.

“Artisan” potato chips are in danger of going the way of “natural” soda thanks to unhelpful consumers who crave exciting new marketing as well as mouthfeel. Did you hear about this? Since the whole “artisan” marketing trend has been exposed and ridiculed, it’s time for manufacturers and marketers in and outside the sustainable realm to conscript new adjectives to help them class up otherwise pedestrian products that, annoyingly, consumers are no longer falling for.

Lay. It used to be that willful ignorance was applauded merely around election season, but with the rise in popularity of intellectual deficiency, it’s a good opportunity to sell hitherto “smart” services as common labor more befitting the common man.

According to the American Bar Association, there are currently 1,225,452 active lawyers in the United States, meaning – more importantly – that there are (as of this writing) 311,279,520 non-lawyers in the United States. Who’s got a better chance of knowing about your day-to-day, non-legal-profession travails – the white-shoe lawyer in the 0.39% or the lay lawyer in the 99.61%? The ABA has hinted at endorsing a lay bar exam by 2014. We are the 99%…who will sue you.

Immigrant-free. With U.S. unemployment close to 10%, companies will surely see the popularity of their products increase if they position themselves as part of the solution to joblessness. An immigrant-free boast can instantly convert your product into a patriotic statement.

Wouldn’t you bristle with pride at your dinner party when your immigrant caterers serve immigrant-free chocolate dipped strawberries in the house you’ve just made sparkling with immigrant-free cleaners? Sure, there’s some implicit xenophobia and racism here, but wouldn’t you rather be perceived as patriotic than not-racist or not-xenophobic? Exactly. Naturally, the immigrant-free American Flag lapel pin – Chinese-made so Chinese workers don’t have to emigrate to produce them here – is coming soon.

Orthodox. Here’s a word that’s been itching to shed its religious overtones ever since “fundamentalist” came along, usurping the sheen of close-minded nastiness it had enjoyed uniquely for nearly 2,000 years. Throw in the aesthetics associated with Orthodox Christianity and the erudition associated with Orthodox Judaism, and you’ve got some real synergy.

Imagine purchasing Orthodox Clorox for your disinfecting needs. Or Orthodox Nestle?

Siberian. Do you know what it’s like in Siberia? Aside from some lit-class forays into something called Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, most of us don’t like leaving the region – and its natural characteristics – wide-open to liberal interpretation. Siberian huskies are the best kind of huskies; ditto for Siberian tigers and Siberian winters. There was even a time when the world’s best figure skater was Siberian, too.

Siberian MacBook? Makes the Panasonic Toughbook look like this. Besides, Snow Leopard? Think about it.

 j-. Apple’s made hay with the letter i, so why not one-up them with j? Imagine everything you love about Apple products – the sleek design, the smugly sophisticated sense of superiority – and now make it one better. If Spinal Tap’s amps can go to 11, then surely your phone can go to j.

But don’t limit yourself to personal electronics. jCarrots, for example, are perfectly symmetrical, easy to chop for soups, stews, or snacks – much more convenient than your standard carrots, plus they make a bigger statement that baby carrots. And you’ll crave jCigarettes not for their nicotine, but because you simply must advertise to the world that you’re smoking a “designed in California” masterpiece, not some garden-variety, cloned e-cigarette. And when upgrading products, simply add the letter t, and everyone will know it’s this year’s model, such as the newly released and eminently yellow, deliciously un-mushy jBanana 4t.

Image: Mhaller 1979

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Even your mother looks at porn.

Whether you realize it or not, porn is everywhere, touching every last corner of culture. And you, dear oblivious reader, may have unwittingly helped yourself to an eyeful on more than one occasion today. You probably know a handful of pornographers (if you’re not one yourself), and you probably enjoy a harmless peak more often than you realize. Yes, pornography is exploitative, gamy, and generally gross, but, man, does it get you Web traffic. So, if you’re feeling a bit “funny,” here are some ways to gratify yourself without sullying your eyes with a feast of flesh.

1. Sizzling Bacon Porn

This is my favorite kind of non-porn pornography. Bacon is to food porn what large breasts are to regular porn. Check out the fifth image in the bacon slide show: “Plain scallops quickly turn savory,” reads the caption, “when wrapped in, you guessed it, bacon.”

2. Vegan Porn

What better way to wash the bacon grease off one’s hands than with Vegan Porn? The salty, sensual delights of bubbling pig fat are quickly neutralized by the dry, rational prose of vegan advocacy. (There’s hardcore vegan porn too, but many find it distasteful.) This is like reading the fiction section of Playboy: It’s titillating and erotically illustrated, but you know you’ll have to get down and dirty in the Penthouse Forum if you really want to have a good time. (Note: We’re talking about vegan porn here, not vegan cuisine; just because veganism makes for less-than-ideal masturbatory material doesn’t mean it translates to less-than-ideal meals.)

3. Gratuitous Motor Porn

This is an invention of the good folks at Wired (“gratuitous motor porn” is their term, not mine), and I have to admit that as a non-gearhead, looking at it doesn’t arouse me in the least. Still, this kind of porn is noteworthy for the fact that it operates in two metaphysical planes: There’s real, hardcore porn for those who get off on its straight, grease-and-metal aspect; and there’s a more stylized version that celebrates things on wheels that look like vaginas and penises.

4. Real Estate Porn

Maybe it’s because I’m satisfied with my studio apartment, but I don’t find so-called “house porn” all that sexy. Even so, there are some peeping toms who can be satisfied voyeurs even when the room they’re peering into doesn’t have people having sex in it. This is perhaps the non-porn porn most similar to real porn, in that each is about lusting after a basic necessity (shelter, for real estate porn; companionship, for real porn) you can’t, (at least right now), have. One can survive without a $225,000 Ferrari, and one can hit Safeway without buying bacon, but everyone needs a home. And just as there’s always someone better looking than your partner (except for me; no one’s better looking than my partner), there’s always a bathroom that’s nicer than yours. For sowing dissatisfaction and jealousy, real estate porn is hard to beat.

6. Geek Porn

Geek Porn is a little too self-aware, too hipster-ish for my taste (Lameness should be enjoyed, not celebrated as “so-lame-it’s-actually-cool”). Even so, it’s a popular genre among Star Wars fans and connoisseurs of inside jokes. Of course, given Star Trek’s track record of legitimate (and groundbreaking) eroticism, geekiness and sexiness would seem a natural fit, but alas, this one’s been hijacked by people who are cooler than us.

6. Shoe Porn

Shoe porn feels safe, since it’s difficult to make any part of a shoe look inappropriate. You can stare at these $3 million bad boys on your screen all day, and nary a colleague will realize just how close to bliss you actually are. Unfortunately for shoe pornographers, the decidedly unsexy Economist has begun to horn in on the action, which is like watching Martha Stewart Living branch into erotic cakes.

7. Golf Porn

Seems like an oxymoron, this unholy combination of man’s most boring time-waster with his most gratifying, but that, my friends, is exactly the point. Strokes, balls, and holes are the name of the game here, and let’s not forget the the vast overlap of terminology shared by golf and sex.

8. Gun Porn

While it’s easy to note that men use guns and penises in remarkably similar ways, good gun porn really just comprises the proverbial bag of dicks. It’s all about quantity over quality. I mean, this is just hot, and this, while intriguing, is just wrong. Despite this fundamental difference, though, there’s still the Larry Flynt-ish advocacy of gun porn, which gives it a greater legitimacy that it may or may not deserve.

Image: Deviantart, thebittenword, Jakob Montrasio, Gordana AM, SarahC1978, A Strakey, Nicholas Putz, onigiri-kun, eek the cat

The post Internet Porn: Less Sexy, More Available Than You Think appeared first on EcoSalon.

How porn has become the slang term for everything from food to literature to ruin.

I’ve been thinking a lot about masturbation lately. Wait, don’t go! Don’t get the wrong idea; I’ve been a model, PG-13-rated citizen over the past nine days. (And I’m an unwed dude anyway, I’m entitled.) But since writing about Detroit, Michigan, and so-called “ruin porn” last week, a conversation has developed about the definition of pornography and, more specifically, about the proclivity of the professional commentariat to expand that definition on a rhetorical whim.

Defined as “The explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc., in a manner intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings,” the English word “pornography” first appeared in 1842 in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. The word was classified under an umbrella of “lower classes of art” along with “rhyparography,” a 1678-vintage word that means “The painting of (or writing about) distasteful or sordid subjects.”

That Smith’s Dictionary chose to separate pornography from rhyparography in 1842 is interesting. In 1841, British inventor and photographer William Henry Fox Talbot developed the calotype, an advancement in photographic technology that made possible the reproduction of multiple copies of a single negative. (The calotype’s predecessor, the dauguerreotype, could only make one copy of a photograph.) Though it may be coincidental that the development of the calotype in 1841 was followed by the coinage of the word “pornography” in 1842, the relationship of mass-production and porn is still significant. Whether or not the calotype actually led to the pornography neologism is unimportant; the invention of the former nonetheless made possible the invention of the latter. It is, after all, lot more difficult to defend the aesthetic integrity of this, a one-off, than it is this, the best-selling adult movie of all time.

So after 164 years of rhyparography, it would seem, it wasn’t enough simply to declare a work of art sordid or distasteful; by the nineteenth century and the publication of Smith’s Dictionary, the intent of the rhyparographer had necessarily come into play. What’s more, “pornography” is derived from the Greek word for prostitution, which adds the tawdry patina of economics to a hitherto purely leisurely pursuit.

It was one thing to portray or chronicle acts of love and other such nonsense; it was quite another to do so with the aims of reproduction and sale to as many people as possible. But the mass-production and economic exploitation of something – erotic or not – don’t make it porn. Moreover, it creates a standard that leads to the definition of all two-dimensional art (and literature) as pornography.

In 1955, the concept of “pornography of violence”- the first nonsexual use of the word – was born. American philosopher Abraham Kaplan declared, “The pornography of violence is more widespread in our culture than all the other categories of obscenity put together.” Kaplan’s use of the word “pornography” – when “problem,” “phenomenon,” or “portrayal,” would have worked – is puzzling. If you return to the Oxford English Dictionary definition of pornography – “the explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity…” – it doesn’t even make rhetorical sense.

True, sex and violence are thoroughly intertwined in mind and body, but the two tropes – fucking and fighting – are so elemental to humanity that it would make more sense to use different terms to describe their employment as titillating, non-aesthetic material. Eating and drinking go together, but hunger is a physical sensation and philosophical concept completely distinct from thirst, and we label and define it as such. The conflation of sex and violence into one monolithic urge, though, is an oversimplification ripe for abuse; Kaplan’s precedent allows for anything remotely sexual (or sexy) to be hastily linked to sexuality, and thus to pornography. Hence, “ruin porn,” “ego porn,” and “food porn.”

What’s more, Kaplan, intentionally or not, by definition removes the aesthetic component from something when he describes it as porn. To take food porn as an example, is one expected to display comestibles as aesthetically unappealing as possible to avoid any taint of titillation? The term “food porn” doesn’t just link style to sex, it equates the the two. Is this pornography because it’s beautiful? National Park sex, anyone?

The British media has taken to classifying certain kinds of memoir as “misery porn,” and the personal pleasure one gets from reading – hitherto lauded as a low-tech, cerebral benefit – is now subject to critical (and implicitly criminal) judgment by the chattering class. Across the pond, finding value in a memoirist’s literary treatment of past sexual abuse, for example, makes one a closet pedophile, or at least a pervert. “Pedophiles are down there with the Nazis and Judas as all-time bad folk,” novelist Gerry Feehily told the BBC in 2007, “so these stories are easy on the writer, easy on the reader. Most of us not being pedophiles, we are in a comfort zone with these books, where we feel edified and also morbidly thrilled.” I can only speak for myself, but pedophilia does not put me in a comfort zone and is, in fact, quite the opposite of titillating for me.

But misery porn titles sell in the millions, presumably to people who have access to far more explicit forms of salacious material, like actual porn. Nevertheless, if something is deemed to have been enjoyed too much by too many people (or if it has earned its creator too much money), it runs the risk of falling victim to a critic’s urge to call it porn. (Disclosure: I enjoy MTV’s Jersey Shore – perhaps too much – and I admit to having once described it as “ego porn” in a review).

Ironically, if our culture is indeed engaged in a prurient “race to the bottom,” then it’s in great measure due to critics’ bizarrely priggish appetite to keep raising that “bottom” to higher and higher strata of perceived decency. These days, anything bright, anything provocative, or anything that eschews stripped-down Modernism in favor of something more decorative is called pornography.

If you want to stamp out pornography, then widening the scope of the definition to include non-sexual material is the wrong way to go about it. Pornography can’t be watered down into oblivion. Salacious art isn’t The Phantom Tollbooth’s (a must-read, modern-day Alice by Norton Juster), Subtraction Stew (A consumer grows hungrier with each bite), and inventing more things at which to tsk-tsk doesn’t make real porn go away.

Image source: Flickr

The post Porn Is the New Black appeared first on EcoSalon.

Ruin porn and the objectification of Detroit.

Can someone explain to me what, exactly, “ruin porn” is? Recently, it’s been linked to Detroit, most notably in Chrysler’s now-legendary Super Bowl ad. How is ruin porn, which Detroit-born-and-raised writer Paul Clemens describes in his new book Punching Out as “the arty delectation of Detroit’s destruction,” any different from Chilean Miners Porn? Or 2011 Egyptian Revolution Porn? Or Portland, Oregon, Porn? Anything worth shooting, it would seem, is potential pornography. Yet critics are slinging the ruin porn term around, conflating genuine interest and concern with insatiable horniness. What gives?

I understand that there is something of an exploitative aspect to the visual documentation of Motown’s decline, a rubbernecking yet relieved sentiment solicited and received by Gothic depictions of wreck and ruin – but provocative isn’t porno. Good photography commands pathos; great photography demands it, and right now, Detroit requires our attention. But how the act of paying attention got mixed up with masturbation is a mystery to me. Am I watching Google Porn every time I check Gmail? Are you? Please, dear reader, close your inbox and pull your hand out of your pants.

Detroit, Michigan, circa 2011, is the most emotive, pathetic, and photogenic subject in America right now. The city’s vacant lots, shuttered automotive plants, and abandoned houses are fascinating and horrifying, and we can’t turn away. But does insatiable consumer demand or instinctual human curiosity suddenly transform something into porn?

What’s more, the assumption that any art – verbal or visual – inspired by the Motor City is pornographic is a slap in the face to anyone who’s ever tried to affect positive change in the world via words or images; i.e., writers and artists. No one ever accused Solzhenitsyn of writing gulag porn or Margaret Mitchell of antebellum porn. Things aren’t so rosy in Detroit right now; Americans should see what’s happening to a great city.

Mother Jones derides Chrysler for utilizing “the cynical racism (or at least colonialism) of positioning Chrysler as a tough, gritty, 8 Mile-style brand that’s perfect for what marketers call the ‘urban core’ demographic; and using Detroit poverty porn to hawk [its] product while simultaneously trying to deride the media’s recent Detroit poverty porn.” (For the moment, we’ll set aside the incongruity that it’s okay for MoJo to mock Chrysler for perpetrating “poverty porn” out of one side of its mouth while promoting its own version out of the other.)

First of all, it’s incredibly naive to fault a failing (or failed) corporation’s attempt to re-brand and re-introduce itself to a new generation of consumers. True, Chrysler’s modus operandi over the last half-century seems to have been “How not to run a business,” and true, the ailing automaker should probably have been put to sleep and made to suffer the consequences of its managerial idiocy. But whether or not you think Chrysler deserved its $15 billion in bailout funds, the fact of the matter is that it did indeed receive them, ostensibly to keep manufacturing cars and to provide some kind of lifeline to the Motor City. And whether or not you think those new cars are classic Chrysler POS’s, the fact of the matter is that they need to be sold to someone. There’s an entire generation of Honda drivers to convert, yet Mother Jones expects Detroit to do so with tail fins, muscle cars, and depictions of Hank Greenberg-era Tigertown.

Secondly, the advertisement seeks to glorify Detroit, not wallow in its decline. There are no cheap Coney Island hot dog joints here, no bombed out buildings. “Imported From Detroit” promotes Motown as the city of Joe Louis; of the Larry Callahan & Selected of God choir; of Eminem. If that’s pornography, then so is this. Chrysler bet $9 million – a Super Bowl record – on their two-minute spot; it was seen by 111 million viewers during the most-watched spectacle in American television history, and as I write, the viral video has gotten more than 9 million hits on YouTube.  “Likes” outnumber “dislikes” by more than 20 to 1.  “Imported From Detroit” is easily the most discussed television advertisement since last year’s epic “Write the Future” campaign from Nike.

There’s no outcry over “Marilyn Porn” when Vanity Fair puts the long-deceased Ms. Monroe on its cover twice in two years (I’ve had magazines reject pitches because editors have deemed them too similar to articles published six years prior), yet there’s virtually no argument to be made about her contemporary newsworthiness (or lack thereof). Graydon Carter knows enough about magazines and marketing to give his customers what they want; is he a pornographer, too?

Image: JSFauxtaugraphy

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