Today we are going to talk about two articles written by Chuck Klosterman. The article entitled "Porn", which deals with the issue of pornography (duh) and technology. In "Porn" Chuck Klosterman talks about the first time that he realized "how prevalent the Internet was going to become". He realized this in 1994 when a friend showed him how easy it was to bring up an image of two lesbians kissing. While the Internet was still in it's infancy, and had few uses other than sending messages from nerd to nerd, you could still access porn. How cool is that! Many people may not even realize that the Internet does anything other than provide access to porn.What Chuck is saying in this article is completely valid. Pornography has long been at the forefront of technology. It is one of the main reasons that VHS won out over Beta max; pornography took advantage of all of the technology that DVD had to offer long before the mainstream movie studios.(Coincidentally, the first Hollywood movie that I remember having a TON of bonus features on it was Boogie Nights). WE would be foolish to think that when George Eastman invented modern film he didn't (almost) immediately think, "Hey, I should take a picture of a naked lady". The fact is, technology and pornography have been linked together forever. Which bring us to Pamela Anderson (sigh).
In "Ten Seconds to Love" Chuck talks about Pamela Anderson being our generational equivalent to Marilyn Monroe. I believe that this is a valid argument. Both women have been talked about greatly in all sorts of publications and households. Whether you like or dislike Pam you can't deny that she has had a huge impact on our culture, as did Marilyn in her day. The difference is, according to Chuck, we can picture nailing Pam in very explicit detail. If we so chose. With Marilyn, it is hard to get past the making out stage. Surely this has to do with our degraded values today right? I don;t think so. I would guess that if there was a film of Marilyn floating around that was similar to that of Pamela and Tommy Lee, our view of her would be totally different. After all that is the only REAL difference between the two. They were both in Playboy, they both married the "rock stars" of their generation, Pam literally, and they both had mediocre acting abilities. Hmmmmmmmmm.
I completely agree with your statement, "Whether you like or dislike Pam you can't deny that she has had a huge impact on our culture, as did Marilyn in her day". I know I've heard of there being naughty pics of Marilyn too, but I believe they are privately own ;)
ReplyDeleteIt is true that some of the earliest photographs and moving pictures were of naked ladies. It's the dirty little secret of film history. Almost as soon as the film industry took off, they had to make regulations to prevent pornographic movies from spreading everywhere.
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