don’t believe the type.

The other day I was checking my myspace account and I came across an ad that read “Don’t believe the type.” And while I thoroughly enjoy this advertisement for it’s play on the Public Enemy classic “Don’t believe the Hype,” it also sends an important message. More then ever before, kids are being harassed, stalked and even molested through the use of Internet. This has been a problem ever since the internet blew up in the late 90’s. When the chat room became the place to meet people and have conversation without actually being in the same room. And how far we have come. Now with every teenager in the world having their own personal web space through the use of sites like myspace and facebook, it is even easier to meet people through the Internet. And with this new advancement in technology, comes even more sexual predators looking for prey on these sites, where kids are hopelessly waiting. It’s a sick scary world and it’s important that parents keep track of what their teenagers are doing on these sites. 1 in 5 kids online are sexually solicited. For more information go to
http://tcs.cybertipline.com/

porn and mcdonalds. modern day crack

When it comes to addiction, we as Americans know a lot about them. From myspace to fast food we live our lives around our verious routines and addictions. When corporate America is trying to sell you over 30,000 different products a day, it is hard not to fall into any one of the millions of “drugs.” While many people think of addiction and drugs mainly as marijuana and cigarettes, it is important to realize that anything that you over indulge in that can cause harm to yourself and others is indeed an addiction. Porn is clealry an addiction for many people in society. While finding a date and communicating with the opposite sex may be hard for many people, porn is always there. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at the end of your fingertips, and it never turns you down. And while masterbation may be seen as a good way to relieve stress, it can be addictive and harmful to your dating/sex life. And when you’re done getting yourself off head over to mcdonalds and get a big mac, cuase eating fast food might help you out.

after thought.

I just read this quote on a blog that I thought was quite fitting to my last posting about life after porn. I thought that I should share it.

“Instead of watchin’ out for #1, you gotta keep your eye on #2 and #3. But #10 is the most important ’cause that bitch is hungry!!”

I don’t like it unless it’s brand new.

After Watching lecture 14, I had a whole new level of respect and admiration for the average porn star. Just like in the NFL, the NBA and just about any other profession in the world, porn is definitely a a cut throat business. Just like Kanye West raps on his new hit single “I don’t like it unless it’s brand new” today you’re a star, tomorrow you’re gone. This is just how we live our lives in the consumer culture world of 2006.
In the world of porn, there are countless woman who are willing to give it all up for the 1 in a million chance of becoming the next Jenna Jameson. While this may not seem idealistic for most women, you must be conscious of how much money is being made in the porn industry. While the average NFL player makes much more then the average porn star, professional sports are the perfect metaphor. In the NFL there is no guaranteed money, no promised tomorrow, and plenty of money to be made. And as soon as you are unable to carry the ball anymore, you’re pretty much out on your own. Left to your own devices. Your whole life you have been trained and educated on the world of football with little knowledge of live outside of it. This is how exactly like how porn stars are treated. As soon as you’re not worth the money to the producers, your time is up. You may have done 10,000 movies with girl/girl, dp and 20 person orgies, but now your on the street. Try getting an internship, with that on your resume.

Katie Morgan’s HBO special.

While looking at other people’s blogs, I found an interesting posting about the HBO special that stars Katie Morgan. I wanted to react to what I thought about the special and why I found it so interesting. First off, the story of Katie Morgan is really pretty normal. A 19 year old girl who gets busted for trying to bring some drugs over the border, goes to jail, gets out and becomes a porn star. Not that I would suggest that anyone should plan their lives around her methods, it just didn’t seem that wild to me. Normally when you think of porn stars you think of the daughters who were sexually molested at a young age, or have some sort of history with abuse. Howard Stern is notorious for interviewing these women and turning them into celebrities. The story of Katie Morgan is fascinating because she was looking for a way out of jail. She found porn because it was an honest living. She films her entire interview naked, because she is so completely comfortable being in front of a camera naked. Her body is pretty much entirely fake. From her boobs to her face, the girl that we see in some of the early videos doesn’t even resemble the one in the interview chair. Her work is her body, and she’s a smart girl. She wasn’t abused as a child. She was never raped. She just made a stupid decision. She did something that was illegal in order to make a living for herself. When she was busted she turned to the safest, most profitable job that she could find. Porn pays her bills, and doesn’t run her the risk of going back to jail. She’s not just a smart girl anymore, shes a rich one.

the computer has come along way.

I can remember when my father first brought home the Apple 2GS computer. The year was around 1992 and it looked absolutely nothing like the computer I am typing on today. There was no operating system, there certainly wasn’t a flat screen and by no means were Cd’s ever inserted into it. I remember playing Oregan Trail and inserting new floppy disks each time the game got past a certain level. Basically this computer was nothing more than a means to play some solitaire and to type a letter on a word processor. Then we get AOL. Dialing up on our family house phone line and after waiting for 5-10 minutes we had access to the world wide web and countless chat rooms. One of the most interesting things that I was able to get from lectures 5 and 6 was the way that technology and the porn business have been so influential on each other. Going back to the DVDHD/blue ray discussion from the first lecture it is scary to think that the future of our technology is still be run by the pornography business. There is just that much money being made of the videos. Although there are millions of porno videos sold a year, it is unquestioned that the Internet is where porn is the most accessible. In the comfort of one’s home is where we like to spend our alone time with our porn stars.

pornography or art?

When discussing art, the most often asked question is what classifies something as art? As an artist myself, this is not always the easiest question to answer. Marcel Duchamp was one of the first American artist’s to ask this question through his work. His piece, the fountain, was a simply a toilet put into a gallery space. Although many outside of the art world would consider this nothing more than a toilet, he was creating a dialogue with his work. By placing a toilet into a art exhibit he was essentially questioning who declares works of art and how we go about labeling something as such. The same I believe can be done with pornography. In lecture 4, professor H. goes into great detail about the history of erotic art and its segway into becoming pornography. But its clearly pretty hard to determine. What makes a figure study like the sculpture of David different then a nude pictorial in Playboy? Both are artistic works created by an artist studying the human form. While one is an infamous sculpture the other is nothing more than taboo reading material sold at convenience stores. Some early works depict the wonders of childbirth as a religious experience as others were censored and considered erotic. The line that separates these works of art in my opinion is extremely blurred, and remain so today.

sex sells.

The pornography business is huge. While watchign the Nightline special on American Porn it is staggering to see the business aspect of the Larry Flint enterprise. What he does is no different then what Nike or any other brand is doing, he simply has a great product. His product is sex and he sells it, in millions of ways. Just like Nike is to sports, Hustler is to porn. Getting an inside look into the store, the videos and the production of his craft was great. Unlike Nike, his target audience is everyone. While not everyone has the abilitly to be an athlete, everyone has sex. From videos to merchandise, his brand has very little boundaries and there is so much money to made. While the Hustler store in LA sells 100,000 videos a month, the production value is so small that there is so much profit to be made. Larry Flint is unlike any other CEO who thinks little about the effects and simply about the bottom line. His product may be considered risque to many, at least he doesnt employ 6 year old kids in Taiwan. Nike in this sense may be more harmful then porn.

Why do we care what the supreme court thinks?

When Janet Jackson exposed her nipple during the Superbowl halftime show a new era of obscenity had begun. In lecture number 3 Professor H. speaks a great deal about pornography and its definition. An interesting part of this lecture was the supreme courts way of going about defining pornography. I especially thought it was crazy that they would go as far as to meet and watch porno screenings when trying to create a standard for the entire country, especially with popcorn and butter. Although obscenity had not yet crept into our public airwaves. I feel It is really important to set a standard for pornography. There is no way that we as people can individually determine what is obscene or pornographic by ourselves and by our standards. While porno may be a topic at the dinner table it can not be defined by each individual. What one person may find as unacceptable, another might find just the opposite. A lot of these personal standards come from the environment in which we live in. What one captain of a ship is willing to show his sailors, would probably not be the same that a religious man or woman would show their children.

Another topic that is defiantly worthy of note is that of statutory rape. Professor H. mentioned the varying differences in the age limit for acceptable sexual relations in various areas around the globe. While statutory rape is very hard to define, this goes back to the issue of acceptable limits and boundaries depending on the environment. The thought of my 14 year old brother having sexual relations may seem absurd to me here in America, in other part the globe this is certainly not the case. On my cousins blog (www.lifeinchad.blogspot.com) he tells a humours story of local Africans who find it hard to believe that at age 22 he has no children.

Porn has effects

From watching the very first lecture it is clear to me that the necessity for a class like this. Consider taboo in American culture absolutely has effects on people of all ages, all races and all ages. The effect that the pornography industry has on media and pop culture are two aspects that i find personally interesting. In the first lecture Professor H. spoke about the VCR and the new technology of HD DVDs and the impact the porn industry has on it is astounding. as a communications design major I fully understand the power of the Internet and the role that it plays in the everyday lives of our youth. The story of the 8 year old girl who was searching for horses i found to be quite surprising, bunt not very at all. in a society where Jenna Jameson is becoming more and more a public figure each day there are certainly negative aspects that need to be addressed. As an artist is often difficult to differentiate between what is acceptable in our everyday lives but bestiality absolutely has no place. From watching the lecture from the first day of class last semester i could just imagine the amount of kids who had no idea what they were getting into. For me this lecture only furthered my interest and made me want to continue onward.