Gravity

Skiing downhill is easy.  This might sound ridiculous for those of you who, like me, have skied and almost died in the process. The reality is, however, that going from the top of the mountain to the bottom is not all that complicated.  If you are not overly concerned with how you look, whom you hit, or what bones you break, skiing downhill is simple.  Ski slopes are slippery.  Gravity does most of the work.

Skiing uphill, however, is a heftier trick, which brings us, naturally, to a discussion about  pornography.

As many of you know, Playboy was in the news lately for making a rather peculiar announcement: it is no longer going to publish non-articles.  This magazine, known for more than half a century as a place to find non-articles, will stop doing so, and the reason is quite simple:  market saturation.  The supply of non-articles has become so shockingly immense, so easily available on laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets, that apparently it’s just not reasonable to actually try to sell such a product on glossy paper.

Thus, Mr. Hefner, the magazine’s founder, has inadvertently become this weird “victim” of his own enormous success.  I use the term “victim,” loosely, of course, because, by worldly standards, Mr. Hefner has done quite well.  Over the course of his nine decades he has garnered wealth, fame, and the consequences of each.  He’s had a life.  However, his flagship publication, which reached its peak in 1975 with over five million subscribers, now has a circulation of around 800,000. What makes the entire story ironic is that one could argue that he designed this scenario sixty years ago.

From the very beginning, Hefner saw his publication as more than just a way for men and adolescent boys to look at pictures of naked women.  Hefner saw himself as a top general in a 20^th century American culture war.  He was going to change the way American society viewed sexuality. He was going to fundamentally adjust what he considered puritanical sexual mores.

And he did.  Not by himself, of course, but by packaging images of “the girl next door” in between engaging text, he designed his magazine to be a more respectable alternative to the seedier mediums stashed away in the closets across America.  Over time this very juxtaposition diminished what many considered illicit content in the first place.  Although considered profane at the time, the earlier centerfolds would hardly raise an eyebrow now in few places outside the Middle East.

This erosion was by design.  When commenting in the New York Times about the decision, Scott Flanders, Playboy’s chief executive, had this to say, “That battle has been fought and won.  You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture.”

            Before continuing, I think it’s reasonable to pause and just let that comment sink in.  Mr. Flanders, to my knowledge, was not being ironic or making a clumsy attempt at humor.       He apparently equates being able to view “every sex act imaginable for free” as some kind of first amendment victory lap, which now brings us back to skiing.  

The “slippery slope” theory basically states that once a society allows one thing to happen, such as looking at centerfolds of scantily clad women, it will eventually allow anything to happen, such as, well, the above paragraph. 

Now, it is important to admit that this process does not always play itself out.  For example, early immigration patterns caused many Anglo-American Protestants to fear that the nation would eventually be ruled by the Vatican.  Let in the Irish-Catholics, the thinking went, and eventually the entire nation would be run by papists.  Clearly those concerns were unfounded, as evidenced by a brief glance at an American history book.

            However, sometimes the “slippery slope” theory is spot on, which seems to be the case here. 

            In closing, I am not, by nature, much of a finger-pointer.  For one, my own life has hardly been one to emulate, and secondly, the world is just too complicated to try and blame one effect on a solitary cause. It is worth mentioning, though, that as our culture’s acceptance of pornography and pornographic imagery has mellowed, the divorce rate has gone up, sexual assaults on campus have increased, global human sex trafficking is running rampant, and the exploitation of our most innocent has only worsened. 

Can any of these societal ills be blamed entirely on pornography?  Of course not.

            But I do have a skiing question to ask before it gets too cold:  are we getting close to the bottom?