Bear with me on this long post. It's a bit rambling, but on a subject that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Back in 1996, or even as recently as 1999 or 2000, I would have read this City Journal piece by Theodore Dalrymple and scoffed. I would have carefully explained that the culture wars are where I never see eye-to-eye with conservatives and why I was more of a liberal or later libertarian.

In no country has the process of vulgarization gone further than in Britain: in this, at least, we lead the world. A nation famed not so long ago for the restraint of its manners is now notorious for the coarseness of its appetites and its unbridled and antisocial attempts to satisfy them. The mass drunkenness seen on weekends in the center of every British town and city, rendering them unendurable to even minimally civilized people, goes hand in hand with the appallingly crude, violent, and shallow relations between the sexes. Britain’s mass bastardy is not a sign of an increase in the authenticity of our human relations but a natural consequence of the unbridled hedonism that leads in short order to chaos and misery, especially among the poor. Take restraint away, and violent discord follows.

Yep, sure, one F-word on TV with a sex scene in a movie and society ends as we know it. Okay. Right.

Except, as time has passed, I've begun to understand where exactly they are coming from. Nowhere, in fact, is the slippery slope more starkly demonstrated than when it comes to popular entertainment and, more specifically, slash-and-burn pornography (and I don't necessarily mean that in the sexual exhibitionist sense) presented as entertainment.

I use the term "slash-n-burn" in reference to the agricultural technique in South America, among other places. They take wooded area, burn it down, grow plentiful crops on the remains of the destroyed woodlands, and when it runs dry they move on. That, more than anything, is what is leading to the destruction of our rain forests. But because the land is not irrigated and cultivated, the farming cannot subside and the barren plains are left for more wooded area to slash and burn.

Popular culture, in many ways, works in a similar manner. Or, perhaps not popular culture as much as shock culture, which is an increasingly strong component of that:

The "any fool" of the last sentence ["But any fool could see that Manson was making a valid point about rock ‘n’ roll gigs and mass behavior, as well as flirting with fascist style."] is a subtle form of intellectual snobbery and flattery, intended to suck the reader into the charmed circle of the sophisticated, disabused intellectual elite, the knowing and the cognoscenti who have moved beyond moral judgment and principles, who are not deceived by mere appearances, do not condemn according to outmoded ways of thought, and are therefore unmoved by such trifling (and oppressive) considerations as public decency. It does not occur to the writer—nor would it matter to her if it did—that in the audience in which fascism was flirted with there might not have been any fools but many fools, those who failed to see the ironically playful "valid" point behind the flirtation and would embrace fascism without irony.

Yesterday I linked to an observance by Poor Man of someone was wearing a T-shirt that said "I vomit remains at Christian filth" in which most of the commenters said that he's likely an adolescent kid dissatisfied with his bed-time and thus feels the need to rebel.

True enough, and that's a quite understandable and common reaction of adolescent projecting the inevitable uncertainties of post-puberty onto society at large. Many such people are also the ones that keep Marilyn Manson's career afloat as a professional provocateur.

Except that in many ways, this adolescent outlook has been sanctified and intellectualized into an entire adult worldview. The sanctification of the idea that nothing should be sanctified, respected, or revered. Without such things, there is nothing to be offended by and the inability to be offended is something of a holy act - indeed, perhaps, the only holy act - in this belief system.

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them?

None of this is to say that a Church of Tolerating Everything actually exists or that there are any purists. Like any philosophy, religious or otherwise, there are varying degrees of adherence.

As the author noted above, Manson's reviewer used the "politically correct" term 'hearing impaired' rather than deaf. In fact, most of the adherants to the standards of tolerance are quite (and rightfully) intolerant of racism, sexism, and discrimination of most sorts.

The effects of this shock culture are more subtle than that. Many liberals are something of hypocrites when it comes to tolerating every religion except Christianity, preaching against assumptions made on race except when it comes to whites, and so on in much the same way conservatives are hypocrites in preaching the Bible's morality and yet falling short of it themselves. It is, in a sense, inevitable and I am one to believe that it is important to have ideals, even if we often fall short of them ourselves.

However, it nature in which it manifests itself is not necessarily stark but it is disturbingly far-reaching. In fact, it is often adopted by its opponents when it's convenient as it is discarded by its advocates. Radio personalities such as Michael Savage score ratings based largely on their ability to say things that others want to but often do not in fear of the society's repercussions.

It's one thing to have a different point of view and to voice it, but the way that Savage and his ilk take pride in being "political incorrect" is not so different from Marilyn Manson making a career as an agitator of the religious right. Whether one is coming at it from the right or left (or no direction at all), when one's art or rhetoric are not sufficient in rationality or humanity to carry without vulgar language and imagery, they are taking a rhetorical short-cut to attention and money.

When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher said that vulgar language was merely a sign of a poor vocabulary. The same often holds true of artists who, because they cannot paint or write, stick a crucifix in urine and call it art. It also holds true for those whose ideas are too ill-concieved and poorly thought out that they simply turn up the amplifier and appeal to the more base instincts of the audience.

"If you can't sing good, sing loud" -Forrest Gump.

Unfortunately, singing loud isn't sufficient. One must sing, or write, lurid. The standards of decency continually shift further and further away from basic codes of conduct. As Dalrymple points out, though, the codes of conduct often follow behind. Many liberals argue that art is simply reflecting reality, but in many cases, especially in the increasing bombarding of media and the inattention given to kids by double-income households, the opposite is undoubtedly occuring. While I'm tempted to write much of it off as "kids being kids" it has somehow turned into adults being kids.

Lawrence put a lot of himself into Mellors, who at one point in the book enunciates the essence of Lawrence’s philosophy, the summary of all his reflections on human existence, his final testament to the world: "I believe in something, I believe in being warm-hearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love. I believe that if men could fuck with warm hearts and women took it warm-heartedly, everything would be all right." The idea that social perfection is to be achieved through wonderfully sensual sexual relations between men and women is a fantasy unworthy of prolonged intellectual consideration. To call it adolescent tripe is to be unfair to many intelligent adolescents.

Yet many adults fall victim to this sort of thinking. Increasingly, over-reliance on physical and emotional affection by the other gender and the perils thereof has been making it in to my writing. I am watching as many of my peers, in their mid-twenties, never having left that adolescent psychological trap. I see many of our parents leaving their home and destroying their family because "the other woman" makes him feel more complete than his job, wife, and family do.

The inclusion of sex in popular media isn't, in and of itself, problematic. It's the glorification of it that I find disturbing. Not that sex isn't a wonderful thing because, of course, it is. Rather because we've taken things from one extreme (you have sex to make kids) to another thing, where it becomes the most important thing to our existence.

Yet as people rack up sexcounts and partners, it ironically becomes increasingly less special. Less sanctified. Which is where the hedonistic philosophy driving much of popular culture comes in. It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's mature and intellectual. Compartmentalization. Dualism. Division.

I am, in general, unconcerned with vulgarity in popular media. I'm also unconcerned with violence and sex, left on its own. What's missing to the stories of culture is the moral of the story.

When I was a kid, all stories had a simple moral to them. The boy who cried wolf taught you not to lie. The story of the witch with the ginger bread house taught you about taking candy from strangers. I don't expect (or, in general, appreciate) such simplistic moral tales as we grow older and notice the world around us in shades of gray, but the fundamental notion of right and wrong have seemingly been tossed aside and we're directed more to empathize (and more than that, live vicariously) than to consider such things.

To put it in a nutshell, sex for sex's own sake is good. Why? because it's part of our nature. To deny that is to deny oneself. The same for Marilyn Manson if he were to deny his own freakishness. The true danger lies in tempering ourselves. It lies in accepting basic truths and striving for unachievable morality. That Manson challenges these things with outrageous stage stunts makes him a viable social critic, regardless of the incoherence of his message. It's not what one is in favor of, but it's what their against. The absense of an ideal is the true intellectual course.

The absense of a moral to the story is the moral of the story.

Then I part company with Mr. Dalrymple

There never was much demand, except from the elite, for relaxation of the law of censorship: indeed, until the law was relaxed, the public had shown a distinctly limited appetite for the works of D. H. Lawrence. But no sooner had the relaxation been legislated, and the book published, than one in four British households had acquired it. The genie was well and truly out of the bottle, the supply had created a demand, and the appetite grew with feeding.

It is, of course, a common prejudice that censorship is bad for art and therefore always unjustified: though, if this were so, mankind would have little in the way of an artistic heritage and we should now be living in an artistic golden age. But if we cannot censor, we can censure: and we should be tireless in saying that D. H. Lawrence and his deplorable and hackneyed progeny down to Marilyn Manson and Glen Duncan, with his "dark, satanic thrills," darken the world rather than enlighten it.

I wouldn't be honest if I didn't tell you that I watched the movie Jackass last week and I greatly enjoyed it. I like Insane Clown Posse despite the lack of pretense of any intellectual, emotional, or spiritual heft. Maybe because of its unpretentiousness.

I should also mention that I have written vulgar things in the past. Along with three other members of No-Lyfe Productions, we write morally vapid, but disarmingly funny, tales of weird people doing weird things.

I make an exception of comedy. Particularly when it's in the vein of the irreverent. I don't particularly care about violence or sex as long as there is a point to it. Does it make me laugh? Does it make me think? Is the sex, cursing, or whatever part of a larger picture or is it simply fan service?

Fan service is generally a term applied to Anime in which the auidence catches a glimpse of a character's underwear (or more... err, or less, I mean... or is it more? You know what I mean) as a gratuitous measure to keep the fans interested and coming back.

90% of the time sex is in a movie is either put there either so you can see so-and-so half-clothed and you can live vicariously through whomever is their co-star. Fan service.

Pushing the envelope for its own sake does not constitute art. Rather, it becomes something of a drug. A new threshold for the next person to have to cross. One can look at classic movies on TCM or another network and there will be movies with perfectly well developed plots without the sensationalism that grips drama today.

So it's tempting to say, as Mr. Dalrymple does, that rather than inhibiting art, censorship actually encourages it.

Except that ignores when sex, violence, or vulgarity actually does advance the plot. Ironically, he points to an example in his own essay:

As the author put it to the interviewer, no doubt to establish beyond doubt his reputation as a serious thinker: “Weird shit happens and I wanted the narrator to have to figure out how to live even in the light of that.” The sexual scenes are not gratuitous, therefore, much less publicity stunts—nor of course are they the result of human choice (weird shit isn’t chosen: it just happens; it is inevitable)—but they raise important metaphysical questions about the boundaries of the permissible.

Well, sometimes weird things aren't chosen by the person they happen to. Heaven knows it's been uninvited in my life on multiple occasions. When that sort of thing does involve sex, it can advance the plot. If the weird thing is sex, well then there isn't too much point tip-toeing too far around it.

I've not had any sex scenes or illicit sexual descriptions in any of my novels thus far, but the one I am drawing up the plot for actually centers around a period of sexual oddity two of the main characters went through when they were younger. I avoid gratuitous cursing when I can, but some times "gosh darn it all to heck" just doesn't quite convey the emotions that the characters are going through.

Chris Rock curses a great deal in his stand-up routines, but they are necessary ingredients to the punch-line and are not the punch-line themselves.

I wouldn't mind Marilyn Manson's vulgar imagery and so forth if I felt that it advanced an honest social critique. I have a great deal of difficulty taking anyone seriously that would try to convince me that it does.

I wouldn't trust an obscenity law to differentiate, however, between what is and is not a valid critique.

Which leaves me a bit at odds as to what the solution is, if there is one. I don't mind outrageous things if they're funny, thoughtful, or whatnot. What bothers me, as it does Mr. Dalrymple, is the exaltation of the outrageous to the profound.

Sometimes a dirty joke is just a dirty joke, and sometimes it really shouldn't be broadcast.