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debtdeathLast night I was reading a series of tweets by film critics Jessica Ritchey and Matt Zoller Seitz (who I look up to a lot!). I could really repost the entire thread by Ritchey but for the sake of brevity, here's an excerpt:
Neoliberalism always needs to justify things for profit. "Why is this here? This doesn't serve the plot." Neoliberalism is terrified of pleasure for pleasure's sake. The idea that you have a sex scene because it's hot. Because you have a right to pleasure.
And here's this from Zoller Seitz:
People have been taught to “consume” things that are given to them immediately and often that were produced under exploitative circumstances — and they also hate the artist who made them for calling them art and insisting they have intrinsic value apart from being “property.”
It got me thinking a lot about sex negativity in media fueling consumerism, and as Ritchey says in her thread, how this "culture-wide phobia of sex which in turn is becoming a useful vector for the increasing spread of fascism".
Much like a lot of fairly reasonable takes on culture online, this one received plenty of whataboutist replies, which drives me crazy.
I often think about the current trend in mainstream media where "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny" as a symptom of capitalism and more specifically consumerist neoliberalism: the infantilisation of the audience.
1. Capitalism and audience infantilisation
By infantilisation, I specifically mean the merging of audiences where media For Everyone now means that it's centered around children, a logical result when you consider that children are the most eager of earnest consumerists since they generally don't know anything about money, market segmentation, or socio-economic ideologies (and who can fault them!). They are therefore most likely to fall victim to the predatory ways companies advertise to them for profit, effectively turning them into "good soldiers of neoliberalism" as Ritchey says in the thread.
This has an effect on all art, as even the most independent artist you've never heard of is still affected by the cultural zeitgeist that is--whether we like it or not--dictated by mainstream media.
OK. Now that we've established this, let's see what art/media for an infantilised audience usually looks like. This is a non-exhaustive list:
- There is little room for subtext. It's all text, text, text. Nothing is left to the imagination, there is no trust in the audience to figure out what's going on by themselves, and everything has to be explained and spelt neatly by The Plot. Hell, sometimes media will do this on purpose so they can get free publicity from people making and searching for ENDING EXPLAINED videos on Youtube. Canon worship is sort of related to this.
- Diversity as marketing. Diversity is at best a genuine attempt at authentic representation that ends up being devoured by the machine that is whatever industry this art is made in, or at worst a cynical repackaging of tokenism under a veneer of progressiveness, meant to reduce people and their art to just their ~otherness~. Also used as a bludgeon to silence any critic attempting to engage with media for what it is, accusing them of [insert type of bigotry here]. Bleak.
- Status quo as an end state. This is about the inherent conservatism of a lot of these stories. There's no questioning of the circumstances in which conflict arises, and the consequences of a protagonist's actions because since they're the protagonist, and the story suggests that they're The Good Guy, everything they do is inherently good, right? I believe this is where the notion that art and characters needing to be Morally Good because representation is inherent endorsement comes from.
- Sex negativity. There is no sex, or sexiness, or mentions of sexuality. In the rare cases that sex actually features in these stories, it's usually always operating under a really annoying cis-heteronormative angle. Even when queer people are involved, it's this cookie cutter bullshit that feels made for vanilla normies and cishet people. No offence to vanilla normies and cishet people but they're seldom at the forefront of tastemaking when it comes to transgressive art. Lol.
The sex thing is the one that gets people VERY passionate, doesn't it? I'm certainly one of those people.
What's interesting about these four points I'm bringing forward, is that as Ritchey says in her first tweet, they're elements that are the makings of fascist ideology:
- discouraging media literacy, instead replacing it by surface-level pseudo-analysis and pride in anti-intellectualism,
- appropriation of progressive language for reactionary and conservative ends,
- presenting the role of art as moral guidance and reinforcement of the status quo,
- the fetishisation of the sexless body, the fear of sex, the demonisation of "deviant" sex (aka queerness) and pleasure for its own sake.
It's no surprise that the religious fundamentalists who have been having a big ol' moral panic over queer and especially trans people espouse this ideology. Fuck 'em lol.
What's concerning is how easily this ideology infiltrates otherwise reasonable people.
It's especially concerning when young, queer people think this way too.
Fandom (in the largest sense of the term: being a fan of a given piece of media) has become a huge vector for this. Large media conglomerates like Disney have realised in the past 10-ish years that fandom is the perfect way to push this capitalist ideology towards art and media.
After all, what's better than a mindless audience that only relates to and interacts with media as a Product to Consume? What a triumph for capitalism to have successfully managed to appropriate the language of social justice to tie absolute consumerism with identity politics, convincing that What You Consume Is What You Are!
You can see this in action in Ritchey's replies: you've got people seeing this genuine, good faith criticism from people talking about how alarming it is that we don't really see sex in movies anymore because there aren't a lot of movies exclusively for adults showing in your average cinema anymore because they've all been supplanted by Marvel slop... and deciding that this criticism is a personal attack on them, because the critic didn't mention the specific case that makes their discomfort with the depiction of sex in art Objectively Valid.
What the hell?
So let's talk about sex.
2. Sex positivity
To understand sex negativity in media, you have to first know what sex positivity is.
I think there's this misunderstanding among people, even queer people, that sex positivity is somehow about being this constantly horny person who wants people to be having public sex all the time and wants to overshare about explicit sex to anyone without their consent (see: people being weird about leather gays at the pride march or whatever) lol...
- Sex positivity is about having open and healthy conversations about sex. It's about demystifying and destigmatising sex, having a more casual approach to it, acknowledging that it's just another thing that a lot of people do for fun, making it less of the Big Deal than it is perceived to be in western/westernised society (big brain sex positivity would also examine the interplay between race, gender and disability with regards to sex).
- Most importantly, sex positivity is about emphasising the importance of safe sex and consent, generally encouraging people to approach the concept of sex without moral judgement, especially when it comes to queer sex.
- Sex positivity is about being pro-actively against a society that dictates that sex should be compulsively cis-heteronormative.
- (Note here that there is nothing about sex positivity as a general philosophy that seeks to justify abuse of power and/or non-consensual sex.)
At this point you may be asking yourself, well then cc, riddle me this: what if I'm asexual. What if I don't care that much about sex. What if I'm a normie vanilla queer. What if I am tired of seeing sex on TV shows because like you I was a conscious human being during the 90s-2000s and that shit was everywhere, man...
I get you! I understand!
The good news is, the whole point of sex positivity is consent and acceptance of individual choice, and that of course includes the choice not to have or even care about sex.
Can individual sex-positive folks be a bit annoying and cringe? Sure. Could they be thinking more about people who don't like sex? Maybe, but beyond being accepting and understanding, it's not necessarily their responsibility, is it?
Do you know who shoves (usually hetero) sex down your throat whether you like it or not? Do you know what you're actually tired of and/or repulsed with?
Let's talk about compulsive cis-heterosexual norms and sex negativity.
3. Sex negativity
Ah, sex negativity... people also call it (neo-)puritanism, but really it's an expression of cis-heteronormativity, so it's no wonder that the usual people who are really into it are your general cast of fascist archetypes: religious fundamentalists, regular conservatives, SWERFs and TERFs...
- Sex negativity is defined by the framing of sex as shameful/sinful/disgusting, even within the approved framework/social contract of (cishet) marriage. No wonder these people think sex is evil, if there's no joy in it and is considered to be degrading.
- By insisting that sex is shameful, happening behind closed doors and not to be talked about, sex negativity wants to silences discussions about consent, safe sex... therefore contributing to normalising abuse and rape culture. See also compulsive heterosexuality, conversion therapy... all a result of this.
- Because of this reification of sex as inherently evil and harmful, sex negativity at best sees queer people as non-existent, or at worst sees queer people enjoying sex and being open about it as a threat to cis-heteronormativity.
- This explains the moral panic of these weirdos accusing us of being groomers and paedophiles or whatever. It's projection: their notion of sex is something unpleasant, repulsive, if not downright evil, so if you actively enjoy it you must be an abuser, right?
Cis-heteronormativity is built on the compulsive subservience of people by trapping them in rigid gender roles, and that's extremely fucking convenient for capitalism, which is built on the compulsive subservience of people by trapping them in rigid socio-economic classes.
To bring us back to sex negativity in art/media: it's convenient. They'll try to convince you about how not featuring even a passing reference to sex in art is Morally Correct, but really it's quite simple. It's just convenient.
It's convenient to produce frictionless, sexless, joyless slop for people to mindlessly and uncritically engage with. It makes the numbers go up, it's a perfectly oiled capitalist machine.
It's also a perfect expression of capitalism turned neoliberalism turned fascism: If you pursue a life of pleasure and joy instead of a productive career, you're useless to society. If you have sex because it feels good (or if you don't have sex at all because you don't care for it) instead of having sex for procreating, you're a deviant.
If an artist creates art because they want it to exist as art, not as a product to consume, then the artist should be hated, seen as pretentious, and they deserve to be exploited and ground to a fine powder by the entertainment industry instead.
Sex workers and queer people have always been the canary in the coal mine for human rights online, and when mainstream culture starts erasing sex positivity... you have to wonder, what's next?
Conclusion
What I want to end on with this... fairly lengthy post, is this:
- Sex is normal. Not having sex is also normal.
- Queer love and sex is especially beautiful, because we live in a world where everyone tries to pretend it doesn't exist.
- Any pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake (whether sexual or not!) is a wonderful expression of human nature at its most affirming, inherently anti-capitalist and anti-fascist.
People, especially queer people who want to make art about sex, or even just talk openly about it, are rightfully frustrated at the current climate in which they're accused of the most horrid shit for even mentioning sex, or their frustration with the current climate! And it sucks that some of the negativity comes from within the queer community!
If you think that the expression of this frustration on is somehow "shaming" or not inclusive enough of asexuals or normie queers or whatever... I think you need to examine a little closer what it is you're actually ashamed of or uncomfortable with, and ask yourself why you resent queer people who enjoy sex.
We live in an age where people are more and more afraid and ashamed of sex. A lot of people pushing for this shift hold a lot of power, and their first scapegoat will always be the people they see as deviating from the norms they were uncritically conditioned in. That's queer people, obviously including asexuals. Whether you like sex or not doesn't matter to them, we're all freaks anyway.
There is always time to unlearn capitalist, cis-heteronormative conditioning.
There is always time to examine your own biases and understanding them.
There is always time to realise that someone's genuine joy, pleasure, and love is not an attack on you but something to be celebrated, even if it's not a type of joy, pleasure, and love you personally practice.
Finally, there is always time to engage with art in earnest. Stop using marketing words like "content" and "consuming media" and you're already halfway there.
And then, I swear, it gets so much better.
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Date: 2023-06-27 03:45 pm (UTC)It feels repetitive to just be like YESSSS on all of your posts, but what can I say... cc never misses! HEHEHE
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