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RSSAlain de Botton's "new kind of porn"
The philosopher wants to "excite our lusts".
By Helen Lewis Published 18 May 2012 11:34
Holy hell. Not content with telling us how to work and how to be happy, Alain de Botton is now going to tell us how to have sex.
No, really. Behold this press release from the School of Life, which penetrated my inbox this morning:
Thanks to the internet, the modern world is awash with pornography. This pornography represents a threat not just to those who make it in terms of the exploitation involved, but also to those who consume it, in terms of the conflict it can set up between the values encoded in the porn and their responsibilities and values in the rest of their lives.
One solution is to ban porn. Another, and perhaps more creative solution now suggested by de Botton, is to create Better Porn.
There’s really nothing I can write that will adequately convey the gist of what’s happening quite as well as Alain himself can, so here goes:
We shouldn't have to choose between being human and being sexual (the Ancient Greeks knew this very well). Ideally, porn would excite our lust in contexts which also presented other, elevated sides of human nature – in which people were being witty, for instance, or showing kindness, or working hard or being clever – so that our sexual excitement could bleed into, and enhance our respect for these other elements of a good life. No longer would sexuality have to be lumped together with stupidity, brutishness, earnestness and exploitation; it could instead be harnessed to what is noblest in us.
The real problem with current pornography is that it's so far removed from all the other concerns which a reasonably sensible, moral, kind and ambitious person might have. As currently constituted, pornography asks that we leave behind our ethics, our aesthetic sense and our intelligence when we contemplate it. Yet it is possible to conceive of a version of pornography which wouldn't force us to make such a stark choice between sex and virtue – a pornography in which sexual desire would be invited to support, rather than permitted to undermine, our higher values.
Well, you can’t blame a fellow for trying. I would love to link you to more information, but unfortunately my Google of “Alain de Botton porn” came up empty.
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32 comments
"One solution is to ban porn. Another, and perhaps more creative solution now suggested by de Botton, is to create Better Porn. "
Another solution is to add gender to the anti-hate-legislation (to join all the forms of discrimination that affect men that are currently covered), and apply this measure of acceptability to all media including pornography.
Better porn? Where is it? All the stuff I been looking at sucks!
Hi, good day. Wonderful post. You have gained a new subscriber. Pleasee continue this great work and I look forward to more of your great blog posts.
http://www.pwffi.com/atv/
Rule 34, no?
Vulgar.
I think what Mr. de Botton is saying is absolutely wonderful and SO important--maybe we tend to ignore the fact that everyone now grows up in a world completely saturated with easy-access porn, and that there might be negative consequences of sex being so thoroughly associated with, as he puts it, stupidity, brutishness and exploitation.
‘We shouldn't have to choose between being human and being sexual (the Ancient Greeks knew this very well).’ Yes but the Greeks, with their wonderful visual and narrative sense of life, had a goddess for love, Aphrodite, of surpassing beauty, and another, a crude, ugly loud-mouth, Pan, for unbitted lust; not to mention dirty old men, like the satyrs, or Zeus for that matter. Porn is closer to Pan than Aphrodite, showing what the male executive organ gets up to, or in to, and likewise, the female labia, not to mention all the other erogenous zones. Difficult to make that noble or witty, inter urinas et faeces. Boccaccio managed it. However, the sexual organs have not developed in beauty in keeping with the rest of the body, as Freud said; they keep their animal nature, invested with fur, and love too is as animal as ever. Civilize it, as Alain de Botton will.
I also don't understand why the tone of this article is so sneering. It sounds like a great idea to me, and one that I felt equally as happy about when it was being put forward by Caitlin Moran in her book How To Be A Woman.
Maybe somebody did start making better porn in the 1980s, but most of the crap we're subjected to today is sexist, mindless and is doing great harm to what youngsters perceive as sex roles in today's society. What is free and blanketed across the internet is just porn crap. Personally, I don't watch it because it makes me sad, not horny, but I'd love to find something that I actually found semi true to life and stimulating! Why, exactly, is that something to be sneered at, other than for the cheap laughs it might bring from the wealth of double entrendres it provides?
It's sneering becuase it's a man talking about sex, and Helen has a problem with men.
The sneering tone of this piece is far more annoying than anything de Botton has ever written. If you want to dismiss all porn, fine, if you want to dismiss an argument, then do so without such a sneer and present something other than what's are reasonable statements by your pet hate figure as if just ha is enough to justify ridicule...
The sneering tone of this piece is far more annoying than anything de Botton has ever written. If you want to dismiss all porn, fine, if you want to dismiss an argument, then do so without such a sneer and present something other than what's are reasonable statements by your pet hate figure as if just ha is enough to justify ridicule...
The sneering tone of this piece is far more annoying than anything de Botton has ever written. If you want to dismiss all porn, fine, if you want to dismiss an argument, then do so without such a sneer and present something other than what's are reasonable statements by your pet hate figure as if just ha is enough to justify ridicule...
The sneering tone of this piece is far more annoying than anything de Botton has ever written. If you want to dismiss all porn, fine, if you want to dismiss an argument, then do so without such a sneer and present something other than what's are reasonable statements by your pet hate figure as if just ha is enough to justify ridicule...
The sneering tone of this piece is far more annoying than anything de Botton has ever written. If you want to dismiss all porn, fine, if you want to dismiss an argument, then do so without such a sneer and present something other than what's are reasonable statements by your pet hate figure as if just ha is enough to justify ridicule...
The sneering tone of this piece is far more annoying than anything de Botton has ever written. If you want to dismiss all porn, fine, if you want to dismiss an argument, then do so without such a sneer and present something other than what's are reasonable statements by your pet hate figure as if just ha is enough to justify ridicule...
Ray, I think the other good idea de Botton had was about building a temple for atheists; again, rather counter-intuitive, but actually kind of cool and interesting. I think de Botton specialises in this sort of stuff. At first take, you think, Nonsense - then it grows on you.
'Religion for Atheists', this is exctly what I was thinking while seeing the title 'Alain de Botton's "new kind of porn"'. Haven't read it (the book) is it any good?
de Botton's idea of temples for atheists is simply an extension of what JD Salinger's character Franny, in 'Franny and Zooey', recognised when reading 'The Way of a Pilgrim'. Remarking upon this in in 'Memoirs of a Dervish', Robert Irwin writes: "I found the idea that religion works for even atheists and agnostics comforting". Maybe I am missing something but I find little that is new or thought provoking in what de Botton writes.
My gut feeling about the book wasn't wrong then. Won't read it. Waste of time.
Yeah, it sounds like one of the few sensible ideas he's had.
And he's right to the extent that lots of mainstream porn insults intelligence by blindly replicating sexist ideas about men and women, I agree that the answer is Better Porn. But as other commenters here have said, he's hardly the first to come up with the idea.
The linguistics can be a spoiler. Why don’t we say “eroticism”—that can be refined and powerful and elevating and touching—instead of “porn?” Opening up the femininity and masculinity in a gracious way is life affirming and empowering. The art of flesh needs rehabilitation via gratitude. There are no fine arts without the mighty sensual ground. There is no real life without being loved erotically.
This is a fantastic idea from The School of Life. We need more of these counterintuitive projects that actually hit the mark.
Just when you thought de Botton couldn't get anymore asinine..
So we can look forward to films like 'How the Swedish Maid Saved the Whales' I suppose.
Oh, sigh! Short story. I was building sandcastles with my 4 year old nephew once and he insisted on putting a 'gun' on top of the castle to 'kill' the 'aliens'. I said, "Is that really necessary? Aunty Chrys doesn't like guns, and maybe the aliens mightn't be baddies - they might be bringing morning tea!"
He rolled his eyes, put his hands on his hips and said, "It's a GAME Aunty Chrys!"
I would say the same thing of porn. It's a GAME! It's fantasy! I don't expect porn to make me think or improve my life in any other way other than to titillate. That is it's function. If I want ethical, intelligent, elevating input I'll read a book or watch a serious movie. For goodness sake, does everything have to be 'meaningful'? Porn is grown-up's sandcastles - we don't expect it to be 'real' and we don't expect it to relate to our real lives or everyday ethics. Of course, people producing porn should not be exploited, but to try to make it something that it is not by over-intellectualising it is as silly as suggesting that atheists need their own temple.
Oh, sigh! Short story. I was building sandcastles with my 4 year old nephew once and he insisted on putting a 'gun' on top of the castle to 'kill' the 'aliens'. I said, "Is that really necessary? Aunty Chrys doesn't like guns, and maybe the aliens mightn't be baddies - they might be bringing morning tea!"
He rolled his eyes, put his hands on his hips and said, "It's a GAME Aunty Chrys!"
I would say the same thing of porn. It's a GAME! It's fantasy! I don't expect porn to make me think or improve my life in any other way other than to titillate. That is it's function. If I want ethical, intelligent, elevating input I'll read a book or watch a serious movie. For goodness sake, does everything have to be 'meaningful'? Porn is grown-up's sandcastles - we don't expect it to be 'real' and we don't expect it to relate to our real lives or everyday ethics. Of course, people producing porn should not be exploited, but to try to make it something that it is not by over-intellectualising it is as silly as suggesting that atheists need their own temple.
thanks Chrys for saving me the time to (try) and say the exact same thing. excellent post, hits the nail firmly on the head.
If you haven't been to fetlife.com then you probably shouldn't go there - your mind may be too narrow, your ideas of sexual pleasure too limited. But there are thousands and thousands of people who already consume and make better porn. We respect choice, gender, ethnicity and sexuality in all its fluidity, and we don't even charge for it.
Mainstream ideas of porn and mainstream attitudes to it really are Victorian... join in the 21st century.
Hate to rain on Botton's parade but this is hardly a new idea. The ex-porn actress Candida Royalle began making films that women could relate to in 1984.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candida_Royalle
Wooohoooo! Nerd-porn!
"Behold this press release from the School of Life, which penetrated my inbox this morning" is one of the best lines I've read in a long time.
first off, name change to "Alain de Bottom" ?
I had the same thought. It's really the least he could do to get better penetration for his stimulating idea!