Do you remember when the only way to get porn was to purchase a magazine or video from a shady convenient store? You had to face the clerk and give them money, owning up to the shame of what you were purchasing. You might have worn a hat or sunglasses to try to mask your identity or your uneasiness. Most in my generation and the ones who’ve followed me can’t relate to this as we were thrown into the deep end of internet pornography as children, unable to swim and left to fend for ourselves. Porn everywhere. Porn in secret. Porn only a click away. With no one watching you. Raised on porn.
Was there shame? Most definitely. But that shame was buried deep inside. For survival purposes, we still put on our good-kid public front while privately slipping deeper and deeper into porn’s addictive tentacles.
To see what our society has become in the public eye though is what makes it scarier than ever.
Several years ago, I was sitting in the living room of a family in an impoverished neighborhood in Lansing. This family’s children went to our inner city park program and a group from our church was going to be painting the inside of their house for them. I walked in and sat on the couch to discuss the paint job with the grandmother. I soon realized there was a porno movie on the television. I tried to sit in a way where I couldn’t view the screen but the awkwardness I felt was palpable. The grandmother was clueless; I honestly think she had no idea what was even on the TV set and certainly had no clue of its ramifications for the children she was legal guardian over. Meanwhile as we awkwardly talked, her 8 year old grandson walked in the room. I knew him well from our park program. He plopped on the couch and watched the movie being played for all to see. It was obvious this was a normal occurrence for him.
What kind of effect will this sort of graphic, violent sexual exposure have on an 8-year-old boy as he grows up into a teenager and a man?
It’s both sad and scary.
Fast forward a few years and every kid under the sun seems to have their own smartphone. A porn machine in their pocket.
What happens when a generation of children are being exposed to pornography at the young ages of 6 or 7 when their parents hand phones to them like candy. Sure, some parents put parental blocks on the phones; most don’t.
What happens is sad and scary. As is our blind our culture is to it.
But what’s even scarier is throngs of adults who are now publicly eating up violent, graphic porn with no shame whatsoever. Millions of viewers will storm theaters this Valentine’s Day weekend to watch the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. A book that has already brought in millions upon millions of dollars.
My local public library has a giant display behind the counter for the Fifty Shades of Grey book series, including an entire section of “If you like Fifty Shades of Grey, you’ll also like these books…” All set up as a Valentine’s Day display.
How romantic.
Here’s a quote from Susan Schoenberger‘s article “’50 Shades of Grey: Just how smutty is it?”
Author E.L. James gives us the first-person perspective of a naive 21-year-old college graduate who is also — wait for it — a virgin who has never really been kissed. She is thrown into the presence of a young and extremely handsome billionaire who is powerfully attracted to her but has a dark secret life that involves riding crops, rope and something he calls “The Red Room of Pain.”
As for the sex scenes, they’re frequent, explicit, and full of breathy descriptions of how “hot” bondage and spanking can be.
And millions of adults will gleefully watch this together this Friday. You might want to be careful who you sit next to. And you probably don’t want visit the men’s bathrooms either as they might be a little “messy.”
Is that gross? And crass? Yes. But that’s the point. Why is this movie being showed in my local movie theater alongside of Seventh Son and The Spongebob Movie? Why should I be legitimately afraid to send my kids to the public bathroom knowing someone might be masturbating in the stall next to them, or just finished in the stall they are in? Why isn’t this movie being shown at the porn shop with Debbie Does Dallas and who knows what other super shady porn flicks are out there? And don’t tell me I’m exaggerating, I’m just being real. Something most of popular culture disdains.
But that’s where our culture is now. Porn abuses us, distorts our minds, and creates us into selfish consumers of other humans. But we are addicted. So we mask our addiction by calling it art and saying we love it.
But we all know the real side to porn. Even the star actors in the Fifty Shades movie know. They can’t let on too much and tarnish sales of their movie, but one can pretty easily read between the lines. In an interview from today’s USA Today edition, actress Dakota Johnson who plays Anastasia Steele, who is seen naked while being beaten and in graphic sexual encounters throughout much of the movie states:
- “Sometimes I feel very nervous about it.”
- “Obviously, it’s a scary thing that a lot of people in the world will see me completely naked.”
- Johnson says she wasn’t really prepared for…the fans waiting outside her hotel on a cold Saturday to get a glimpse of (her). That’s one reason she has a bodyguard for the media tour.
- She’s not sure if her parents will see Fifty Shades, for obvious reasons…”They can give it a try and walk out if they’re weirded out by seeing their daughter whipped, spanked and blindfolded.”
- “I’d go home really exhausted some days. But most of the time, it was creatively gratifying.”
Jamie Dornan who plays the stalking, violent, sex-crazed Christian Grey states:
- “I’m not massively uncomfortable with it.”
- “It was brutal. It’s the moment he (Grey) realizes, ‘What the (expletive) is wrong with me?’ It made me feel a bit like that as well.”
How long can our culture try to speak out of both sides of its mouth? Calling the utmost distortion of love “beautiful” and “romantic,” all because people get a lustful fantasy hit off of it.
A hit that will only make your real life less and less appealing and more and more depressing.
Covenant Eyes has a great 5-minute video on the “4 Lies About Sexuality in Fifty Shades of Grey” (from it’s blog). It is excellent and definitely worth watching:
Matt Pradd of Covenant Eyes couldn’t sum it up any better:
Don’t be fooled. Fifty Shades of Grey is nothing more than poorly written violent pornography.
He is:
Author of Beyond the Battle: A man's guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world
Host of the The Flip Side Podcast
Join an online men's small group led by Noah and team at BeyondTheBattle.net
so sad and so common
your best blog that I have ever read… thank you for speaking against this
Thank you for that great encouragement Amanda! And you’re welcome!
“To see what our society has become in the public eye though is what makes it scarier than ever.”
Only know about the movie from reading reviews like yours but crazy that violence tied to sex has gone mainstream. Not sure why the book being popular gives a pass on making it visual. Seems ancient since Harry Potter films were controversial. Thinking the blindness to it is that it’s considered advancing things that a Fifty Shades is now acceptable socially. Not sure how America is still admired by so many in the world as a home to freedom when culturally/morally the no limits that encourages a Fifty Shades is just a prison of our own making. We not only defend our right to it, we raise a glass to how great it is. Huge disconnect that politicians fight so hard for ideals when reality is we’re no longer worthy of them. Maybe too harsh an assessment but just seems the value of the good things we entertain ourselves with are so shallow compared to the depths of the dark things we are attracted to.
I think that’s very perceptive Alan. I was talking to a Muslim friend of mine from Iran who is here as a phD student. He made an observation about America’s value of freedom in that it really just means people can do whatever they want morally and no one can say anything about it. While obviously I don’t agree with Iran’s political system (neither does he), I think that sort of third party outside perspective is very helpful / sobering. I run up against this a lot as a Christian pastor/blogger. People think you are a close-minded bigot or hateful if you are trying to espouse any sort of morality whatsoever. That is scary to me as you’re right, that viewpoint isn’t just defended, it is celebrated. The more free and loose the better. As if sexual orgies were more American and right than a monogamous marriage. It certainly can feel that way. The scary part isn’t the lewd acts themselves, it’s the mindset that condemns teaching on morality and only accepts the ideal of people doing whatever is right in their own eyes… sound familiar?
Huge disconnect for me when Russia was getting so much grief when hosting the Olympics for saying that it is illegal for gays to promote homosexuality to minors. Seemed pretty basic but most western countries including the US came out against Russia as backward and behind the times. Not a good sign that a politically repressive country like Russia is in many ways morally superior. When republicans drag out Reagan and the “shining city on a hill” talk, it not only seems nostalgic but distant, as if we looking at it from the gutter.
Small good news is that at $10/ticket, the $81 million take means only 8 million saw the movie out of 300+ million. Holding to the hope that morally this country will someday be worthy of the freedom our political rights allow.
Wow, where to begin. I’ll start by seconding Amanda’s comment: this is definitely one of the most useful blogs you’ve posted Noah. Thank you.
I’ve never read the book, nor will I. Nor will I see the movie. I’ve read enough *about* the story to know there is nothing redeeming in it. Very glad you linked that Covenant Eyes video. The four lies the video calls out are all on the mark.
Regarding Lie #1 – Violence is sexy. I am a counter-human trafficking advocate. Just how many sex buyers are going to jet over to South East Asia to re-enact their favorite 50 Shades fantasy with some poor country girl who has gone to the city in search of work and finds the only way she can earn any money for her impoverished family is to sell her body and subject herself to abuse? How many of those prostituted girls will even be there of their own free will? Not all of them. This is not harmless stuff.
Noah made this astute observation: “People think you are a close-minded bigot or hateful if you are trying to espouse any sort of morality whatsoever.” – Because it is just nuts to say that sleeping with one partner until death will save the world from a plethora of debilitating or deadly diseases, not to mention many unwanted pregnancies. Totally bonkers that Christian line of thinking. Of course, it is not that they don’t object to espousing any sort of morality. The world’s very much about espousing sexual morals, namely, sleep with whomever you like.
“Huge disconnect that politicians fight so hard for ideals when reality is we’re no longer worthy of them.” – This reminds me of a quote from the re-booted Battlestar Galactica: “Are we worthy of survival?”