The Famed English Historian Arnold Toynbee once said something to the effect that borders between cultures rich and poor tend to favor the poor.... people like things cheap, think they get more for less, and the poor culture moves up the food chain influencing the rich more so than the rich influences the poor. I think we have a good example of this in the rise of what I call porn culture. Now, I'm not being puritanical, I like a little skin as much as the next guy, but I feel like in about the last 20 years I have seen the rise of fetish that has no basis in normality, the fetisization of fetish seems based on fetish... it's as if the system has gone awry, left it's roots, has no grounding in reality anymore. My thesis I guess is that the influence of Jackie Kennedy, of the days when fetish was private and not shamed, and when sexy and classy lived side by side so to speak, has evaporated to something I will call Vegas Culture, or Stripper or Porn Culture. It seems to have worked up the food chain, with the Adult Industry shepherding it that way, and invaded Club culture and now seems to be taking over things as simple as weddings and tatoo's.
I guess I am pointing out that the lines between public and private conduct are being so blurred, and it's in part due to corporate interests, and what is happening is that Fetish is in our face 24-7 as an enticement which makes it loose it's flavor but has people who want to see themselves as cutting edge or rebellious embracing things so extreme that the norm is now so open that it has lost the intimacy of secrecy. The Sexual revolution is so complete that no one knows anymore how to make love because we are all so busy fucking. You can't make money on making love.. hoochie has won over romance the same way oil won over streetcars. We all rushed into it as a way of pretending we were adult when only a few seem to know how to flirt and fiddle anymore because so many are so busy rutting rutting rutting. Hipsters are too busy exploring their mental curiosity to engage their emotional curiosity to fight this.
What caused it? good question... is it the shift of the centers of our culture to warmer climes, Florida, Arizona, Southern California, where more is revealed out of practicality? Is it the constant push of marketing for sex and sexually related products, like liquor sales, clothing lines, and the adult toy and movie industry?
Is it the broadening of the progressive spirit and a legacy of the Baby Boomers for everyone to rush towards more overt sexuality as a notion of civil rights, maturity, and coolness?
All of the above and a few more reasons I would guess.
The move for me is symbolized by brands like Vivid, Ed Hardy, Lucky, Stoli, and the Tatoo/fast cars/liquor industry, the P Diddy world of the 90's broadened and intensified, the prurient as the baseline leaving no place left to go, nothing left to imagine, plastic surgery as the norm, our barbie dreams the only remaining model of mass produced happiness.
The upcoming generation has an affinity for the culture of the early 40's, something a bit more genteel, but they do it with the assumption that any shame in sexuality is inherently wrong, which is a bit of an oversimplification of what might be seen as a deft maneuvering of the waves and shoals of human sexuality.
Can we blame Kinsey? I don't think so.. he described what was under the surface, but it was low culture that brought it to the forefront, this idea that addictions are virtues, the combination of the notion that there is no shame in being low class, and the notion that sexual health is a national virtue as exemplified by Sexual Education nationally at the age of maybe 5th grade, have led to a confidence on matters of reproduction that is a bit like a sophomoric ego, smart enough to not be dumb, but not smart enough to be nuanced about it.
The outcome is clear, the white hip hop scene of sorts, the Kardashianization of America.. the idea that icons are not classy examples of the rare air of the upper class, of refinement like Gweneth Paltrow or Katherine Hepburn, but are more likely to be exemplary of the upper class mimicking the lower class with a focus on the extremes of body type and behavior like the Kardashians, making the subversive so mainstream that it looses it's subversion, and becomes the norm for lack of any more creativity. Larry Flint pulls you down, objectifies you for our Colosseum Pleasure, but in response no one climbs up to be pulled down anymore. Perfume goes from ambrosia soaked rarity to mass produced saccharine, matching the trends with allure from truffle soaked coquettish to bubble gum flavored emptiness. From french boudoir to Hustler store Chinese shipping container cheapness in 100 years flat.
Now to be fair, what is has always been and will always be. Before the Kardashians there were other icons that portrayed the prurient above the principled, the Jayne Mansfields of the world for those of us who were too busy makin' a 9-5 to play the tease game, wanted what we wanted now, fast girls and a little bit of pleasure. The world has always had high and low, but it seems as if the low has reached up recently to gobble up the high, that the bourgeois know only the prurient now, are not tempted by the yacht culture of the refined. Sperry is being subsumed by Stiletto, the perception of ecstasy has crowded out it's true experience, and fucking has won over fornicating...it's coming out of Miami and Phoenix and Mexico and the Jersey Shore because the only ones willing to show us how it's done are the desperate and the desperate are now the new rich. Suburban kids no longer look to the wayward porn stars of the 70's who might have still had a classy background, fell out of modeling or some such thing due to a taste for forbidden fruit, but now look to the Rock Star energy drink world of Trailer Culture thrust upwards, the quick buck as the new norm, the movers and shakes hustling us all for cash with no idea how to spend it. The Icons become empty. Rolls Royce a brand but not a tradition of excellence, Ogilvy subsumed by trashy iconography.
