Emotional Pornography?: In Defense of Romance

On the Catholic Exchange, an article by Catholic psychologist Greg Bottaro appeared warning of the dangers of “Emotional Pornography.”  He argues that just as men fall prey to “physical pornography,” women are especially susceptible to “emotional pornography” in the form of romantic films and songs, which supposedly create in women unrealistic expectations for how their romantic partners are supposed to behave.  The implication is that just as physical pornography turns women into “sex objects,” emotional pornography turns men into “romance objects” who exist solely for the gratification of women’s emotional desires.

The notion is quite intriguing, especially given the truth that unrealistic expectations of romantic love do pervade our culture.  But I want to push back against the idea that romantic films and songs constitute pornography in any meaningful way.  The author’s argument is flawed for several reasons.  First, he does not provide a clear definition of what constitutes pornography.  Second, the definitions that he does provide do not apply to romantic films or songs, primarily because he does not accurately identify what is objectified in romantic films and songs.  This makes his attempt to compare true pornography with the romance portrayed in films and music deeply morally problematic.

The first definition the author gives for what constitutes pornography is based on what it does: it “somehow” creates a “movement of something in us.”  He writes that romantic music and movies constitute pornography because they “present an idea to a woman that somehow moves something in her" (emphasis mine).  This is a vague and unsettling definition of pornography’s supposed effects.  It could, in theory, encompass everything from the poetry of John Keats to the plays of William Shakespeare to the novels of Jane Austen, right on down to episodes of The Bachelor and Taylor Swift’s latest hit.  Heck, the Song of Solomon “moves something in me” – does that make it pornography?

Clearly we need a more precise definition.  Although the author provides no specific examples of a film or song that he thinks "emotionally pornographic" (aside from Twilight and The Notebook), he does try to specify what he means by pornography, saying that “using sex to sell is a form of pornography.”  He goes on to indulge some sketchy etymology (“pornography” does not come from a Latin root, and “prostitution” is not the Latin word for “price”), and then he points out that pornography objectifies individuals by treating them as the means to fulfill sexual ends.  He also asserts something some cultural theorists have also argued: that pornography “presents fantasy as reality.” 

We have several claims to examine here.  First: that pornography uses sex to sell.  I find this definition imprecise.  Pornography does not use sex to sell.  What it does is sell sex.  It’s a subtle but important distinction.  Pornography seeks both to arouse desire and to gratify it instantaneously.  Porn is its own gratification.  It is selling a sexual experience, not using the temptation of a sexual experience to sell a product.  Using sex to sell is what advertisements do, such as those found at Victoria’s Secret or Abercrombie and Fitch.  Advertisements arouse desire but do not gratify it – rather, they point you to something else which will gratify those desires.  Art, it has been argued, is distinguishable from both porn and advertising in that it does not seek to arouse desire but rather seeks to enable people to contemplate an aesthetic ideal. (1)

Naturally, the boundaries between pornography, advertising, and art have been heavily contested by theorists and philosophers, who question whether the boundaries exist at all.  (Trying to get a group of social theorists to agree on anything is probably harder than getting a group of dogs to sing in harmony.)  But perhaps we can agree that the meaning of a form of communication (be it a film or a song or a novel or a photograph) is determined in that shifty, elusive space between the intent of the communicator and the intent of the recipient of the communicated object.  

Of course, intentionality itself is a contested subject.  But let's speak, if we can, about the intention behind romantic films.  The author of this article suggests that romantic films are intentionally "marketing" men for women, packaging "unrealistic" men who gratify their emotional desires, similar to the way that pornography markets and packages unrealistic women for men's sexual desires.  Yet here I find that the author blurs the line between pornography and advertising.  In his own assessment, the worst that could be claimed for romantic films is that they serve as an advertisement for romantic love, arousing desires in women and leaving them wanting more: “you walk away from these movies feeling like your life isn’t that great, your relationship isn’t measuring up, or somehow you won’t be happy until you find a Ryan Gosling character to sweep you off your feet.”  This is what advertisements do.  If this is the case (and I would agree with him here) I would argue that romantic films could be critiqued as a form of consumerism.  But what is offered for sale is not objectified men, as the author seems to believe, but the idea of romantic love.

And this is key: the marketed item in romantic films is not men, but the idea of romantic love.  Therein lies an important difference between the objectification of women in pornography and the supposed objectification of men in romantic films.  Within the context of pornography, the objectification of women occurs because the identity of the woman doesn't matter.  Her thoughts, feelings, and personality are all irrelevant so long as she performs the necessary motions with her body.  She is objectified, commodified, "thingified."  In romantic films, however,  at least within the context of the story, the personality of the man matters.  His thoughts and feelings are taken into account, and relationality is foremost.  He is not an anonymous object, but a human being with an identity and a personality that matters to the story.  

The difference is one between fantasy and imagination.  The author argues that pornography creates a fantasy for men, and he equates this with the "fantasy" created by romantic films.  But again, I think there's a distinction to be made.  Cultural theorists have posited that another difference between pornography and art is that porn creates a fantasy world in which viewers can manipulate reality, becoming sexual gods who turn others into sex toys that they can control.   In this it is the enemy of imagination: George Steiner argued, for instance, that in pornography "there is no respect for the reader" or viewer "whose imaginative means are set at nil" (76).  Art, on the other hand, engages the imagination, providing a means for viewers to explore reality and gain insight into the different forms it can take.  It seeks not to dominate or control reality but to allow viewers to plumb its depths in new ways. 

This distinction is subjective and subtle, but still important.  And the author’s own words reveal his failure to recognize the difference: “Just as you know that you will never be able to live up to (or down to) the level of women in porn, we feel deep down that we will never be able to live up to (or down to) the level of those men in the movies you love.”  In physical porn, however, there’s nothing to “live up to” except to be a manipulated object of someone’s sexual desire.  (Frankly, I find the generalization that women feel inadequate based on what men find in pornography absurd.  Perhaps some women do, and we pity them.  But women do not object to porn because they secretly wish they could be porn goddesses but can't attain that ideal.)  In romantic songs and films, however, we see not a fantasy in which men are manipulated like objects, but an imagined ideal for what relationships could be like.   This is not to suggest that the “ideal” presented in these films and stories should never be critiqued.  Certainly they should, and women should be wary of accepting this marketed ideal as a standard for their own lives.  But at their best, romantic songs and stories allow us to explore the various depths of expression that love can take, and to contemplate the beauty of love between a man and a woman.  When they do that, romance becomes art, as it does in the hands of our best poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and novelists.    

Because, in my view, the author fails to identify the difference between the marketing of women in pornography and the marketing of romantic love in romantic films, he falls into dangerous moral territory.  I find any comparison that tries to draw an equation of any sort between the so-called victims of emotional pornography (i.e., men who feel inadequate that they can’t live up to the romantic expectations of their partners) and the victims of real pornography (i.e., the countless women who are bought and sold as slaves to the sex industry) deeply offensive and disturbing.  I cannot find it in my heart to pity the poor men who feel victimized that they can’t be as romantic as Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, not when men, women, and children around the world are heartlessly being traded like anonymous commodities every day.  The type of objectification is simply not the same, and it is morally repugnant and philosophically irresponsible to suggest otherwise.

This is not to say that our culture does not glamorize romantic love in ways that are unhealthy and that should be guarded against.  The glorification of romantic love does have unsettling implications for how we view marriage, sexuality, and commitments between romantic partners.  Nor is this to say that women do not use romantic movies to gratify unchaste desires.  Even further: this is not to say that things like Harlequin romances or Fifty Shades of Grey do not slip over the line into pornography for women.  Certainly I don't mean to suggest that all romantic films and songs ascend to the heights of true art.  But to call romance films and love songs pornography in such broad strokes is uncritical and insulting.  There are better, more responsible ways to talk about and critique romantic love than this.

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(1) There's a great deal of debate within the realm of philosophy, art history, and cultural theory about the tenuous line between art and pornography.  I don't mean to engage them here, except to suggest that Dr. Bottaro's thinking might be clarified if he considered the broader debates surrounding the topic he's engaging.  See, for instance, Hans Maes' Art and Pornography: Philosophical Essays.

Salt of the Earth: A Blessing and Curse

St. Scholastica

Salt of the earth: not a good thing to be.

Salting the earth in the ancient Near East was a practice performed by victors in war, to ensure that the land they had conquered would remain infertile, and to symbolize a curse upon the land.  Salt is a metaphor for destruction, and it lasts forever: salt, in the Old Testament, was also a symbol of everlasting fidelity.

We are the salt of the earth.  If we are the salt scattered by the victor, then who is the victor, and who are the conquered?  God is the sower of salt.  God is the victor.  Consider how this would sound to Jews living under Roman oppression: You are the salt of the earth, God's people who remain to curse a world that has forgotten God.  You have been sown here to condemn injustice, and you have been sown here to symbolize God's ultimate victory over the evils of the world.  

We are the salt of the earth.  We are to be a curse on the land of "worldly" values, calling a plague upon the greed and selfishness and violence and injustice that fill our earth.  We are supposed to symbolize God's eternal triumph.  
Yet salt is not only a curse - it is also a blessing.   It preserves food and enhances flavor.  It cleanses and heals wounds.  In the Old Testament it was offered to God with gifts of incense and grain.  

So while we are a curse sown by God upon the evils of the world, we are at the same time to be a symbol of healing and hope.  The world sees us as a curse, but despite the world's perceptions and intentions, we can become a blessing.  We can choose faithfulness and reconciliation.  We can choose to offer ourselves as sacrifices to God.

It is the cycle of death and life, of destruction and creation, of curse and blessing.  It is a dangerous responsibility we have: like salt, we possess simultaneously the power to be forces of death or forces of life.  We must choose what we will destroy and what we will preserve.  

Do not lose your flavor.  Do not renounce this responsibility.  Do not be afraid to be the curse and the blessing, the death and the life.  Die to sin, be born in Christ.  

Be the salt that is sown over the evils of the world.  Be the salt that destroys the roots of injustice.

But also: be the salt that heals with God's grace.  Be the salt that cleanses with God's Word.  Be the salt that preserves goodness.  Be the salt that lasts forever.

A More Perfect Bread

The miracle of the Eucharist is precisely that the bread remains, in a very real way, bread after the consecration.  It looks like bread.  It tastes like bread.  When you eat it, it will affect your body physiologically just as bread does.  The consecration is not alchemy, whereby one object is transformed into something entirely different.  The bread is still bread.

Yet it is more than bread – or more precisely, it is more perfectly bread, because now it is the Body of Christ.  This bread fulfills the destiny of bread in nourishing the whole man: body and soul.  This bread helps us to see all bread, and indeed all of creation, with new eyes, because this bread is no longer oriented towards earth but towards God. 

This is a subtle miracle, yet it is precisely its subtlety that gives it power.  It is by no means flashy.  It does not come accompanied with lightning bolts and thunder.  It is not magic.  God does not violate the form or function of the bread to achieve His purposes.  He allows the bread to retain its integrity as bread.  He does not force His way into the bread, but permeates it.  He seeps into its pores.  The bread becomes Christ's Body, but the reverse is also true: Christ becomes bread, so that bread might be perfected through Him. 

This is the transformation God wants to effect in us.  God does not want to make us into something we are not.  God wants to perfect who we are.  Be suspicious of flashy conversions, of conversions that demand that we renounce legitimate interests and legitimate joys.  And rest assured that almost all of our interests, all of our joys, all the quirks of our personalities, all the things that make us uniquely ourselves can be put to God’s service.  Are we witty and funny?  Laughter gives joy to God.  Are we serious and somber?  Somberness reminds us that this life’s pleasures are not all there is to human existence.  Are we argumentative and combative?  Use it to argue for the truth and to stand up for justice.  Are we introverted?  We remind others of the need for solitude and silence.  Are we extroverted?  We remind others of the need for community and fellowship.  It is true that God loves us as we are - but He also wants to perfect who we are.  In our conversion we remain the same, yet entirely different.

When God converts our hearts, all of our interests, all of our activities, will have a new orientation, a new purpose.  If we are artists we will still produce art, but our art will be elevated because it will be created out of an awareness that beauty is meant to glorify God.  If we are cooks we will still cook, but our food will have a higher purpose, because it will be given out of a desire to nurture for God’s creation.  If we are teachers we will still teach, but our teaching will reflect an understanding that all true wisdom comes from the Spirit of God.  Our words and actions may sound and look the same as they always did, but there will be a new, a deeper meaning to all we say and do.  The fulfillment of meaning.  

Our God is not a pushy, shovy God.  He will not push us out of the way to make room for Himself.  I think too often we are afraid of letting God enter our lives because we are afraid of this.  We see God as competition, like the loud bossy person in the room who demands silence and refuses to let anyone else talk.  So we shut Him out.  But God does not want us to be silent while He speaks: He wants to speak with us and in us and through us.  He does not want us to be still while He acts: He wants to act through our actions.  He wants to permeate our lives and perfect all that we say and do and are.  He wants us to unite our actions and ourselves with Him.  

Movie Review: The Snow Walker

On the surface, The Snow Walker is a very simple tale of adventure and survival.  Set in the 1950s, it features a cocky white pilot, Charlie, who is bribed with walrus tusks into taking a sick Inuit girl to a big-city hospital, only to crash his plane somewhere in the Northwest Territories.  Charlie thinks he has what it takes to survive on his own in the wilderness, but quickly discovers that he’ll have to rely on the Inuit girl’s knowledge and skills if he is to survive the mosquitoes, the swamps, and the snow without dying of exposure or starvation.

If this was the only story The Snow Walker had to tell, I doubt it would have struck me the way it has.  Over the past week I’ve found myself haunted by the film.  Against the backdrop of the glorious Canadian landscape, and through the dynamic performance of the film’s two leads, The Snow Walker tells a story that is more than the sum of its parts.  Though the narrative is in part propelled by the suspense of wondering if and how the main characters are going to survive, the film tells an essentially a character-driven story: we are watching a transformation occur in the main character as he learns not only how to survive, but how to love.

This love is both simple yet powerful, and of a kind that is not commonly portrayed on film.  It is not romantic love, but it is also not a mere familial, brother-sister bond.  It is rather what I would call agapic love: love built on self-sacrifice and total self-gift.  It is a love that Kanaalaq almost innately possesses, as she selflessly and wordlessly feeds, clothes, and heals her companion, no questions asked.  Later in the film, its Eucharistic qualities come to the fore as she shares the story of how her mother left her starving family so that her children could have her share of food, and how she herself bit her own wrist to let her dying sister drink her blood.  Kanaalaq laughs as she tells this last bit, marveling at how she “tricked” Tarqeq, the moon god, by saving her sister’s life, and I could not help but be reminded of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s ransom theory of atonement, which holds that Jesus’ death “tricked” the devil and won life for the rest of mankind.

Charlie, for his part, must learn this kind of love from Kanaalaq, and he must learn that how we love in life will affect how we approach death.  When Charlie and Kanaalaq find a wrecked plane containing a charred corpse but also a trove of tools and weapons, he does not understand, at first, why Kanaalaq refuses to go near any of the dead man’s belongings.  Instead she builds a funeral cairn for the body and buries his tools with him.  Slowly, Charlie begins to see that people – and objects – have more meaning than his utilitarianism is willing to grant.  Kanaalaq’s self-giving love extends even to the dead as she is willing to sacrifice a chance for survival to ensure that the unknown dead man will be safe in the afterlife. 

Kanaalaq’s funeral ritual for the dead pilot is counterpoised with the funeral rites of white Canadians, which Kanaalaq herself, though no one in the film is aware of it, receives as she faces her own death.  When Shep, Charlie’s boss, assumes that Charlie has died and holds a memorial service for him, we hear a eulogy lamenting the loss of a life cut short in its prime.  The viewer, however, knows that this eulogy is not for Charlie; it is for Kanaalaq, and the poem becomes a voiceover for scenes of the dying girl coughing up blood and being carried by Charlie across the snow. 

It is, visually and aurally, a moment of cultural and religious contact and enrichment.  Never does the film devolve into cheap comparisons that glorify Inuit culture and denigrate white Canadians.  Nor do we get the sense that Charlie will abandon his modernized ways and embrace the Inuit lifestyle.  Though Charlie has been eating sitsik and going spear-fishing, we feel confident that if he survives he will be grateful to return to the city and enjoy a steak-and-potato dinner at Moishe’s.

But we do see that Charlie has been incalculably altered by his contact with Kanaalaq.  Charlie is ravaged with guilt over his actions during wartime, and we get the sense that his “girl in every port” lifestyle is driven by a “you only live once” attitude.  But Kanaalaq’s quiet, patient love gives him the chance to forgive himself, and once he can do that, he is able to break out of his selfishness and learn how to love.  The ultimate symbol of his transformation comes in his willingness to leave his walrus tusks – the price which Kanaalaq’s family paid for her passage with Charlie in their ironic attempt to save her life – in Kanaalaq’s empty funeral cairn. 

The cairn is empty because Kanaalaq, like her mother before her, leaves Charlie in the middle of the night so that his journey through the deepening winter might be easier without the burden of a dying woman.  Charlie’s grief for Kanaalaq is intense, but he has also learned another lesson from her: not only how to love, but how to let himself be loved.  Rather than chasing after what he desires, Charlie has learned how to accept the gifts that others want to give him.  To let oneself be loved is often the best gift we can give.

Contrast Charlie at the end of his journey with Charlie at the beginning.  In the opening scenes of the film, Charlie is celebrating his birthday.  His girlfriend tries to give him a gift, which he postpones opening because he is eager for sex.  We never do find out what was in the gift; Charlie is called away to work before he could open it, and he departs on his fateful voyage without saying goodbye to his girlfriend.  When Charlie is believed to be dead, we watch as his apartment is cleaned out and the unopened gift swept into a cardboard box.

The Charlie at the end of the film, however, would have known better than to leave that gift unopened, just as he now knows how to accept with gratitude the sacrifices another person wishes to make for him – not because he deserves it, but because she loves him.  How many of us walk away from the gift of grace, ostensibly out of pride and arrogance, but more probably out of a deep fear that we are not worthy: what God could love us so much?  But this sort of thinking selfishly places the emphasis on ourselves, the recipients of the gift, rather than the other – the giver, the lover.  Kanaalaq has taught Charlie that learning to accept such love is the first step in learning how to give it.  And it is only by the power of this love that we can make meaning out of the often bleak landscape of human existence.