MEDA209 Essay
Craig Mitchell
MLA2
'From TelePHONES to TeleDILDONICS'
Sex Anybody?
'Man, woman, dog or tree, on the menu of sexuality.
What will it be, in this age of immorality?
Today's special: S& M,
With Monica look-a-like on a big Harley bike.
Or you can have toys; They're not for little boys.
They vibrate, they gyrate, they compensate.
Want to exchange yours, or simply alter the contours?
Like John Wayne Bobbit's, His wife couldn't rob it.
Pope's in on it that's true, the man in the White House too.
And Michael lures little boys who are poor to play grown men's games
Oh, what a shame, what a shame
Don't ask, I won't tell, Mr. Officer man,
I am not a f*ggot, you ugly maggot.
In this world, Love's just a word.
Sex is what sells, And AIDS is what ails.
Ménage trois's, Edible bra's, all kinds of erotica.
Viagra and silicone, cybersex or on the phone.
Explicit pornography, paedophilic photography.
F*cking's the word making love's for nerds.
Ten-year-old mommies, and multiple daddies,
That's the reality of today's sexuality.'
(http://www.writenet.org/virtualpoetry_archive4/WVW01010.html)
"I turn finally to the impact of technology on Western culture as thought in the middle 1930s, 1960s and 1990s and
here again I will argue that; even as one moment leads to the next, each one comprehends the one before. Thus what Guy Debord
sees in the spectacle of the 1960s are the technological transformations that alter Benjamin anticipated in the 1930s; and
what cyberpunk writers extrapolate in the 1990s are the cybernetic extensions that Marshall McLuhan predicted in the 1960s.
In the discourse on Technology the terms attached to these moments project an ideological totality: the age of mechanical
reproduction in the 1930s, the age of the cybernetic revolution in the 1960s, and the age of techno science or techno culture
in the 1990s (in which research and development, or culture and technology, cannot be separated). Hal Foster, in "Whatever
Happened to Postmodernism?", The Return of the Real, p.218
Elsewhere, Hal Foster describes this as "the relation between turns in critical models and returns of historical
practices". I will be discussing this principle and its relevance to the idea of 'sex, pornography and the way we love' and
its relation to contemporary media production.
Intentions
For this essay I will be focusing my thoughts on the sex industry (how nice), pornography and how we encounter
sexual relationships and try to depict how technology and various paradigms have changed, affected and maybe influenced the
way we perceive them. We all know that the topic of sex, relationships etc. is indeed an enormous subject that covers more
words, feelings and emotions that one could ever put to paper in a 2000 word essay. I will seek changes from the invention of
an organised postal service (back in 1653) through to the present days hustle and bustle of the Internet; but focusing
particularly on the ages 1930s, 1960s and 1990s as previously defined. I will attempt to draw upon my views and opinions on
how modernism, post-modernism, structuralism, futurism, surrealism and many other 'isms' has influenced this industry and
subject with particular references to the works by Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Sigmund Freud, Jorge Louis
Borges and maybe a little Hugh Hefner thrown in for good measure.
Introduction
Baudrillard considers society to be a spectacle, and argues that things have reached a point where it is difficult
to separate the spectacle and the social reality - the two are so entwined through each constructing the other that they are
inseparable. Further, to separate these that society has some underlying characteristics, and the spectacle is guided by
forces such as profits, technological imperatives, or attempts to manipulate the public. How true in today's media world, the
internet today seems to be driven by nothing else but public manipulation and of course a vast desire for huge dotcom
ompanies to make money. The analysis of Baudrillard points to the difficulty of making such assumptions or conclusions and
that the contemporary era is characterized by society itself becoming spectacle or simulation. "Sexuality does not vanish in
sublimation, repression or morality. It vanishes more effectively in what is more sexual that sex: pornography. The
hypersexual is the contemporary of the hyperreal." (Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. Selected Writings. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.). In this Hyperreal world in which we live the society maybe has completely vanished, we have online chat rooms to
lure our potential partners, thousands of online dating agencies, you can even meet, talk, see and interact with members of
the opposite sex if that is your hearts desires." Online chat rooms have become the singles pubs of the nineties: a place
where young people can go to meet new people, build friendships, find romance, and have safe sex" (John Hamman
http://www.socio.demon.co.uk/history.html)
Let us Begin . . . .
A pornographer was defined by the Oxford English dictionary just before modernism occurred as "one who writes of
prostitutes or obscene matters; a portrayer of obscene subjects. Present day post-modernist dictionaries defined pornography
as "Any material, pictures, films, printed matter or devices dealing with sexual poses or acts considered indecent by the
public." The scope today is much wider. Dramatic changes in the public attitude toward explicit material have been driven by
a loosening of restrictive moral strictures, an acceptance of sexual fantasy as healthy, and by the spread of these materials
throughout the media.
Virtual sex, or cyber sex, if you like can now happen at any time of the day, with anyone in the world in front of
your computer, with a keyboard a range of kinky contraptions including teledildonics (sex in a computer simulated virtual
reality, especially computer-mediated sexual interaction between the virtual presence of two humans) and of course your
imagination. The post-modernism age of digital sex marks the dawning of the ultimate in safe sex. No messy exchanging of
bodily fluids, no skin-on skin action, no spreading of disease, and no unwanted pregnancy. The advancements in technology are
throwing open the doors of opportunity to ways of getting pleasure that many of us have probably never even thought of.
The desire to make money through selling sex has driven technological advances through the ages, from modernism and
futurism (along with the invention of the camera) through to present day postmodernism (the internet). Adult entertainment
and technology go hand in hand because the appetite for sex is virtually insatiable. Whatever your feelings about porn, there
is no denying that millions want it, and what people want (if profit is involved) then the industry will provide. The online
porn industry is worth $1 billion and this dotcom business will never die. The pornography industry in the Untied States
earns revenues of more than $10 billion annually, of that amount £2 billion is spent on pornographic websites, pay per view
movies, adult cable channels and the huge phone sex industry are also significant contributors to the overall revenues.
One hears over and over how practically anything - sex, flight, reasoning - can be 'simulated'. Indeed, it seems
that this is the bandwagon that Jean Baudrillard climbed on-board with the writing of his essay 'Simulacra and Simulations'.
Baudrillard tells us, as Jorge Louis Borges and Guy Debord did earlier that now 'the map precedes the territory' (1983)
The Internet is offering new ways for many sexually active people around the world to interact. Marshall McLuhan
wrote "We have put our central nervous system outside us in electric technology"(The medium is the message 1964) Hal Foster
remarks that McLuhan sees this extension as an ecstatic body become electric, wired to the world. We have gone from very
personal beginnings (surely our first contact outside those of us in our immediate vicinity was the invention of an organised
postal service in which love letters were our first forms of romance from afar - this still exists today in our post
modernist society in the form of e-mails and text messaging) to something that seems more personal, yet impersonal. You can
chat to millions of people online in chat rooms and interact, but in the privacy and loneliness of your own computer room at
home. The society is surely the spectacle in this case and, although technology has enabled us a greater freedom of contact
from the States to China in a millisecond, are we in danger of becoming totally cut off from the realism of one to one
contact? "Is our media world one of generous interaction, as benign as an ATM withdrawal or Internet inquiry, or one of
evasive discipline, each of us an 'dividual' electronically tracked, genetically trace, not as a policy of maleficent Big
Brother but as a matter of quotation administration? Is our media world one of cyberspace that renders bodies immaterial, or
one which bodies, not transcended at all, are marked, often violently, according to racial, sexual and social differences?
Clearly it is both at once and this new intensity of disconnection is post-modern" Foster Hal (1996) Whatever Happened to
Postmodernism? The Return of the Real, p221
Chronologically, what happened ????
Inventions and technological advances have had an effect on sex since the dawn of time. In 1653 the first organised
postal service was invented in Paris. Snail mail as it is interpreted in today's digital world was surely the earliest form
of long distance romance. As mentioned before e-mails now exist and the boom of instant text messaging in the late 90's
allowed 'real time' romances to evolve. "wot r u doin? u gonna cum 2 bed?" might be phrases listed in the Oxford English
dictionary in the near future.
Before Marxism reared its head in the mid 1880's the invention of the first camera's allowed images and scenes to
be captured and recorded as a hard copy representation of the 'real'. Who would have thought that along with the printing
press this would lead to the massive pornographic magazine industry that take up so much of the publics time as well as the
top shelves of newsagents world wide.
Along with modernism came the invention of the telephone, this enabled lovers to communicate across distances. The
sex industry soon made use of the wires and set up sex chat lines to bring comfort to millions on lonely nights, while raking
in the millions.
Freud's 'Interpretation Of Dreams' took us through to Marcel Duchamp and the invention of the television. Now real
life moving pictures could be broadcast to the privileged few who could afford their own television sets. This gave birth to
the electronic age, the age of representation, and Walter Benjamin predicted technological transformations to come. Images
ould be captured, the moment could be captured and feelings could be captured and visualised by more than one person in one
place - something very new and un-encountered before now. Link this to the postal service and your romance from afar could
actually see whom he or she was liasing with.
As the boundaries between modernism and post-modernism starts to become blurred the invention of the printing press
around the mid fifties was an invention that the American Hugh Hefner would greatly appreciate as his magazine 'Playboy' was
one of the first to take adult material into the mainstream. The first issue featured a calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe
selling more than 50,000 copies. The second anniversary issue of Playboy sold 400,000. The magazine and many others like it
that followed, pushed the envelope for explicit photography and content. Is this the representation that the modernists
predicted?
And so the dawn of the cybernetic age and the real breakthrough for the porn industry came when the VCR was
invented. Marshall Mcluhan predicted these cybernetic extensions in the 60's and by the early 70's mainstream films such as
'Deep Throat' and 'Behind the Green Door' took pornographic images into the mainstream. The stigma of going to X-rated
cinemas could be avoided by watching adult films in the privacy of your own home. Was this the first step in the
de-socialising of the individual from the outside world?
The development of viable personal computers in the early 1980s started the revolution many people enjoy today. The
Internet allowed online communities to liase, you can chat dirty, view live sex shows, lap up what you will via personal Web
cams, shop securely for sex toys and find like-minded people in relevant newsgroups. Not wanting to sound too much like Jean
Baudrillard but how could the world be MORE connected in such an individual way? The more these online communities exist the
more the desire to be physically alone, the more the opportunity to mingle with friends, colleagues and strangers in chat
rooms, the more we are cut off from society, the medium created to bring people together has done so in small way, but for
the majority it has overtaken our lives. Just type in the name Kimberly Young to any search engine or go to
www.annonline.com/interviews/980403/ and see her studies and her books regarding Internet addiction and in particular
'Tangled In The Web' - she describes counselling couples 'whose once stable relationships were devastated by cybersex' That
is, people that are hooked on 'cyberporn and Web cam sex. . . ' In this post-modern time are the extensions that Mcluhan
predicted being severed by the same medium that brought us together? It is up for debate and one that has lasted since the
late 17th century and will no doubt continue to last long after you and I are gone.
And so on to today and at the time of writing 'teledildonics' isn't actually represented in many dictionaries -
what does it mean???? Well, an example of today's online relationships and what lies ahead can be found at
www.virtualsexmachine.com. How much more isolated can we get at a time where the technology boom has opened so many worldwide
doors?
Bibliography
Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real 1996
Baudrillard, Jean. Selected Writings 1988
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations 1983
McLuhan, Marshall. The medium is the message 1964
Websites
Hamman, John. http://www.socio.demon.co.uk/history.html
Young, Kimberly. http://www.annonline.com/interviews/980403/
References
Young, Kimberly. Tangled in the Web: Understanding Cybersex from Fantasy to Addiction 2001
Lane, Frederick S III. Obscene Profits: Entrepreneurs of Pornography In The Cyber Age. 2000