Porn

This is an entry I meant to write last year already, but didn't write. In January last year “The Revenant” came out with Leonardo DiCaprio. I haven't seen the movie. Although the movie is based on a true story, which usually interests me, it didn't interest me at that time. But I have noticed discussions about a scene or a moment in the movie. Namely a scene with a bear and that context there was talk about rape. In the end it just seems to come down to what could be called an inconvenient camera angle and nothing more. On English websites there were writings of “porn”. Carole Cadwalkadr wrote in her review for The Guardian even in the headline already “The Revenant is meaningless pain porn“ (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/revenant-leonardo-dicaprio-violent-meaningless-glorification-pain). German webistes as well mentioned the amount of violence in the movie. http://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/neu-im-kino-the-revenant-wuchtiger-kampf-ums-ueberleben.2150.de.html?dram:article_id=341768 used the word “Gewaltporno” (“violence porn”). Apart from the fact that I had little interest story-wise, the mass of violence, which reviews already focussed on a lot, was just another reason for me not to watch the movie. What puzzled me however was the word “porn” with all of this. A reference to the bear scene and with the connection of the amount of violence making it “pain porn” and “violence porn”?

I am one of those people who noticed Mark Gatiss rather late through “Sherlock”. Once I was searching the internet for pictures of him and found a website with a collection of pictures of his hands. “Hand porn”. I understand that someone is impressed, if not to say obsessed with another person. I too may like certain aspects of a person or I may not like them at all. But “hand porn”?

Dear me! I just typed in “food porn” on google to find a certain article again. There is an article on that on the English Wikipedia! Prefaced with the notion: “Not to be confused with Food and sexuality.“ The following headline from The Guardian a while ago made me think of the porn thing again, namely: “Unicorn lollies and six million avocados: our insatiable appetite for Instafood“. (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/aug/01/all-food-fit-to-instagram-have-we-reached-peak-food-porn-photography). I didn't find a picture of the unicorn lollies in the article, but it is about food and lately it seems that the word “porn” isn't far away. As it's the case in the article. I don't really get it. Maybe I'm just naïve or clueless. After all I'm one of the few people who don't have an account on Facebook, also I'm not on Instagram or Twitter or any of those other sites where everything is shared. Can somebody please enlighten me.

Maybe I'm thinking too negative about this or something. I don't know. But regarding sex I've watched a couple of documentaries. One was about young people with sick abnormal sexualities. Not criminal, but not normal either. I remember a young man in that context who saw a young woman while driving in the car and he had to stop and left the film crew for a short while to go to the toilet and shortly after that he came back again and I think he even excused himself at the film crew. He was very aware that this wasn't normal behaviour and I think he felt sorry about that. I felt sorry for him. Another program was about teenagers, sexuality and porn. With the internet children and teenagers have easy and unnoticed access to porn and “sex movies”. Such movies, the teenagers told openly, are shared with others, too. Someone in the documentary made the comment that shaving, for example of the legs of a woman and also young girls has its roots in porn. They shave for such movies for a good view. I didn't see it that way until then. Certainly that's not a thought most women have when they shave today.

Back in my school time a company would drive me to school and back home again. I remember when I was in my final years the drivers and boys on the drive were talking about women and girls they saw on the street. Words like “Schlampe” (“slut” or “bitch”) were used. Not always, not necessarily weekly even. But regardless the fact that I was a young woman and present with them, the word was used freely. In English the word “bitch” is equally freely used for a certain type of women or also girls. On the other hand there's also time and again discussions if a victim of rape may have provoked this act because of their behaviour or their clothings.

What does that mean for our society and it's progression? I'm getting the word “sexualisation” in my head. But I don't get any further than that with my thoughts. I don't understand it. Can't the encounter of a bear not simply be the encounter of a bear? Can't hands and food simply be hands and food? I don't think I like this progression. Maybe only because I don't understand it. Maybe because I really don't like it.

Comments more than welcome. I think I'm open and I would like to understand more.