Love American Style: Faking It

Professor J,

It's really difficult to find anything to quote in the second chapter! ;)

You pointed out that the author says in this kind of culture human beings become "commodities to be used up and replaced."  This is most evident in chapter 2, The Illusion of Love, where we don't see anyone he interviews sugar coating exactly what is going on.  Hedges bravely draws back the curtain on the porn industry and shines a harsh and depressing light on the ugliness of it.  While throughout the book we see examples of people being ill-used by corporations or governments under the guise of something else, this chapter (which I felt was somewhat out of place and would have been an excellent idea for another book) isn't building any illusions. It isn't supporting any. It's the only place in the book where we see people admit openly in interviews that they are out to use, injure, and destroy other human beings without compassion.

I was at an estate sale recently and among the art and books there was a large collection of Playboy magazines from the 1960s. They was so tame as to be nearly amusing considering that you can practically get it in prime time today, and if you can wait until after 10:00 or if you want to pay, well... But having read this book and having some of the brutal images floating around in my subconscious caused me to notice something else... the women were being presented as pretty.  So when women had little power, were channeled into specific jobs, and were denied opportunities, men, even those who would objectify them weren't trying to degrade and humiliate, at least not openly in a public forum. It was, in a way a celebration of them. (Let the feminist howling begin.) So is what we are seeing, with all the degradation and violence a sort of backlash? I wonder.

The guy who owned several anatomically correct dolls and who readily admits it is "really nice thing because you are in full control" and that they "take the stress out of wining and dining women"was disturbing. But when he said "women who look like these dolls are not mentally or emotionally in line" I had a sneaking suspicion in many cases he may be right. I couldn't help wondering how much of that would have been created by the way those women had been treated by men. I also wondered why it was more important for this guy to have some really "hot" (you know, after he covers them with electric blankets ;)) dolls than an average looking REAL woman. I hear Eldredge in the background...something about a man not wanting a woman who would challenge him.

There's a broader discussion to be had here at some point about whether or not while women made advances thanks to the feminist movement there were also, it seems unforeseeable consequences. I find all this intricately linked to the topic you are covering over on The Professor. We might add to that discussion Hedges comment about porn having won the culture war (which sounded very O'Reilly of him). But the real shocker, because I've suspected this to be true for a long time, was "Sexual callousness and emancipation have become synonymous." (p. 86) I suspect that a great number of young women who are having casual sex or having sex far earlier in a romantic relationship than they really want to are behaving this way because it's what the culture tells them it expects from them.

Right in the middle of all this "heartlessness" he gives us a reprieve from brutality but not from how ridiculous we've become with his description of one of America's favorite vacation destinations:

"Las Vegas sells a cartoon version of other cultures and other lands...A trip to Las Vegas is a visit to a sanitized, cutout version of foreign countries without the intrusion of foreign people, the hassle of unintelligible languages, strange habits different ideas and traditions, or bizarre food. Here everyone speaks English. Here you are surrounded by Americans." (p.64)

 I thought he made an excellent point about Las Vegas. I have had a couple of opportunities to go there that I turned down. I'm not much on contrived experiences. Why would I want to go to an amusement park when there are mountains to ski and oceans to swim in? Who wants a fake Venice? Who wants "Italy" without Italian? Or without Italians?  Depending on how much one loses in the casinos a trip to the real thing might be a bargain.
 
I was surprised that Hedges didn't have a chapter entitled The Illusion of Friendship. Facebook and Twitter are both mentioned in a quote by William Deresiewicz in chapter 1, but in connection to the "contemporary self" gaining attention and not as places where pseudo friendships may fool us into thinking we are connected. I thought it would have been a very appropriate thing for him to cover alongside fake travel and sex with dolls. Friendship with little time or effort invested is far too common, as I've said before our relationship landscape is now about 5 miles wide and an inch deep. This illusion has increasingly replaced deep meaningful friendships that require something of us. Not that there aren't any real friendships born and maintained via social networking, and used well it can be a great facilitator, but it demands a bit of extra work and trust that the other person will keep showing up. :)