Joe Francis: Cultural Libertarian?
Defender of 1st AmmendmentClaire Hoffman of the LA Times has written a profile of Joe Francis, founder of the ubiquitous Girls Gone Wild franchise of "adult videos." It's a very cool, readable piece about a major figure in our popular culture.
This is so much bigger than Francis. In a culture where cheap and portable video technology lets everyone play at stardom, and where America's voyeuristic appetite for reality television seems insatiable, teenagers, like the ones in this club, see cameras as validation. "Most guys want to have sex with me and maybe I could meet one new guy, but if I get filmed everyone could see me," Bultema says. "If you do this, you might get noticed by somebody—to be an actress or a model."
I ask her why she wants to get noticed. "You want people to say, 'Hey, I saw you.' Everybody wants to be famous in some way. Getting famous will get me anything I want. If I walk into somebody's house and said, 'Give me this,' I could have it."
Above the dance floor, the stage is full of girls who rotate, twist and shimmy their way up and down three strip poles. One of them is Jannel Szyszka, a petite 18-year-old who prances around the stage like a star. At her feet, a crowd of hundreds is gyrating to the pounding house music. Dozens of polo-shirted boys shout up to her, making requests like "shake your titties" and "get crunk" (meaning crazy-drunk). - Claire Hoffman
Perhaps I'm a monomaniac but I kept thinking of libertarianism as I read the article. Joe Francis has all the qualities one thinks libertarians would like. He has a bracing entrepreneurial spirit. He is not bound by conventions. He even seems to put a few things over on the cops from time to time. He pushes the boundaries. He is the liberated man.
Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason magazine promotes a libertarianism of pluralism and tolerance. In a recent debate with a conservative he declared that he would not be bound by some "bullshit tradition." Since, the society Nick likes is one dominated by commercial institutions does Nick reasonably expect that his form of liberalism actually can tolerate "bullshit traditions" like modesty and propriety? For all his blather about freedom, Nick would not prefer a culture where another set of private institutions, say, Churches, had more influence than the pop culture industry.
I forget who told me this, although I'm sure it was Kevin Michael Grace. What is annoying about Libertarians isn't their vulgarity, their desire to keep all their money, get rich and boink anyone or anything in sight. There have always been such people. It's the self-righteousness that is really disgusting.
He stabs a finger in my face, shouting, "You don't care about the 1st Amendment. I care about the 1st Amendment, but you are the kind of reporter who doesn't care." - Claire Hoffman
Hat tip to Peter Suderman.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
Ross Douthat offers this:
Once upon a time, there were all sorts of taboos built up around sexual behavior. Then people decided that we should just get rid of them, because they were a function of patriarchal oppression and they just made people repressed and unhappy, and what could possibly be wrong with expressing your sexuality in a consensual fashion with someone you loved, or liked, or just lusted after? At this point, some other people - we'll call them the social conservatives - suggested that some of the taboos might be there for a reason, and that the quest for a sexual utopia would probably end up creating more exploitation and degradation than there was to begin with - most of it perfectly "consensual," of course, so long as you don't mind lubricating your consent with alcohol from time to time. Nobody listened to them back then, but in the age of Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild, you would think that the utopians might be a little bit chastened with how their revolution has turned out. But not to worry: It's all the patriarchy's fault, now and forever, world without end. Especially the pro-lifers. - Ross Douthat
Michael Brendan Dougherty
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Source: 'Baby, Give Me a Kiss'Francis has aimed his cameras at a generation whose notions of privacy and sexuality are different from any other. Nursed on MySpace profiles and reality television, many young people today are comfortable with being perpetually photographed and having those images posted on the Internet for anyone to see. The boundaries that once contained sexuality have also fallen away. Whether it's 13-year-olds watching a Britney Spears video, 16-year-olds getting their pubic hair waxed to emulate porn stars
Reader Comments (25)
"What is annoying about Libertarians isn't their vulgarity, their desire to keep all their money, get rich and boink anyone or anything in sight."
This is an unjust characterization of libertarians. You are savy enough to understand the difference between a libertarian and a libertine. There are libertines at all points of the political/economic spectrum and there are plenty of libertarians - myself included - who are not libertines.
I am also not buying copies of Girls Gone Wild nor would I advise any woman to participate.
Teaching women self-respect and teaching them shame and self-denial may result in similar behaviors but I tend to advocate the former instead of the latter.
Liberalism (political and cultural) tolerates modesty and propriety only to the extent of not imposing legal sanctions. Instead our liberal commercial society (should I revert to "managerial" instead of liberal?)imposes honorific sanctions: namely stigma.
I think the burden of proof is on liberals and libertarians to show that a mass commercial society does not impose its values on the rest of society through mass media and the weight of common opinion. Also, I suspect (though I doubt there could conceivably be data to support this) that mass commercial society benefits from the breakdown of traditional taboos, stigmas - etc - and without a strong moral culture imposing formal and informal restrictions on it - big business will always take the side of cultural liberals and libtertines.
Shame is healthy. :)
As I see it, the major difference between libertarians of my stripe and paleos is that while paleos are willing to use the force of government coertion to attain their cultural, political and economic goals, libertarians are not.
The mass culture is brought to you by very specific pieces of technology that you are in no way required to use. Learn an instrument and entertain yourselves Jane Austen meets Funkadelic style if you like. There is nothing stopping anybody from opting out.
Leaving aside the decade long parental controls available, if everybody wanted ABC Family or PAX there would be, and might be in the future 20 channels, just like them. The fact is that the decadent libertine programs are watched at the same rates all over the country and by people who identify as every possible religious affiliation.
Capitalism is at its core amoral not immoral, it only produces whatever will sell with regard only to efficiency. Which is why it is intensely regulated but you can only regulate what is measurable like say the amount of dioxin in the drinking water and the safety of workers as opposed to the number of people offended by "Will & Grace".
Shame might be exciting but that is not a synonym for healthy. ;-)
And I'm not arguing that people who "identify" as being this or that religion are any less decadent or stupid or discriminating in their televisual habits than actual libertines and liberals.(Though most libertarians I know like to smoke pot and watch porn - maybe that is just me).
Refusing to buy Girls Gone Wild may keep one from being culpable in its creation. Detesting it in the abstract is healthy too. We've heard that if one is to love one's country, one's country should be lovely. Well, the more depraved other people in my towns and neighborhoods get generally - the less I love the society we share. We don't live in isolation and if pop culture deeply affects the habits and mores of the people around me - then it affects me as well because I live with them. This is not to say that my taste should be determinative in what is legal and illegal. I'm just saying, Girls Gone Wild does have an affect on our culture as a whole (coarsening it), does put pressure on women and men to act like animals
It is tiresome, really. We are supposed to be deferent to some men but not all but it is not very clearly delineated who is who. Attempts at flirtation sometimes result in insults (at least 5 times in my life) because random men get angry at you for not being suffiicently nice to them. It is your obligation as a woman to indulge them, flirt with them and smile at them to make them feel good about themselves and their lives where they themselves have failed to acheive anything of interest or note. However if you are too deferent you become a weak little slut and they still feel perfectly allowed to call you names and make fun of you.
Yet when we try to opt out of this nonsense by saying women need to stand on their own and not be so concerned what men think, because honestly the goalposts for male approval move more than Shakira after you put that ice cube down her skirt, we are told that we are responsible for the nonsense.
Blaming feminism for Girls Gone Wild is like blaming the Catholic Chruch for Andres Serrano.
Though I'm not particularly clear about your stripe of libertarianism, this statement is just silly. Many libertarians are quite willing to use or to assist federal government forces in overthrowing local laws which obstruct libertarian goals.
"like to smoke pot' And why shouldn't they? Smoking pot is the moral equivalent of drinking alchohol; neither is immoral unless it becomes debilitating (either physically or mentally) and prohibits one from making moral acts (choices, in modern lingo).
Well, I am not one of them. Could you please provide an example of this so that I know what type of thing you mean exactly?
I don't see entirely where the traditional mores and taboos I'd love to see re-introduced are substantially different from women having self-respect.
Women,used to be taught not only to respect themselves but to rebuff and shame men who encourage them to act like sluts. They guarded their honor and reputation this way - and also helped to raise the quality of men since men's behavior so often depends on the expectations of women.
You are right that women are held to higher standards then men. But many of the banner acheivements of feminism/sexual revolutionaries : the pill, abortion on demands - etc are precisely the things that enable men to expect, and women to comply with, the new sexual ethic of hooking up. Now because a critical mass of young women accept this sexual ethic (whatever internal hangups they may have about it) there is intense pressure for all women to adopt it as well. I hate the hackneyed expression "viscious cycle" - but I don't think it can be denied that over the past few decades men and women have suffered from lower expectations of each other.
I'll hazard a guess that the seemingly arbitrary expectations of men regarding the sexuality of women (one minute she's a prude, the next, a slut) are the product of men's confusion over what is right and wrong. Men want women to comply with their base desires and low expectation, and at the same time resent them for complying with them.
I have some more thoughts on what I'll awkwardly call "the middle ground" into which I think most younger Americans fall when it comes to sexual ethics - They are aren't libertines or traditional Christians. I'll write another post about it tonight.
Take the overturning of state anti-obscenity laws. The power of the courts helped destroy what was left of local decency standards, undeniably an aim of many libertarians. Judicial coercion used for liberation is still coercion.
I agree with you completely that Federal laws overruling State anti-obsenity laws, and State laws overruling County laws, and on down the line, are unjust and coercive. But neither would I take the position that Federal or State laws should prohibit obsenity - this, too, should be left to townships. These are prudential judgements which can only be made on the local level. For instance, St Thomas Aquinas said that it would be a valid prudential judgement to allow red light districts on the grounds that since prostitution will always be around it is better to have it localized.
Where we perhaps differ is that instead of using Fed & State power to 'our' advantage (by, say, passing Fed or State anti-obsenity laws), I would dismantle the Fed & State govts and remove their power (and therefore the possibility of corruption) and leave it to townships to decide.
Yes, I would disagree on foreign duties! Aside from economic reasons I would disagree on the count that as soon as we decide to impose duties a myriad questions arise: from which countries shall we import, or not import? which goods shall be taxed, and at what rate, and which shall not? where will the money collected in taxes go? etc, etc. To answer each of these questions a person (or more likely a committee) must be made responsible and with that responsibility comes a tremendous amount of power. It is too much to expect that such power will not lead to corruption. The kings of old never weilded as much power as does the common bureaucrat today! Much better, and more efficient, to leave it to the consumer to decide which goods he wants, and at what price.
If you think there was some golden age of getlemanliness you have not read anything by women who were harassed, sexually abused or assualted before talking about those crimes was considered appropriate. Openness about sexuality has made it possible for crimes to be called crimes including one the favorite new bludgeons for socially conservative commentators, child sexual abuse.
Making women responsible for men's behavior means essentially men can behave anyway they choose because it is truly their women's fault for not inspiring them properly. And when men do treat women civilly well I am surprised they have time to run all the important things in the world when they use that one hand to pat themselves on the damn back constantly. Either you are a fully developed human being that treats all they meet as individuals with the same rights and autonomy as yourself or you're not. When respecting our most basic human rights is treated like you are indulging us or doing us a favor, by not violently physically dominating us and imposing your own will, lets just say that strikes us as condescending and not terribly civil.
Men and women are only confused because they don't know what they want. I will give that the culture contributes to the confusion but it is essentially a lack of character: if the man you are attracted to pressures you to have sex before you are ready then he is not the man for you. The problem with that scenario isn't just that the man expects sex its that the woman will sacrafice anything she believes in for the man. You can call that alot of things but you can't call that feminism.
Sex education only tells you what is possible not what you yourself desire or, in long term, need. That is for you to decide.
Feminism is a much bigger subject than a comment thread to discuss.
But I'd just say that though there was never a golden age in which all were gentleman (never claimed there was) there certainly was a time where chastity, gentalemanliness and other values were held as the ideal. The instance of rape today won't 200 years from now discredit all of us. "They never really believed in consent"
Ideals can be powerful.
"The problem with that scenario isn't just that the man expects sex its that the woman will sacrafice anything she believes in for the man.You can call that alot of things but you can't call that feminism."
It's called Original Sin. "for your husband shall be your longing, though he have dominion over you" Gen. 3