The Pleasure

Every second $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography, 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography, 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines, Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the United States.
Pornography, a word that is synonymous with sin in our society. To understand its present relevance, we need to delve into certain aspects of the form, beginning with its meaning. It stems from a Greek word meaning ‘writing about prostitutes’. It originated in Europe in the early 17th century, science taking the tumultuous precedence on religion, with ideas of contraception and conception capturing minds and subversive literature surfacing. In pagan cultures, the beauty of sex was depicted via carvings and paintings. Erotic literature had a place in the mainstream. But, erotica is quite different from pornography. Erotica has an aesthetic purity, while pornography is purely mechanical and commercial.
But today, globalization, the fast track existence, etc have shook the very foundations of the wall separating erotica and pornography, reducing it to a mere thin line susceptible to parallax. According to the 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues, around $97.04 billion is its transaction, with China dominating. Though India does not figure at the top, it is one of the major illegal importers of DVDs, VCDs, etc. The porn industry has penetrated all levels of society that we hardly find a movie without a pornographic namesake.
India on a cultural map, is a region where sex and sexuality are open taboos. Porn is laid across as sex. In such a situation, it is no wonder that people lean towards the pleasurable, yet emotionally unattached trend. Thus it deems necessary that we analyse the impact of pornography in our nation.
Evaluating on a social platform, there being major outsourcing of work to India (better cost efficiency), there exists a class who are exploited and violated due to their ignorance or helplessness. A grave question of counting on the future citizens to build a great tomorrow arises. If our nation has something, it is the dignity and integrity it keeps through the tempests of politics, capitalization and commercialization of human life. If lives are broken through such a face of an industry, isn’t it a basic violation of human rights?
Encountering the cultural aspect, we draw a complete blank. Our incapacity to accept sex as a human need, makes us etch the scarlet letters on those who enjoy pornography or indulge in premarital sex, which are primarily no more sins than the unabashed gazes of the passerby who undresses you in his/her mind.
But, pornographic addiction can be quite a problem. Affecting the individual and his/her loved ones; it can lead the person to a crossroad where a world of fading reality and mounting fantasies becomes actuality. The surreality pushes the person into a deep precipice of confusion, a trench of denial and can possibly lead to a dungeon of perverse acts.
The media has a huge role in catering the right perspective about sex to the people. The Supreme court on December 12, 2006, rejected a plea on a blanket ban on ‘obscenity’ in print media. The rejection came at a time the moral values of the society was on a balance, at least in some minds. But, as the ruling said, ‘will lead to a situation where the newspaper will be publishing material which caters only to children and adolescents and the adults will be deprived of reading their share of their entertainment which can be permissible under the normal norms of decency in any society’. Certification vs censor is a constant debate in the film industry. Again, the rights to expression and entertainment come on the screen.
Of course, the dream child of electronic media, the internet has put across endless possibilities of swimming in the oceans of untiring pornographic pleasure, some extremely deviant from the normal pornography. The anxiety of parents is very much in sync with the reality. Even before the children get proper idea about sex, they are subjected to the dark side of it.
The reality of pornography is thus a cube. On one face, there is the original meaning of it, on another the history, then the economic aspect followed by the moral question, preceding the issue of exploitation and perversion, yet on the last side, there is the query of human will. Like William Osler said, ‘The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget!’