Society and Double Standards

Last Friday, Macomb Sheriff's Deputies arrested a 47 year old Harrison Township man on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and child pornography charges. He was allegedly carrying on a sexual relationship with a 16 year old girl, and had child porn on his computer. Such things are, of course reprehensible, or worse. If guilty, he ought top have the proverbial book thrown at him. But the situation raises a question rarely if ever debated publicly: why are some forms of child pornography perverted while others are openly tolerated, and even encouraged?

No one seems to mind that Jodie Foster played a 12 year old child prostitute in Taxi Driver, or that Brooke Shields was messing around in The Blue Lagoon while she was 15. Never mind that movies involved mere acting: isn't something being acted out in whatever type of pornography may be your fancy? We can talk of body doublers too, but it doesn't alter the fact that what we are dealing with is meant to represent child porn. Aren't movies supposed to be taken at face value?

Nor can we dismiss such films as little more the prurient drivel: Taxi Driver made number 53 on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 films of all time. So the question remains: by what standard are certain kinds of child pornography evil, while others are not?

Is it art? Then we ask a variation on the original question: what is the difference between mere art and perversion?

Is it for reality's sake? But it then becomes fair to ask whether movies are real. The answer is that, yes, they are, and there is a significant difference between, say, faking a shooting, and actually showing (or pretending to show) two teenagers getting it on. One extends the drama of a scene, and everyone knows it isn't really real. The other is meant to be 12 and 14 year olds at, well, play. Again, why are such things acceptable if a duly accredited movie studio portrays them, yet vile and contemptible if done more privately?

We propose that they are in fact no different. Further, that when society condones such characters and scenes, it condones child porn done rightly, so to speak.

As such, we should not be surprised when some people take it just a bit more literally and actually pursue child porn and inappropriate relationships with the young. They're wrong, yes, but they've also been at least arguably encouraged in their perversions. So long as such societal double standards exist, we will continue to see such travesties as 'actual' child porn more readily pursued. And that, quite frankly, is a shame on us.