There was a story that popped up on “Nightline” last week that caught my attention as a true indication of just how bad our present economic crisis really is – and how diverse this country’s beliefs are, as well. According to the story (which you can pick up off the ABC News site) there’s a young couple who are filming themselves having sex and selling the A/V files to an amateur porn website in order to make enough money to pay their bills and provide for their 20-month-old daughter. From what I can make out, ABC was expecting this to be a mildly sensational story; the kind of things that will pick up a few extra views for a news show that airs after most people have gone to bed. What they got was a genuine hot potato, and an apparently huge influx of email commentaries…
The first thought that came to my mind on reading this story is that the editor at ABC who approved it for broadcast is having one on us – or else is so naïve that he or she should be institutionalized somewhere safe until they learn a little bit more about human beings. American society remains deeply divided on most issues of morality, which is hardly surprising given the vast diversity of our population and their ethnic and national heritages. Americans as a whole like to pretend that we are all the spiritual descendants of the Puritan movement by way of the Plymouth Colony, and that none of us would ever have a dirty thought, much less look at a dirty picture. But even a cursory examination of our commercial history will establish that this is nonsense; contemporary American culture is derived from literally hundreds of different cultural traditions, none of which could ever have agreed on one code of morality…
Thus, it is disingenuous (and facile) of the ABC News people to claim that they did not expect any strong reaction to the story. A much more interesting question is what this says about us – and the time in which we are living. At first glance, the idea of two young adults (who have a child of their own) filming amateur pornography for money might seem shocking, but when we consider that this activity is completely legal, as is the use to which their content is being put, it certainly doesn’t compare to some of the extremes we have witnessed people going to in order to support their families. It is highly probable that this material will complicate their efforts to raise their child (especially if they intend to maintain a particularly straight-laced family), but given that they have voluntarily chosen to take this action, and that all of the things they are doing are completely legal, I don’t think we can criticize it on ethical or moral grounds…
At some future point, perhaps, I will have to address the ethical side of this question in one of our regular Sunday ethics posts. My point in bringing you this story today is to point up that no matter how degrading your job might be, and no matter what you feel you have sacrificed in order to keep your family fed, somebody somewhere has probably had to do something worse – and that no matter how advanced, sophisticated, jaded, apathetic or uncaring you think our society has become, there will always be stories about people doing completely legal things in the privacy of their own home that will move vast numbers of our citizens into a howling frenzy…
It’s probably worth remembering that the next time you plan a business venture, and innocently ask, “What could possibly go wrong?”
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