"Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're stuck with the jobs and haircuts."
- P. J. O'Rourke (1947 -)
It is fascinating, really, that even hundreds of years later, the original Puritanical thoughts and beliefs are still intact today. The original founding members of America brought not only their deep religious convictions, but their core moral and value systems as well. The Puritans believed in hard work, foreseeing and shaping the future in the present, dedication, individualism, and perhaps most importantly, the willingness to risk their own life for their beliefs. These beliefs shaped the young country which would eventually grow in a relatively short amount of time to become the superpower it is today.
Despite their best intentions, not all of the core beliefs the Puritans held were sound. Socially, the Puritans were conservative. They believed in social classes, slavery, and strict adherence to the Bible. Drugs and alcohol were considered licentious.
Carnal desires were to be repressed as well. The erection Johnny got when he looked above Ann-Marie’s corset was brought on by the evil forces of Satan defeating all that was pure in Johnny’s head. It wasn’t the beautiful physical manifestation of Mother Nature, but rather something wicked. Sex was viewed as something of a chore. It was the business end of procreation. With it, often came guilt, shame, and it even caused innocent people to be murdered by the hands of the state (for more details see: Trials, Salem Witch).
There was a time in the not-so distant past that the gyration of fully clothed man’s hips was considered obscene and wholly inappropriate. The emergence of Elvis as the sexualized male rockstar made many Americans uneasy. Elvis forced many Americans to realign their values and accept the more sexually-suggestive content Elvis performed.
The Puritanical spirit which became the societal mindset for the country was being challenged. This was a good thing for Americans as it forced its citizens to push beyond their normal boundaries and to consider new ideas regarding sexuality.
Ever since The King emerged back in the 1930s and 40s, there has been a slow but continual change in the American psyche to believe that expressing ones sexuality is not shameful but rather empowering.
Every generation has a new figurehead of this movement. The Silent Generation had Marilyn Monroe. Generation X had Madonna. What was considered shocking to your grandmother, was only slightly controversial to your mother, which is now yawn-able to you. They couldn’t show Elvis’s hips on national TV in the 1960s but here in the year 2006 they are saying once-taboo words like “fuck” and “shit” commonly on 60 Minutes. Even Oprah is imparting to her viewers the proper way to put on a condom. She would have been labeled a harlot and witch and burned at the stake if she were to discuss human sexuality that openly only a half a dozen generations before.
This is why government sponsored censoring of the media and society is not wise. The best judge of what society should deem offensive is what society actually does deem offensive. If you produce a TV show that is so offensive it makes people queasy viewing it, nobody is going to watch your show and it will be a commercial failure. However, if you produce a TV show that is insanely offensive yet people still want to watch it, it should be brought to fruition and offered for public consumption.
Let the demand for the offensive material determine its market, rather than the government determine what is or what isn’t acceptable.
Censorship is in direct opposition to the basic tenets of the free-market system which has lead this country to glory. Free the society and the market will follow.
The above work is the opinion of the author,
and not necessarily that of the Prometheus Institute.
