A Socratic dialogue triggered by The Labyrinth
Trimmed slightly, but "minimally processed" from an email conversation following The Labyrinth:
Author: P.S. My brother showed me the following video as cool. He didn't see why I found it a bit of a horror: "Do You Want to Date My Avatar?"
Visitor: Oh gosh, that's just layers and layers of sad. It's all about the experience, but the message is kept just this side of tolerable ("nerds are the new sexy" - the reversal of a supposed stigmatization) so it can function as an excuse for the experience. At least that's my analysis.
Author: Thanks. I just hotlinked a line of Labyrinth to Avatar...
...and added a tooltip of, "Veni, vidi, vomui".
Visitor: (Laughs) You have me completely mystified on this one, sorry.
However, you are welcome. And I'm glad to see that you're cracking jokes. (I think.)
No seriously, laughing out loud. Even though I don't exactly know why.
Is 'vomui' a made-up word? Men... when it comes right down to it you all have the same basic sense of humor. (I think.)
Author: Veni, vidi, vici: I came, I saw, I conquered.
Veni, vidi, vomui: I came, I saw, I puked.
Visitor: Yep... the basic masculine sense of humor, cloaked in Latin. I'm ever so honored you let me in on this. If the world were completely fair, someone would be there right now to punch your shoulder for me... this is my favorite form of discipline for my brother in law when he gets out of line.
But what's Avatar... and hotlink and tooltip?
Author: The link to "Do you want to date my Avatar?" Hotlink is a synonym for link; tooltip, what displays if you leave your mouse hovering over it.
Visitor: Oh dear, I really didn't understand what you were telling me; I was just in good spirits.
OK, I find that funny - and appropriate.
Author: Which do you think works better (i.e. The Labyrinth with or without images):
Visitor: I have some doubts about the video showing up in the text.
Author: Ok; I'll leave it out. Thanks.
Visitor: Welcome.
I did like the Christ image where you had it. It encouraged a sober pause at the right place in the meditation.
Author: Thank you; I've put it in slightly differently.
Visitor: I like that.
Author: Thank you.
I've also put the video (link) in a slightly different place than originally. I think it also works better there.
Visitor: Taking a risk of butting in... Would this be a more apropos place?
The true raison d'êatre was known to desert monks,
Ancient and today,
And by these fathers is called,
Temptation, passion, demon,
Of escaping the world.
Unless I've misunderstood some things and that's always possible. (laughs) I never did ask you your analysis of what, in particular, horrified you about the video. But it seems like a perfect illustration not of pornography simple but of the underlying identity between the particular kind of lust expressed in pornography (not the same as wanting a person) and escapism, and that's the place in the poem where you are talking about that identification.
Author:: Thank you. I've moved it.
In That Hideous Strength, towards the end, Lewis writes:
"Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?"
Ransom replied, "Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would he be who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.
Pp. 270/271 are in fantasy imagery what has become quite literally true decades later.
Visitor: Yes, that would be what I was missing... that fantasy banquet at the end of the video feels particularly creepy now.
However the girl I was telling you about had among other things watched a show where a "doctor" talked about giving seminars where women learn to experience the full physical effects of intercourse, using their minds only. (Gets into feminism, no?)
That's why I was trying to tell her that "richter scale" measurements aren't everything...
In this hatred of the body, in putting unhealthy barriers between genders, and in seeing the body as basically a tool for sexual experience, fundamentalist Christianity and cutting edge worldliness are really alike. (I had a pastor once who forbade the girls in the church school to wear sandals because they might tempt the boys with their "toe cleavage.")
Author: I would be wary of discounting monastic experience; I as a single man, prudish by American standards, probably have more interaction with women than most married men in the patristic era.
But in the image... "eating" is not just eating. In the initial still image in the embedded version of "Do You Want to Date My Avatar?", I made a connection. The sword is meant as a phallic symbol, and not just as half of a large category of items are a phallic symbol in some very elastic sense. It's very direct. Queer sex and orgy are implied, even though everything directly portrayed seems "straight", or at least straight as defined against the gender rainbow (as opposed, perhaps, to a "technology rainbow").
Visitor: Yes, I see what you are saying. I suppose the opening shots in the video would also imply self-abuse. I was seeing those images and the ones you mention as just icky in themselves without thinking about them implying something else.
Author: P.S. My brother who introduced it to me, as something cool, explained to me that this is part of the main performer's effort to work her way into mainstream television. She demonstrates, in terms of a prospect for work in television, that she can look beautiful, act, sing, dance, and be enticing while in a video that is demure in its surface effect as far as music videos go. (And she has carefully chosen a viral video to prove herself as talent.)
Not sure if that makes it even more disturbing; I didn't mention it with any conscious intent to be as disturbing as I could, just wanted to give you a concrete snapshot of the culture and context for why I put what I put in The Labyrinth.
Visitor: It's making a lot more sense now.
I'm not remembering the significance of the technology rainbow.
Author: As far as "technology rainbow":
In contrast to "hetero-centrism" is advocated a gender rainbow where one live person may have any kind of arrangement with other live people, as long as everyone's of age, and a binary "male and female" is replaced by a rainbow of variety that is beyond shades of gray.
I was speaking by analogy: a "technology rainbow", in contrast to "face-to-face-centrism", would seek as normative any creative possibility, again excluding child pornography, where face-to-face relationships are only one part of a "technology rainbow".
It might also help make the point that internet-enabled expressions of sexuality, for most of the men, aren't exactly straight. They do not involve same-sex attraction, nor animals or anything like that, but they depart from being straight in a slightly different trajectory from face-to-face relationships where heterosexuality is only one option.
Neither member of this conversation had anything more to say.