Fear: 6. Avoiding emotional reasoning

Sex sells. In advertisements for everyday commodities, even innuendoes draw attention. Across the board, companies manufacturing cars, electronics, dvds of music and interactive games, clothing, perfume, bags, ad infinitum rely on its overtones for product sales.

The intent of the associations is to ensure brand association. In the global marketplace, consumer memory and attention span is short, while the competitors’ list grows almost by the minute. It makes business sense then to spend resources on advertisements rather than product quality. However, the product pushing tactics increasingly stretch the imagination about the actual connection between product and message advertised. In the competitive need to boost the bottomline, ‘artistic creativity’ justifies flirting with sexuality.

The imagery, says Jane Tallim, tends to contain or imply

• violence
• superiority and domination
• dismemberment (fragmenting and sexualizing body parts)
• playfulness and exaggeration
• coy behaviour
• approval seeking
• emaciation
• drug addict
• fetishism

Through print, billboards, radio, television and Internet, risqué themes bombard aural and visual senses. For mundane fruit juice, for instance, the luscious mango ingredients shown in a clipping are staged to resemble female breasts. The point is the product itself may be forgotten, but the subtle messages root in consumer memory. Through multinational outlets, identical themes spread globally. That they may actually condone deviant lifestyles is overlooked or simply ignored. 

As a result, “porn is becoming more mainstream”, and accessible from anywhere in the world. With focus on sexuality, they weave fantasies about the unequal status of women and men in society, degrading the former or even as wives, rendering them "invisible". The value of intimacy and commitment in interpersonal relationships is attenuated. Lust replaces love as the goal to be pursued. 

Author Gail Dines points out

In pornography nobody makes love. They all make hate. The man makes hate to the woman’s body … It [Internet]  made it more accessible, affordable, and anonymous. You’re seeing a massive rise in use, and the users are getting younger and younger. In order to keep the consumer base going, the pornographers have to keep upping the ante… more violent, body-punishing, or abusive…

Furthermore, interactive games have opened up simulated learning on very large scale. The virtual world forms a new social outlet sometimes with multiple players engaging at the same time. Video games formats progress through different levels, wherein the tally of points is the entry pass. At each level the degree of difficulty of ‘tasks’ increases. Players tend to become hooked to pushing up their individual scores, delving deeper into the game.

Although cartoons are generally considered youthful entertainment, their effects are not all harmless.  Players, drawn by the sense of power derived from the exploits of the character played, are led into repetitive behaviour - that is, an addiction to the play, which becomes more rewarding than human interactions. The addiction continually demands a fix - stimulation of the pleasure/reward centres of the brain through actions repeated over and over again.

Interacting with screens in self-imposed isolation, for example, with animated cartoon characters living in an animated environment, players have opportunity to interact with a ten-year-old schoolgirl superhero and seven sisters ranging in age from three to nineteen. A hikari.org report outlines an episode developed by the company, Gamewizz Interactive, for commercial distribution:

[Superhero] Poemy and the sisters are forced to take on some evil aliens who have come to earth bent on exploiting all women for sex.  The story culminates in Poemy freeing the sisters from the clutches of the aliens, and bringing an end to their 'evil' scheme. 

Scenes included in the 87-minute episode are deliberately exploitive and titillatory - the reason being simply "the animators' own "perversion" and "sexual desperation"" with regard to sex and violence on children.

The games require no emotional involvement. With freedom of uninhibited action and the lack of social accountability in virtual reality, moral/ethical centering can become fluid. The aggressively sexual thinking portrayed in ads and games is industrializing perceptions of human relationships. Others in the life space may be perceived as similar to fantasy characters rather than as unique thinking-feeling beings with differing points of view.

Interpersonal conflict of emotions is discomforting, especially for the masculine gender now socializing in fantasy. The consumer clientele, getting younger by the day, would prefer to avoid the unpredictable reasoning of live human interactions. My space, rather than sharing space becomes more important in everyday life. Between narcissism and social interest, the pleasures of self-absorption become habit.

Life then imitates the ‘art’. Chasing the fantasy power of sex, the Coles, Woods and Rooneys, amongst hosts of other celebrity men in politics, showbiz, sports or corporate industry have successfully destroyed their marriages and fractured their families. Having resources is associated with the right to sexualize and dominate others.

Using new technology to stream violent personal exploits to a voyeuristic community online, is another new brand of enjoyment for many men. Keeping family values is then less important to breaking 'traditional' bounds for individual satisfaction. In tune with the themes advertised, even minors are drawn towards the infamy of sexual depravity and sociopathy. 

Influenced by the prevailing environment, common social perceptions assume pleasure-seeking, devoid of emotional attachments, as key in gender relationships. In this business-driven age, natural affection and love, brotherly, romantic, and unconditional, appear redundant. The corporate industry has the choice: they can realize social citizenship in running ethical campaigns, or else accept responsibility for disintegrating the fabric of society only to fill their coffers.


References for this post:

1. Avard, Christian. “Gail Dines: How “Pornland” destroys intimacy and hijacks sexuality” pulsemedia.org. Pulse. 29 June 2010.
2. Deguerin Miller, Carlin. “Jonathan Hock Pleads Guilty to Live-Streaming Sexual Assault of Girlfriend”. cbsnews.com. Crimesider. 48 Hours Mystery. CBS News. September 3, 2010.
3. Martinez, Edecio. “Joseph Thomas Hansen Wanted to Be "World's Most Infamous Sociopath," Say Police”. cbsnews.com. Crimesider. 48 Hours Mystery. CBS News. September 3, 2010.
4. Milinovich, Gia.“The lady vanishes: Invisible Wife Syndrome” guardian.co.uk. The Guardian. Saturday 28 August 2010.
5. Nathan, Sara.“Revealed: The second 'prostitute who had a threesome with Wayne Rooney'”. dailymail.co.uk. DailyMail Online. 8 September 2010.
6. “Reasons for Decision”. hikari.org. November 2004.
7. Tallim, Jane. “Sexualized Images in Advertising”. media-awareness.ca. Media Awareness Network. May 2003.
8. Wakabayashi, Daisuke. “Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends”. wsj.com. Asia. WSJ. August 31, 2010.