McLatchey offers this sad report on the popularity of a pornographic movie that's currently being shown on college campuses across the nation:
The movie - reportedly the most expensive porn film ever made - combines computer-generated images with hardcore sex scenes.
Digital Playground's 2005 film "Pirates" became a surprise hit on campuses from Yale to Tulane, said spokesman Christopher Ruth. Student groups contacted Digital Playground for permission to show that movie, he said.
From that experience, Ruth said the idea arose to market the 2008 sequel to university audiences by offering it free.
Student groups at a half-dozen universities - including UCLA and Carnegie Mellon University - accepted the offer. Hundreds of students lined up at each show.
The University of Maryland will screen the movie this weekend, the firm said.
The unfortunate aspect of this is not just the availability of the film, kids have unlimited access to pornography today. Nor is it just that universities across the country are facilitating the showing of the thing. Universities long ago abrogated their responsibility to responsibly shepherd young people through their late-teens years into adulthood. The most unfortunate part of the article, perhaps, is found in the last couple of lines:
The screenings generate publicity and sell a few copies of the movie, Ruth said. But the larger point is to get young people accustomed to seeing adult movies as mainstream entertainment.
"It's not anything you should be ashamed of," he said. "Sexuality never is."
This statement transcends stupid. Whether people should be ashamed of "sexuality" is hardly what's at issue. The issue is what we're doing to the hearts and minds of young people by immersing them in a pornographic culture. What effect does it have on a young man's view of women to see them graphically portrayed as sex toys? What does it do to the self-image of women when their objectification is glamorized and sensualized? What happens to our sense of human dignity when we watch for a couple of hours people copulating on screen? What are the expectations a young couple have for each other in a marriage when sexual athleticism is held up as an ideal? What does it do to sex itself when the act is emptied of all its mystery, intimacy, commitment and love and reduced to a mere expression of sheer lust?
Parents who pay their child's activity fee when they send them off to college probably never suspect that one of the activities they're paying for is the screening of movies that encourage young men to think of young women as little more than a means to their gratification. It's all very sad.
RLC