Our lives are filled with images, sounds, and various sensations. In the current technological age, daily existence is overloaded with a constant stream of information and sensory stimulation – most of it falling into the background: an endless din of useless chatter. Occasionally, something from that miasma will stop us, and we pay attention; sometimes this happens collectively to the entire world – the most recent example: the twerking exhibitionism of Miley Cyrus at the MTV Awards; now, it’s part of the national consciousness – although the full effects of what happened will not be felt for years.
In my own life, probably the greatest pop-culture moment took place in 1979, when ABC televised a Playboy Bunny Roller Skating Pajama Party – this climax of 70s discoism took every fad of that era and combined them into one all-encompassing high-point of epic hedonism; at the center of it all: my boyish daydream – Dorothy Stratten, who had less than a year to live. In that program: sex, fame, and pleasure became one. To a child, it all seemed perfectly attainable. It was a pornographic fantasy come to life. It was dazzlingly beautiful. For many years, it remained the ideal: that freedom through the flesh was the ultimate goal.
As a teen, the second most powerful image to enter my brain was from the new media of the music video; indescribably influential at the time, their social impact can only be compared to the introduction of motion pictures and then the affordability of home televisions. MTV became the glowing altar from which every teenager focused their undivided attention; and, Madonna became its first high-priestess. My favorite: her music video for the single “Like a Virgin;” with its competing imagery of the sacred and the profane, the high and the sleazy, Madonna single-handedly ushered in the age of main-stream pop-porn. Her dance on the front of a Venetian gondola, rosary dangling between her bosoms, was pornography as art; the crass and the corrupt masquerading as myth.
Finally, by the time Hollywood rolled out the film “Basic Instinct” in 1992, I was no longer that damaged little boy – but, an equally damaged man. As a kid, pop-culture had been the greatest influence on my life – I could remember the lyrics to countless forgotten one-hit-wonders, but not a single hymn. Madonna was my Madonna. I was the child raised on lies: of free sex with no consequence, perversity without payback, and a singular belief and confidence in my own sense of direction. Therefore, when Sharon Stone flashed the camera, many were shocked – I wasn’t. For myself, and for all those who had found themselves after a wasted childhood – now, denizens of the glamorous vice-pits of San Francisco, LA, and New York, it was a moment of liberation; of the supreme power of sex. It fulfilled the dream set forth by Hefner in his Playboy special from 79: the total prevalence of self-will over morality.