On moral pornography

The phenomenal popularity of the viral video about the Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has once again called attention to the moral outrage of the abduction of children to be trained as soldiers. In line with the nature of such a contagion (keeping with our viral metaphor), a considerable amount of blood spilt in far-flung Conradian thickets translates commensurately into ink spilt in our more familiar cloisters of idle privilege and infinite concern.

Child soldiers are, of course, not new to Uganda or (for that matter) a host of other African countries. The recent histories of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Liberia match that of Uganda according to just about any macabre metric imaginable. Rape, pillage, dispossession and slavery are all familiar plot elements, and contribute to the rather dark feeling that one has seen this movie before. But what can account for the powerful reactions this narrative garners with each virtually identical sequel?

In thinking of the way the endless horror stories of Africa are packaged for and enthusiastically consumed in the West, Vladimir Nabokov’s epilogical description of pornography in “On a Book Entitled Lolita” comes to mind as a source of useful terms of comparison. Nabokov identifies the chief characteristics of pornography as “mediocrity, commercialism and certain strict rules of narration.” A number of “old rigid rules must be followed by the pornographer in order to have his patient feel the same security of satisfaction as, for example, fans of detective stories feel.”

It is not despite, but rather because of their repetitive familiarity that sporadic eruptions such as the Kony affair continue to register all of the “shock” appropriate to an orgiastic fit of righteous indignation. To be sure, righteousness, indignation and moral outrage, like the libido itself, stem from healthy, vital energies without which our humanity would fall nugatory and impotent. It is just for this reason that both the sexual and moral urges are so vulnerable to decadence, self-indulgence and excess. This is a kind of excess vaguely reminiscent of one of those old Ricki Lake or Jerry Springer episodes at the end of which a handful of roly-poly illiterates from the studio audience get to hurl self-righteous (and often violent) aspersions at some toothless, two-dimensional pedophile or Klan member guest (boo! hiss!).

The ecstasy of moral outrage, like pornography, thrives under conditions of caricature and, in Nabokov’s words, “has to be limited to the copulation of cliches.” Neither pornography nor self-righteousness thrives alongside nuance and complexity. A realistic plot is simply not the point. One danger, then, is that the beguiling pleasures of righteous indignation can seduce us into simplifying each trendy new cause into the pre-packaged parameters of a morality play. It’s not reality, but fantasy and feeling that count.

If the delights of moral pornography are indifferent (and even hostile) to reality, they are perhaps even more so to effective action. The moral release afforded by taking up some exotic cause bears little or no relation to whether one actually makes a positive difference—a sort of half-hearted deontology posturing as activism. I need not explain how the equivalent release offered by sexual pornography may (in fact probably does) exist entirely independently of whether any sex act takes place. Indeed, one of the chief purposes of pornography is to facilitate sexual release without sex. Similarly, the most effective bits of moral pornography operate onanistically, allowing one to climax in self-congratulation and deplete one’s moral reserves without any action whatsoever. Just as pornography can function as a (hopefully temporary) substitute for sex, so can moral pornography function as a substitute for real action. Perhaps this helps to explain the activist who can pontificate endlessly about the plight of the Inuit and yet treat the “rednecks” in his own backyard with barely concealed derision.

It matters a great deal that moral pornography chiefly features a far-away problem in some exotic locale. This is because the more exotic and remote the location, the more moral credit one is able to give oneself simply for being aware of the issue. So many ignoramus Americans don’t even know where East Timor is, let alone the dire humanitarian crisis it recently faced. Moral and intellectual superiority for the price of nothing!

Exoticism is crucial in another important respect. It establishes a certain “pathos of distance” which facilitates the objectification process that is instrumental to the effective working of pornography as such.