Child Sex and the Media

After the Great Penn State Scandal of early November, we see another example of what our culture deems the ultimate no-no: prurience in relation to children. Of course, this seems like a reasonable thing to hate - what parent, brother, sister, etc could imagine their innocent little loved one involved in a sexual relationship with a full-grown adult? Let's be honest, most parents don't even want to know their kids are involved in sexual relationships with their peers. Moreover, emotive discomfort aside, there is an obvious moral disfunction involved in exploitation. Taking a child's puerile affection and naiveté and manipulating it into a complicated sex game that takes advantage of and seriously hinders a child is a mark of an individual lacking ethics, empathy, and inhibition. It seems most everyone is going to be able to agree with this point - regardless of whether or not you've read Lolita - psychologically challenging or not, it is a societal maxim that is too ubiquitous and obvious to challenge.

Why I gathered the interest in the sex scandal at Penn State more than any of the Catholic alter boy testimonies or countless teacher-student scandals (cf. badbadteacher.com for a perspective on enormity of this issue) is due of the proximity it had to our media culture. Sports coverage is one of the most pervasive interests shared by the denizens of nearly every city and suburb. Despite the cultural love for sports, most people would agree its for fun and entertainment - it brings people together and makes them happy. Now, with our Penn State folks in the spotlight, we see a new sort of conflict of judgment: some people actually love Joe Pa and the Nittany Lions enough to exculpate those involved (in particular JP), not on lawful terms, but simply because he's a loved icon to many. Doubters of the Catholic sex abuse cases didn't riot in the streets at the idea of their priest being put on trial or moved to a different parish.

What's the point of highlighting this? It seems to me that the most guilty offender of pushing gratuitous sexual idolization and sexualizing youth is the media itself. Look at any women's or men's magazine and its a 50/50 shot that any page you open up to will involve sex tips, a sexualized scene, or a way to appear more sexy. Then, go into any high school, or even middle school, and find the popular girls - the desirables of these teenage hormone chambers - and you'll more than likely get pointed to girls dressing as if they're in their twenties. They don't come up with these fashion styles themselves, its sold to them in store windows, magazine advertisements, online fashion reviews, and through entertainment. This should come as no surprise; however, something that the Penn State Scandal has taught me is that we're more numb to the media's influence on us that we could have ever imagined. When what generally appears as our most culturally stigmatized taboo - child sex scandals - is brushed off by PSU lovers due to the clout carried by those involved, we can realize we are not only a culture identifying and obsessed with entertainment, but a culture that has no grasp of ourselves as separate to its influence.

What we can learn from the Penn State Scandal is that even our deepest ethical and moral concerns are no match for the influence of the mainstream. It seems its time for those who see the stranglehold that media has on culture to speak up and provide critical voices that disabuse our daily complacency with the power being granted to public imagery that is crushing whatever virtues are left in our American culture.