Sexual slavery in Hollywood

Some recent articles refer to sex in Hollywood (aka the US entertainment industry) productions, and claim that some of this amounts to sexual slavery.

One of these articles, by E. Stephen Burnett, refers mostly to the HBO series "Game of Thrones," which is based on George R. R. Martin's series of novels, collectively called "A Song of Ice and Fire." See here and here for my reaction to the books -- I did not finish the series, for reasons I explain in the posts. My second post discusses and refers to some reaction to Martin's work by Christianity Today and by award-winning author of fantastic literature Elizabeth Moon.

Burnett claims that the HBO series includes pornography. He says that "naked people who act out sexual scenarios in public media in order to get money is porn." He also refers to John Piper, who says, in a post on "Game of Thrones:" "God calls women to adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control (1 Timothy 2:9). When we pursue or receive or embrace nudity in our entertainment, we are implicitly endorsing the sin of the women who sell themselves to this way and are, therefore, uncaring about their souls."

Piper also says that violence on-screen is not real -- no one gets killed. But nudity is real. People really expose their bodies. Further, he says that it is not ever necessary to have nude actresses in order to tell a story.

Piper dealt almost entirely with nakedness in women. There is, of course, also nudity by men on-screen. I don't know the frequency of occurrence of one versus the other.

A Cap Stewart has written two posts, here and here, in which he claims, with some anecdotes to back them up, that women are sometimes coerced into becoming sex objects. He says, with some justification, that some of them are a sort of sex slave.

None of the three authors (all of them wrote about "Game of Thrones," and other things) discussed the pornography film industry. My guess is that there might be some actual full-time sex slavery in that industry, but I have no facts to back that up. None of the authors discussed homosexual sexual activity.

Thanks for reading. Be careful what you watch. Since this post concerns pornography, I expect that it will get more views than most of my blog does, which, in itself, tells us something.

The moral universe of Game of Thrones, as seen by Elizabeth Moon and Christianity Today.

George R. R. Martin is perhaps the best-selling author of fantastic literature of the last 25 years. His most popular work is a series, still incomplete, entitled “A Song of Ice and Fire.” That series is the basis for the popular HBO TV series, “Game of Thrones.” Martin has won several awards for his writing.

I try to deal with important works of fantastic literature in this blog, although I haven’t tried to touch on  vampire literature. Some years ago, I decided not to cover Martin’s work. My reason was that it didn’t affirm anything. Although there were sympathetic characters, their fate was often terrible, and there were some extremely evil characters, who seemed to be unpunished. (I’m sure that the series hasn’t suffered because I’m not following it!)

Two recent articles, not by me, bear on this matter.

The first is an excellent blog post by Elizabeth Moon, who has won awards in fantastic literature herself. Although it doesn’t directly consider Martin's creation, what triggered Moon’s post was a review of Martin’s work. Moon points out that there is a difference between moral complexity and moral ambiguity, and that although, say, Tolkien’s characters experienced moral complexity, what should have been done was clear. (See here for a discussion of Galadriel, for example.) But, says Moon, we are coming to the point where there's a lot of moral ambiguity:

“Moral ambiguity requires that there be no general good and bad–a chaotic, or amoral, universe–a universe in which the concepts of good and evil are absent, immaterial, and have no effect on characters’ motivation.”

As indicated above, I haven’t read all of Martin’s series, but Moon has succinctly put my unease about the series into words.

A recent article in Christianity Today points out the same thing I saw in my earlier post -- nothing is affirmed. (I claim no great wisdom here. It’s easy to get Martin’s world view, or at least that part of it.)

As the article puts it: “For Martin, realistic means his characters are complex, ‘gray,’ and morally ambiguous. There are no heroes in Martin’s books like there are in The Lord of the Rings. There is no echo of Calvin's description of human beings as ‘glorious ruins’ — broken, but still able to bear the Image of God. Martin's image focuses on the ruin, not the glory.”

Thanks for reading. Don’t read George R. R. Martin, or watch the series. Or, if you do, do so carefully.

A series I didn't finish reading

A number of years ago, I began reading what was supposed to be a great series, the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels by George R. R. Martin. The books are Sword and Sorcery fiction. (For more on the plots, characters, and setting, see the first link, which is to the Wikipedia article on the series, which article has links to pages on the individual books. The first book was published in 1996. I probably obtained a paperback copy in 1997 or 1998.)

I read the first two books in the series, and some shorter fiction related to these books. The volumes were well crafted, including the characters, the setting, and the plot. But I decided that I should stop reading them. Too many characters were evil, in too many ways. Too much evil, such as cruelty to slaves, and in war, seemed to be just accepted, with no revulsion towards it. There were some characters who were loyal and hard-working, and who treated others fairly, but they often seemed to be killed by other characters, without such good qualities. So I quit reading. The series didn't seem to affirm much. (I have recently posted on the topic of affirmation, here and here.)

When I began this brief series on affirming, my experience with Mr. Martin's books came to mind. I checked on what the series had become. I was surprised to discover that, although the first four books have sold well -- very well for fantastic literature -- and subsequent volumes have been eagerly anticipated, there has been a hiatus of about five years since the fourth novel was published. Martin and the publisher do not have a release date for the fifth work. The Amazon web site gives the publication date as December 25, 2012, which sounds like an estimate, not a firm date. Or perhaps it's just wishful thinking. Few or no books come out on Christmas day.

See here for a Martin fan's perspective on the hiatus in Martin's series. Here's the Wikipedia page on the fifth volume.

Perhaps it would be best if the series (which is projected to go to seven volumes) is never finished.

Thanks for reading. Read something that affirms some sort of excellence!

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June 10, 2011. The series is the basis for a TV series on HBO, and the books are again on some best-seller lists. A publication date, next month, has been set for the fifth book, so presumably, this time it's a real date.