Sex in the '90s
Part Three
Madonna, Pornography, Violence
by Daniel Heydon
(Published in Dell Horoscope August 1993)
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Sex in the '90s Part Three Madonna, Pornography, Violence by Daniel Heydon (Published in Dell Horoscope August 1993) |
SEX IN THE ‘90S
Part Three MADONNA, PORNOGRAPHY, VIOLENCE
by Daniel Heydon
Pornography and X-Rated Video Tapes
Despite Attorney General Meese's 1986 crackdown on pornography, thanks to the VCR and the camcorder, porno is still very much alive in the ‘90s and prospering. With Neptune in Scorpio, Playboy magazine became part of our culture. With Uranus in Scorpio, the porno film Deep Throat starring Linda Lovelace was the first ever film of that ilk to be considered to have enough merit to be shown in regular movie theatres. And Marlon Brando's Last Tango In Paris was erotic enough perhaps to hold its own in a porn theatre.
In 1976, with Uranus in Scorpio there were some 780 adult movie houses throughout the country that ran porn 52 weeks a year. (1) But just as the burlesque theatre went out of existence with the advent of movies, so did the pornographic movie theatre begin to seem dated in the early '80s with the advent of the sex-videotape revolution.
Statistics about the sales and rentals of X-rated videocassettes were staggering in 1983 — an estimated 350,000 X-rated films were purchased or rented a week. (2) It was estimated by Video magazine that 1.4 million units were sold that year, with rentals outnumbering sales by 12 to 1, a figure of 16,800,000 rentals. (3) This is the same period as when Hill and Thomas worked together at the E. O. A. C . Se x L i e s an d V i de o t ap e s, the title of a popular 1991 film, could also serve as the title of the Hill -Thomas hearings in 1991. Here pornography took central stage as a nationwide TV audience pondered the question whether Thomas in fact spoke to Hill about Long Dong Silver. Yet, I wonder what statistics would have revealed if the same people polled about Thomas' guilt or innocence were asked i f they had ever in their lives rented a sex video tape. In 1990, it was estimated by Video Store magazine that the rental of porn videos alone generated around $665 million a year. (4) Reuben Sturman, known as the porn king, alone was thought to have built an empire that in 1991 grossed $1 million a day from the sale of lewd magazines, videos, and sex toys. (5)
Six months before the Hill/Thomas hearings, the New York Times News Service on April 2, 1991 featured a story on a new product that entered America's video stores around October 1990 — amateur adult videotapes. Many husbands and wives in our society are home taping their sexual encounters and then selling them to adult bookstores which feature pornographic video tapes. The figures cited by Michael Savage, sales manager for International Video Distributor, a wholesaler of adult videos in Newark New Jersey are mind-boggling. His company alone sold over 10,000 homemade sex videos within that year, and he estimated that several hundred thousand amateur videos are in circulation. (6)
With Uranus in Scorpio, it was only a sexy woman or guy who starred in a porno movie. Now with Pluto in Scorpio, pornographic videotapes have indeed gone mainstream. Any housewife, any student, in fact, anybody, no matter what his or her physical attributes or acting ability may be, can now aspire to be a porn star!
By the ‘90s adult movie theatres were all but gone, not withstanding the unfortunate 1991 case of Pee Wee Herman's solo performance in an adult movie house that was witnessed by the Florida police. Not to put Pee Wee further in the muck, but he as well as the other patrons of that adult theatre, also become representative of the Pluto in Scorpio truth that what happens in the dark must now come to 1ight.
What Pee Wee did in the dark that July evening Madonna routinely simulates in the light on her videos and in film — the videos Like A Virgin, Like a Prayer, and Erotica, as well as her film Truth or Dare, will suffice as examples. Michael Jackson, along with many other rock stars, tried to follow suit, but Jackson's video Black and White drew such an outcry from the public, that the offensive parts of it were quickly eliminated. Not only was the public upset about Michael's overt sexual posturing, but also his violent trashing of a car. Perhaps, though, when it comes to libidinous gestures, there is no one like sassy and beguiling Madonna, whose rise to fame and beyond accompanied Pluto's transit of Scorpio.
Her first album Madonna was released July 1983, three months before Pluto entered Scorpio. This album sold slowly, but sales picked up wildly with the release of her second album Like A Virgin, November 14, 1984. At the time of its release Pluto was at 2 SC 48, just past a conjunction to her natal Neptune at 2 SC 18. The release of the single Like A Virgin was a mega-h it, selling 1.9 million copies within six months and the album with the same title had a staggering worldwide sales of 7 million copies in the same time period. On the single Like a Virgin Madonna mocks and destroys the time worn Victorian cliché of woman as either whore or virgin. Here she combines these images to sing, "You make me feel like a virgin, touched for the very first time."
Some university professors now include Like A Virgin (as well as several other Madonna songs) in college courses (e.g. Harvard, Princeton, and UCLA). (8) Madonna has become in academia the prototype example of the postmodern woman. The crucifix against the crotch imagery of Like A Virgin, which certainly is blasphemous to devout Catholics, and in poor taste to many of all religions, has become for Harvard professor, Lynne Layton, an example of the "deconstruction of fixed female identities". (9) For a worldwide audience of rock fans, Like A Virgin, the single, reached # 1 on Billboard's Top 100 of December 1984, and the album with the same title reached #1 in January 1985, displacing Bruce Springstern's Born in the USA from its top position. On May 27, 1985, Madonna made the cover of Ti me Magazine.
But has Madonna gone too far with the October 21, 1992 release of Sex, a photo fantasy book of Madonna, which includes whips, chains, and women with pierced nipples. In Sex the cross/crotch imagery of Like A Virgin has been replaced with stiletto knives menacingly held next to her crotch by two tatooed lesbian skinheads. What's more, a staggering first run of 835,000 copies makes this the largest initial release of any illustrated book in publishing history. With a $49.75 price tag (not including tax) will this by necessity result in a media blitz that celebrates the darker sides of sex?
Of course, one publicist that October said he anticipated an outrage such as was created by the first publication of D.H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Though Madonna says in her interview in the October 1992 issue of Vanity Fair, that sadomasochism is about power and not sex, an entirely different message may be conveyed by Sex ‘s photos in which heterosexual love takes a back seat to images of lesbianism and sadomasochism. Though lesbianism by itself is certainly neither violent nor dark, some buyers of this book may indeed take offense at images of lesbians as sadomasochists. Already, in 1992, there was a violent outrage by the lesbian community over the film Basic Instinct, for it's depiction of a lesbian as a psycho-killer.
Of course, Madonna thrives on controversy and likes to take her fans to the cutting edge. Are these really as she says, her erotic fantasies which we should take with a sense of humor — or is this a calculated career ploy. Maureen Orth writing in Vanity Fair, though, found little of a humorous bent in this book and many other critics felt the same. Nevertheless, Madonna's Sex within the first week of publication entered the New York Times best-seller list as the # 1 non-fiction title in the country.
Is Madonna an angel of darkness or is she fulfilling a cosmic purpose, a Plutonian function of bringing the issues of pornography and sadomasochism up for public discussion? Does she know what she's doing here or has her Sun in Leo gone out of control? Certainly, she is used to generating controversy and capitalizing on it. Her album Erotica, which was released October 21, 1992 also included the same S & M motifs and echoed the themes of Sex.
Madonna was born with the Sun at 23 LE 06 conjunct Pluto at 1 VI 43. Here we see the planet of light, the Sun, in conjunction with Pluto, the planet of darkness. Madonna herself replied, when asked by Vanity Fair 's Maureen's Orth, if she were out to shock people with Sex, "No, I'm out to open their minds and get them to see sexuality in another way. Their own and others." (10) It would seem that Madonna's purpose from her stated point of view is to use her Sun in Leo to shed light on its natal conjunction with Pluto in Vi rgo.
Madonna's statement echoes that of another famous Leo personality, Mae West, herself no slouch as a sex symbol and a writer, who once said, "I take sex out in the open ... I kid it. I'm a healthy influence." (11) Mae West also said "In choosing two evils, I always try the one I've never tried before" — words that we could easily place in Madonna's mouth, especially, when we consider that Mae West was born with Mercury at 9 VI 39 conjunct Madonna's Ascendent at 8 VI 15. Does it also surprise you to learn that Madonna's Neptune is at 2 SC 18 in close conjunction to Mae West's Uranus at 2 SC 38 — or that Madonna's Uranus at 12 LE 42 conjuncts Marilyn Monroe's Ascendent of 13 LE 04 and that Madonna's Sun at 23 LE 06 also conjuncts Marilyn's Neptune at 22 LE 13? To make these chart comparisons complete, note that Marilyn Monroe's Sun at 10 GE 27 is conjunct both Mae West's Pluto at 9 GE 44 and her Neptune at 11 GE 07. Here we have, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, linked together by the outer planets as sex goddesses for the ages!
Sadomasochism in the '90s
Sex and violence are the two best sellers in our culture, so it's perhaps not surprising that sadomasochism, which combines both sex and violence in the same act, is on the rise. We are no longer shocked by it, for kinky sex or allusions to it are readily available, from off-color jokes by our humorists to films like Blue Velvet (1987) and Tie Me up. Tie me down (1990). Though Farm Aid fundraiser John Cougar Mellencamp sings "I was born in a small town", in another video, set in a biker bar, he sings to a girl draped in chains "it hurts so good" — after hearing these lyrics, we may wonder if the small town Mellencamp comes from is Twin Peaks. With Pluto in Scorpio, there is perhaps no better image of the fact that S & M has gone mainstream than the TV ice cream commercial showing a man begging like a dog for treats from his teasing dominatrix with the accompanying voice over "Evidently, it's not your normal chocolate chip." (12)
A current Pluto in Scorpio trend is the wearing of rings in the nipples and genitals. In April 1990, one California business reported over 600 body piercings in that month alone, including the nipples of a bank president and the genitals of many Orange County housewives. As John Leo in US News & World Report said," this is the clear imagery of sexual slavery, springing from the hardest core, most hostile porn, but it is presented as a natural and harmless extension of earings and nose jewelry." (13) When I read a review of Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy, a novel about clitorectomy (i.e. female circumcision) which reached #4 on the NYT best-seller list on August 2, 1992, I was presented with a different kind of "sexual slavery."
Feminist critics have certainly spoken out about the barbaric nature of this ritual inflicted on women in Africa and other cultures, yet I have not heard any feminists raise their voices about the new fad for clitoral rings. Do we have a double standard here? If rings were put on the clitori of circumcised black Africans, would that have made this ancient custom alright. Would the ring have resulted in pleasure for the victim instead of pain? Is this a situation where if you try it, you'll like it, or is the truth of the matter more like that experienced by Alice Walker's character Tashi whose clitorectomy was an experience of "suffering and humiliation." (14) Or am I missing the significance of those genital piercings in California, which is, that maybe these piercings were especially sought after so that the wearer of the clitoral ring could indeed experience "suffering and humiliation".
No doubt Madonna's photo album, Sex and her record album Erotica will bring, what is for me a disturbing topic, into a clearer light. Though in the '90s, such taboo topics as incest, child abuse, and rape are now topics to be discussed at the breakfast table, we hear of no support groups for the survivors of sadomasochism nor do we have statistics on how many people are into it.
Does this mean that society doesn't view S & M as an aberration and that it is thought of as a normal part of sex, at least for some individuals? As Madonna implicates, should we practice a live and let live attitude to this phenomenon in our society? Is sadomasochism only a problem, for people like me? And now I speak only for myself (and I hope I do not sound like either Dan Quayle or Tipper Gore) — but do we have to have the accoutrements of the dungeon to add mystery and excitement to our sex lives. Certainly, for many of us, just getting to know someone, to dare to become intimate, is scary enough. And when intimacy is achieved, do you not feel, to quote the very same lines of Madonna that I did in the last section, "like a virgin, touched for the very first time." Here Madonna speaks of sex as a rebirth and here she seems to be in touch with sex as that primal experience which D.H. Lawrence, a Scorpio, so often celebrated in his work.
Though S & M came out of the closet, so to speak, in the '70s with Uranus in Scorpio, when punks wore black leather and safety pins in their ears, soon to be accompanied by Vogue in 1975 using S & M motifs in their fashion ads, little has been written about this subject in the '90s (I know that, thanks to Madonna's Sex, all this will have been changed by the time you read this article). The fashion world by the way has gone from ‘70s S & M to ‘90s vampire chic, as befits our bloodthirsty culture. (See Entertainment Weekly September 24, 1992 issue and Mirabella, October 1992).
The inspiration for this new fashion turn was provided by Francis Ford Coppolo's Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was released November 1992. Bram Stoker's novel was written in 1897 with Uranus in Scorpio; with Uranus again in Scorpio in 1977, Frank Langella starred in the Broadway play Dracula; and the classic film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi was released in 1931 just after Pluto's discovery. As of November 1992, you'll no longer have to travel to Transylvania to purchase your vampire accessories. This was the month that mass market " Drac " wear began to appear in specialty boutiques and department stores throughout the U.S. Also available are upscale accessories like blood-red lipstick, jeweled fangs, and coffin handbags. Yes, fashion does mimic the movements of the outer planets and yes, with Pluto in Scorpio, the vampire look went mainstream in 1992!
But to return to the subject at hand. Susan Brownwiller in her Against Our Will; Men, Women and Rape speaks of rape not as a sex crime, but as a power trip. And Madonna tells us that S & M is not about sex, but about power. (In astrology, Scorpio is a sign linked with both sex and power.) Though society feels it is an outrage when S & M takes the form of the battered wife, apparently many members of society feel that nothing is out of whack when both parties to a sadomasochistic act willingly assume the roles of dominator and submissor.
Much has been written in recent years about how we live in a mucho-macho society where men are domineering. Women have rebelled against being assigned a submissive role in our society. And in our universities in the ‘80s and '90s, we have read of professors losing their tenure because of sexual innuendoes that are considered politically incorrect. Yet, despite all the sensitivity to this issue, we have both men and women writing in books of their sexual experiences of bondage or what it feels like to have another human being cower before your whip. These stories are not written with regret or guilt – but with eroticism.
It is felt by many in publishing that this is a victory for women’s rights, as pornography was strictly a man’s preserve at the time when Neptune was in Scorpio and Playboy first appeared. Though it is a healthy sign that we can laugh about S & M, there are greater issues at stake here. The goals of a kinder gentler relationship between men and women, one in which equality reigns rather than themes of dominance and submission, will not be achieved, so long as our culture saturates us with the conflicting message that S & M is alright in the bedroom but not in the corporate boardroom.
But there are still other reasons to be concerned about sadomasochism. On occasion, we read of S & M that has gone too far, like the case in NYC in 1985, where a male model ended up dead after a night of S & M playfulness. Perhaps, this will help us realize that it is significant that psychologists say that hostility, guilt, and lack of self-worth can turn a person in this direction and that in some instances, a childhood history of sexual abuse can lay behind an adult taste for sadomasochism. Perhaps, we will come to realize that an experience in which someone who gets his or her kicks by making someone else feel small and in which the other party gets delight from being degraded is perhaps just not right. That a sexual coupling that for some people makes the participants feel larger than life because power needs are being fulfilled can lead to death is a circumstance that should not be ignored.
The 1991 release of the film Silence of the Lambs and the publication of American Psycho, both about serial killers, prompted Barbara Ehrenreich to devote an editorial in Time to society's enjoyment of such things as decapitation, dismemberment, eye gouging, and the like. She notes how we desecrate our bodies today, in one form or another. She calls for a more realistic treatment of sex by Hollywood with an occasional film showing sex between people who are wrinkled and overweight and who actually like each other. She feels we need to make friends with our bodies again — that we need to be reminded that our bodies can be good for a romp now and then, by which she means,” something involving dancing and petting as opposed to dicing and flaying." (15)
With Pluto now in Scorpio, perhaps the 1993 publication of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover (16) by D.H Lawrence will refresh our memories that sex indeed can be a primal scream, not one that derives from pain or inflicting pain, but rather from ecstasy (not the drug by that name). Lawrence wrote about sex as an experience that does indeed make the earth shake and the heavens move, and the participants reborn to themselves as individuals, who in togetherness achieve a oneness with the universe. This perhaps is one of the ultimate mysteries (some, sadly, will say -- fantasies) associated with Pluto and Scorpio. Let's hope, by the end of this transit, that sex as ecstasy, mysticism, and literally out of body travel, will be the catalyst that once again reacquaints humanity with the relationship between the spiritual and the physical, with the relationship between body and soul. Is there any significance to the fact that in 1930, the year of Pluto's discovery, the song Body and Soul was at the top of the charts? Yes, I know, what cynics among you might say, so were Ten Cents a Dance and Love for Sale .
June 13, 1990, p. 20
Ibid
Quoted by Janette Turner Hospital, New York Times Book Review, June 28, 1992, p.11
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Why don’t We Like the Human Body,” Time, July 1, 1991
Note: In 1993 the BBC dramatized Lady Chatterley's Lover in a film directed by Ken Russell although the more explicit scenes were toned down.
