Good links from Ran Prieur this week.  Firstly a compelling essay by Naomi Wolf about the social implications of porn.  Here’s some good thought:

” But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated—or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.”

Good shit.  Later on describes a process of isolation and alienation that I can only filter through the Modern Metaphor of Misunderstood Quantum Physics:  we all end up isolated and alone together, unto ourselves, drifting soundless and frictionlessly within voids.  I bring this up because it’s this Voice of the Vacuum that I hear when I read The Rainbow, and why that book excites me so much.  He got it;  he gets all this social fragmentation on a scientific level I’m so far ignorant of.

The other link is to an interesting review of The Dark Knight.  I am not allowed to watch these sorts of films.  Like the awful, awful Charlie Wilson’s War, such films are dangerous because they promote a shallow acceptance of terms, a general ignoring of fine print.  Oh, but it’s just a movie!  No.  It’s just a meme, a universally acceptable context.  We define ourselves on this sort of shit.  We shouldn’t promote bad politics and confused thought as entertainment.  But that ought be the end of my comments until I’ve actually seen it.