The subject of porn is a delicate topic for many people. Teenage men may build up a large collection on their computers at home, but for other people it can be extremely offensive.
I think the majority of people reading this will feel that there is a time and a place for everything. That said, how would you feel if you walked into a local electronics store and saw someone watching a pornographic movie or viewing explicit images in view of everyone?
This is a situation that faced customers in Best Buy. The company have even had to issue an apology for an incident which was witnessed by the public, including children. Best Buy in Greenville, US was the center of the incident.
According to reports, two people accessed the stores wireless signal to broadcast the explicit images on a ‘smart television display'.
One customer said “It was extremely, extremely pornographic image, I think even the word ‘pornographic' doesn't cover it. I have never watched pornography, so I don't know what else you can see there, but to me, I really felt extremely violated.”
It took the management several minutes to take down the picture. We wonder why they couldn't just have pressed the ‘power' button? A family has filed a complaint with police for ‘dissemination of pornographic material.'
It leads us into a broader question however. Are people generally becoming desensitized when viewing sexually explicit imagery?
Religious groups are taking matters into their own hands, if you can excuse the pun. American television shows such as Californication staring David Duchovny (of X-Files fame), which often features sexually detailed dialogue and nudity is constantly under attack from religious groups who find the subject matter offensive. The show has featured sex with under age women, defecation on a car and death via asphyxiation during masturbation. The list is endless.
Where should the line be drawn? Should we expect more nudity on television and in mainstream life? Will there ever be a time when a sales executive in Curry's or Dixons can highlight the quality of a television's ‘skin tones' via explicit high definition video content to customers?
Kitguru says: Share your views with us!
I’d feel far more offended if the store was showing violent images or movies. It’s the desensitisation to that, that should be the issue. With those too young to remember the last Falkland’s War already talking about another as if it were a sequel to a classic computer game, the absurd stigmatisation of anything even vaguely ‘adult’, but the placid (flaccid?) acceptance of any level of violence is just another dangerous Americanisation of world societies. Spare us from the sanctimonious preaching of the self-styled moral majority – who are neither moral, nor a majority. There’s nothing new under the sun, and so-called extreme imagery is no different from stuff in covert circulation during the 19th century – another era of absurd hypocrisy.