Topic: Filth/Censorship/Mores/Sexuality and Technology
When talking in class about The Filth or The Ticket That Exploded it’s hard to be that person who thought reading it was fun. With the rest of the students only voicing disgust the closest some people got to saying they enjoyed The Ticket That Exploded is saying that they found it interesting. Reading the book could have been disturbing to some because it makes you aware of carefully hidden and ignored perversions within yourself. It has the ability to provoke uncomfortable sexual feelings with its pornographic scenes of fish-boys and bodily fluid. When reading The Filth in public places many of us found ourselves hyper aware of people around us due to the fact that the pictures were blatant proof that what we were reading included sex, giant killing sperm, old men jacking off, ect. The Ticket That Exploded and The Filth present sex and the things that go with it as no big deal while in contrast our own society says the exact opposite, that it is something to be ashamed of. As a result, it’s not a surprise that most the class could only respond to the books with comments like, “I didn’t like reading it”. The easiest way to deal with these uncomfortable realizations is to deny them, a basic defense that requires little effort.
The blogs held restrictions much like that of the classroom. Writing what you felt about the book wouldn’t immediately bring the rest of the classroom’s judgment down on you, but it would serve as an archive for whatever you said. Anybody could look and see and have proof of what you wrote. At first a lot of our posts consisted of us trying to distance ourselves from what we were reading just like how class discussions had begun. A blog post by Jonishere55 said this, “As I get into the book more though there is weird alien sex describing texts that are just way out there and I am pretty much starting to hate the book. I start to wonder, "Is this author gay or something"? Large portions of this book seem to be about Alien gay sex, I mean really I don't want to read this!”(01/23/09). As shown by Jonishere55, some students were trying to take what they were uneasy about and had negative feelings towards and justify it by applying it to who the author was as a person. Over time though people relaxed and became comfortable with themselves. This helped to calm those who were having trouble dealing with their inner turmoil. They were able to let go of that animosity so as to focus more on what was going on in the plot. The Ticket That Exploded was a tough read for me and I’m still not sure I understand it, but I did my best to point out the things I thought were important or at least curious occurrences. Prichard took control of the discussions in class and led us from how it made us feel to thinking about questions like whether language was a virus or not and why we found it important to find a meaning in the book. Having a theme to focus on especially helped us in reading the book since it was frustrating enough trying to figure out the best way to read the cut-up style, much less battle our squeamishness. The Filth was much more appealing because of its pictures, even if they did occasionally put us in awkward situations. A comic made for a more straight forward read after the complexity of the cut-up. I think many of us found it much less difficult to endure compared to The Ticket That Exploded and a welcome relief as well.
What I noticed about reading The Filth and its similarities to real life porn consumption was that we approached it the way we approached our sexual nature, in private. When able to we much rather preferred cracking open the graphic pages of this book in a secluded room then in a public place like a library. Our embarrassment at potentially being caught reading something that casually threw around sex overwhelmed us. Any cliché porn video has its base in the normalization of taboo acts in places where anyone could see. A task as simple as making a photocopy or delivering a report in the office place can blow up into a full out orgy. Porn taps into the type of society our discomfort has shoved way from our thoughts and to the dark recesses of our minds. That’s why porn works. With it we can tap into the need that has been growing in the sheltered depths of ourselves and best of all, we can do it in private. I’m not surprised that in more conservative states the porn rates are higher. Like stated in the article Red States Consume More Porn, “if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more.” As society continues to tell you that your sexual desires are scandalous and something to be concealed you become more frustrated. You can’t hide from them, you can’t get rid of them, soon you’ll feel the need to act on them. What else can you turn to but porn? It’s the perfect outlet because it can be watched behind a locked door and on mute if need be. Reading The Filth was much like that, you wanted to be hidden away somewhere so no one could speculate about you and your porn comic.
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