Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060035
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I read the front-page story with disbelief. When I grew up, the FBI pursued people like John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde. Are we doing so well with our war against mobsters, gangsters, spies, rapists and terrorists that we can set our sights on fashion designers?
I hasten to say I am not a fan of Calvin Klein or the " kiddie porn" his attackers claim he is promulgating. I don't like (and don't buy) his products. I have seen his ads and TV commercials, and find them in poor taste. But I note that those under question were actually withdrawn in August, under pressure from the public and the retail industry. That's the kind of pressure that is appropriate in a democratic society - and the kind that works. Why, then, involve the FBI?
Perhaps they hope to reverse the bad publicity that came with the agency's overkill in Waco, Texas, and in various shootouts now under investigation. This is hardly the way to do that - it makes us ever more questioning of both their mission and method. Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern says the FBI is on the trail to "see if the Klein ads broke child pornography laws."
Controversial, and so far, unenforceable, those laws prohibit "lascivious exhibition ... of a minor." Our super-cops have discovered one Klein model, Bijou Phillips, who is indeed only 15. The FBI may be worried about this, but not Bijou's parents. They saw the photos before they were published and were "just so proud of her and thrilled."
Why then all the fuss? Am I missing something? Norman Siegel may have put his finger on it:
"The government is bowing to political pressure and misusing the child pornography laws. There is no evidence that the models were sexually abused, and the ads, whatever you think or say of them, do not descend to obscene."
What seems obscene, in retrospect, is the autocratic way the FBI was ruled for years by discredited J. Edgar Hoover, who blackmailed congressmen and presidents, and hounded Martin Luther King as a "dangerous communist." Has Hoover's ghost returned (via many of the agents he trained ) to smoke out yet another "subversive?" Richard Powers' prize-winning biography of Hoover sets the shoddy record straight.
Undercover operations are always a threat to freedom. Those of us who had a close look at the Stassi in East Germany and the KGB in the Soviet Union know the dangers of such tyranny. So do those who have read Kafka's "The Trial" or read about George Orwell's Big Brother in "1984."
And what has Calvin Klein said about all this? "We're not trying to shock and we're not trying to create controversy." A Klein spokesperson added: "We are confident that we have not violated any laws."
Perhaps the big change in recent years has not been our teen-agers or human nature, but the media atmosphere in which young people grow up.
The world around them has become a fantasy showroom of cars, discs, blue jeans and attitudes that fuel the consumerist bonfire. Many children grow up spending more time in the media world than in the real world. Like a living organism, like any biological entity, this fantasy world grew with new networks, MTV, satellite linkups, cable TV, telephone marketing, computer networks, Internet, home shopping clubs. With all this we seemed to be able to reach out and touch anyone. What happened to "love?" It became less of a reality than a fleeting phantom - a perpetual illusion, a confused blend of sentimental pathos, body exposure and half-digested Freudism.
The cleverest ad makers - and no one denies the cleverness of Klein - made extensive use of "subliminal advertising." Used widely today, especially by those selling cigarettes, cars, liquors and clothes, the appeal is to the subconscious. The idea is to suggest something so subtly to the "inner mind" that we don't even comprehend it in the ad itself; to manipulate our ideas and memories, making us think the unthinkable. What we really want is the intimate, the secret, the forbidden. The image flicks across our mind before we can comprehend or digest it.
A favorite device is to suggest a phallic symbol or a sexual liaison. Why? Sex sells. Klein, like many others, gets to our pocketbooks partly through our sexual cravings and fantasies. If sex sells, and the goal of capitalism is profit, how can we stop all this? Having invented the mediatmosphere, can we expect simply to turn it off or forbid it? Like the Sorcerer's's Apprentice, we know how to make the brooms carry water - but who knows how to stop them?
Surely we have a porn problem coming from many sources: television, movies, magazine ads, billboards, talk shows. And we can take certain measures to solve it, such as setting workable legal limits and exerting pressure where it counts most - the pocketbook of the producers. We don't have to buy Klein products, and magazines don't have to accept his ads or outside advertisers his billboards. While we're choosing targets, might we not single out the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel? Isn't tobacco a greater threat than Calvin Klein?
What then to do? Yes, we have many problems (such as "kiddie porn") in today's America. Subliminal advertising, cyberspace, Internet and rapidly changing high tech are changing all the ground rules and boundaries. We shall have to work through many new areas and many baffling situations.
What shall be our chief resource? The ballot box, not the Tommy gun or the bureaucrat's mandate. What we need is more, not less, democracy. We should listen to the grass-roots voice of the people, and not invoke the federal government when problems arise. Even the politicians in and around the White House admit that today's government must be curtailed and trimmed. They are coming to realize how right Jefferson was when he said that government is best which governs least: the same Jefferson who founded the Democratic Party which seems to have abandoned or forgotten him.
"Give the people light," Jefferson wrote, "and they will find their way." As recent events demonstrate, that light may not emanate from the FBI.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communications studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB