The front page of one leading Sunday newspaper on 15 January was remarkable for featuring a photograph of a lynx-faced naked model wearing, in the words accompanying the photograph, ‘Nothing but Newbridge’ – a reference to the silverware bracelet on her wrist. The model’s expression as she looks directly into the camera is distinctly feral.
Curiously, in the same newspaper and on the same day, Eilis O’Hanlon reflects on how women’s bodies “might become commodities in an increasingly pornographic society”.
The delusion here, considering the remorseless projection of nudity and overt sexuality in newspapers and magazines, and in TV and movie screens, is that this is representational of how women are granted by democracy a degree of freedom which is clearly unattainable in countries defined (principally by the west) as lacking in such freedom.
To equate naked women as representative of freedom – when men and women are experiencing despair as a result of diminished work opportunities and economic hardship and a deepening sense of powerlessness in their daily lives – is clearly a misrepresentation of facts, and as such should be recognised as a cynical attempt to foster an illusion in the minds of the public in countries alleged to be democracies.
Overt sexual imagery of this kind is not a real representation of freedom, and does not lead to the welfare of society as a whole. Neither does it open perspectives on the social emancipation of sexuality.
Even worse is the increasing spread of sadistic pornography. The representation of violence and sadism as essential components of sexual liberation effectually destroys expressions of affection and concern within relationships. Moreover, it surely has a nullifying effect on people’s ability to be moved by news of crimes of a violent and sadistic kind around the world today.
There is an aimlessness in the consciousness of people in the democratic public sphere, and this aimlessness is preyed upon – and very successfully so – by those legions employed in the sphere of shaping public opinion, initiating trends and controlling minds.
What better way of deflecting people away from working towards the common good than to dupe them into the ludicrous concept that if they tattoo themselves or wear nose rings or try to (as one lifestyle magazine put it) “look gorgeous naked” that they will be recognised for going against the herd. It’s mere egoism, hedonism, solipsism, narcissism.
In my view, Sinead O’Connor is the personification of obsession with the self, shaven-headed and tattooed like a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp – and this reference is not made lightly, but as a reflection on the gross insensitivity of such self display given the appalling suffering of Holocaust victims.
Sinead O’Connor may be under the impression that she is representative of the non-conformist in society but in fact, in a convoluted way, she is the very epitome of conformity. This obsession with the self is itself the ideal obsession from the viewpoint of those described by John Pilger as the “secret rulers of the New World Order” – the bondholders.
John Kelly is a Metro Éireann reader from Mullingar, Co Westmeath
