I’m three coffees into my morning and meditating on the dynamics of group sex as the traffic goes by in the rain. Group sex. Public Sex. These have begun to make more sense as we move into the age of shamelessness. Nowadays people do what they have to do in order to get publicity.
Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, whoever, we are nearly a decade and a half past their infamous sex tapes being leaked onto the then unready internet. The fact that we got to see them naked, being penetrated, was hardly a career killer. Many people speculated that releasing those tapes was just the kind of publicity stunt they needed.
We are in an era where many people want the light to shine on them, regardless of whether it makes them look good or awful, in the traditional sense. This moves the once shady notion of the orgy into the public consciousness in a larger way.
Think of it like this: in the old days, orgies were more like a Kubrick movie. Yes, people were going to fuck in front of other people, but it was an exclusive affair. There were secret handshakes that had to be exchanged, there were vows of silence that had to be proffered, the witnesses had to stand silent around the act (performed on an elegant black leather chez lounge) in a large circle covered in floor length capes and protected by face masks.
That seminal film Behind the Green Door made in 1972, starred Marilyn Chambers as a young woman who becomes a public figure of lust through her initiation onto a clandestine society. Only when trusted to complicity is she allowed to become the centerpiece of the Romanesque orgy within the club.
How quaint it all seems now, that as much of a freak as a person might have been back in those days, there was always a notion of the public and the private, and that the face we showed to the world might betray nothing of the proclivities we had in private towards being made a sexual spectacle. Now, many people just don’t give a fuck. The point being that the revelation of one’s private life could damage one’s public life.
Does that really happen now? We get to see people naked all the time, whenever there is some “leak” of their nude photos, their sex tapes, whatever. If anything, these revelations tend to intensify interest in their doings, rather than push people away. Revelations about people’s sexuality simply don’t hit as hard as they used to.
That said, a lot of men are falling (quite rightly) because of the #MeToo movement. However, it seems like many others, after an initial allegation and inquiry, recover with their careers intact and maybe even more bulletproof than before. We really do live in an age of shamelessness.
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