The Academy Stripped Bare: Putting Your Ass in the Spotlight
I thought this article, about a graduate student who pays his way for his graduate degree through homosexual stripping says many things about society and colleges in particular. It shows the nature of the current generation, my generation, being post-shame and entirely focused on issues of self-identity and self-gratification. Normally, I've been conditioned to think that strippers are degraded, and that they all must be single moms trying to earn a living after being laid off at the textile factory, but that obviously isn't the case. As Craig Seymour says, "The overall context was all about me" and that was part of its appeal. This modern vice, as harmless as it may seem, is tempting in so many ways: it plays on the loneliness of those shelling out dollars, and it tempts those in spiritual and financial poverty to seek affirmation by revealing themselves in a lustful way to find carnal affirmation. A former fellow AU alum, Marty Beckerman has written a book on this issue, Tom Wolfe wrote "I am Charlotte Simmons" on the general topic (which I'm now reading) and yet, even with all of these words, the full shift here isn't being understood. The entire mindset and values of the current college generation is changing. It's not just materialism or feminism or postmodernity, it's an entirely different value system which is quite frightening. It's one thing to go to a strip club, or work at one, and still at least admit it was wrong. It's quite another for it to infect your personality to such a degree that you validate it any way you can. As evidence, I think Seymour's statement about incorporating his nighttime employment into his academic pursuits is the most telling:Seymour’s stripping had its origins, appropriately, in academic enterprise. His master’s thesis, based on participant observation and interviews but not (at that point) practice, was entitled "Desire and Dollar Bills: An Ethnography of a Gay Male Striptease Club in Washington, D.C." (He writes: "[B]y far the most controversial thing I did in the thesis – though it seemed like a good idea at the time – was to include an appendix with photocopies of pictures from gay porn magazines featuring models doing a full bent-over ass-cheek spread." The appendix complemented his argument, in which he outlined “how the anus operates as a site of desire within the context of clubs.")
He's of course lying to us and lying to himself, but it seems as though no one wants to tell the emperor that they have no clothes.
Labels: academia, culture, homosexuals, materialism, society
posted by . @ 2:08 PM
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