from www.cityonahillpress.com – In the present-day media and political climate, there are moments when it’s hard not to feel like the entire world is in on some elaborate joke that you just don’t get. It doesn’t make sense anymore, and you’re left wondering where and when exactly everything stopped adding up.

That happened for me last week when I read People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is planning on launching a porn site. I know what images that might conjure in your mind, so I’ll clarify — the pornography will feature humans exclusively (no animals), but the site will be used as a tool to draw people in and then inform them about PETA’s message: animal rights and a vegan diet.

PETA has a history of favoring the “shock factor” technique in its advertising — the organization has equated factory farming to the Holocaust, used porn stars as spokesmodels, and is perhaps most notorious for using bloody imagery to drive home their point, that “Meat is Murder!”

There are some who might not see a problem with PETA’s newest publicity tactic. As one friend succinctly said to me when I brought up the subject, “I mean, why not do this?” After all, if people are going to look at porn anyway, why not try to educate them about animal rights in the process?

And I’ll concede that pornography is not inherently unethical — it’s just the way it’s produced by for-profit American companies, with the exception of a few groups of people specifically dedicated to reclaiming porn for all types and portraying more realistic and respectable sexual situations, is often degrading and belittling to all sorts of people. The porn stars PETA has employed in the past have been plastic, mainstream figures of the adult film industry, so with only that history to go on, it’s likely their new site won’t challenge the norm.

It’s probably crossed your mind by this point that this is the ultimate irony — compromising the integrity of human beings to prove a point about the integrity of animals. Keeping all that in mind, it’s tempting to lambast the organization for a lack of ethics or common sense.

But this publicity stunt didn’t come out of thin air. PETA’s defense of its more drastic measures has always been that it’s the only way to catch people’s attention. And that’s understandable, because nobody gets in the news for being agreeable anymore. If PETA were just launching a new, standard, informative website, then I probably wouldn’t be writing this piece right now. And what that means is PETA’s decisions don’t just reflect their own organization, but also the culture at large.

It’s true PETA is an extreme group, and its bids for attention aren’t part of the norm. But what is most unusual about PETA’s overt use of pornography for gain is just that — it’s overt. Look at any commercial or magazine cover, and the odds are good it manipulates sexual desire and some form of the “ideal” body to sell products or copies. City on a Hill Press’s own beginning-of-the-year welcome guide, Primer, featured the outline of a woman on its cover this year, and while it was not the driving motivation for the concept, the sex-appeal factor was not ignored. That’s just one closer-to-home example of the nearly ancient and universal advertising mantra: “sex sells.” Other famous examples include recent Axe body spray ads and Calvin Klein ads in the ‘90s. In some twisted sense, you have to hand it to PETA: at least they’re cutting through the bullshit and telling it like it is.

Fringe groups like PETA often are the first to pioneer an attitude or ideal that later becomes the moderate norm — this is how change happens in America. Could this mean that someday straightforward porn websites — rather than advertisements that resemble porn — could be the standard means of selling products or ideas?

It’s honestly not something that would surprise me. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of an advertising strategy that would surprise me at this point. It’s a strange time for advertising in general, as the Internet is superseding television as the dominant medium, and Internet users are masters at avoiding ads. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

But desperate and lazy aren’t the same thing, and ultimately, that’s what selling sex is: lazy. PETA porn is clever in a cringe-worthy way, but it’s also way too easy. It’s the equivalent of a sitcom with a laugh track — relying on artificial measures to trick people into thinking they’re being entertained. Ha, ha, ha. Sex sells.

And that matters to me because advertising isn’t just a reflection of or an influence on culture — it is culture. I’m as likely to bring up a commercial in conversation as I am a television show. Some people would say that’s sad, but I’m aware enough to know that there’s no escaping consumer culture, so the most we can do is demand the very best entertainment we can where we can get it, whether it’s hamsters driving cars and listening to hip hop or Envious Nomads who love Emerald Nuts.

Yes, sex is great, but capitalizing on that idea isn’t exactly creative. I’m all for advocating for animals, but it’s also important to advocate for standards.