I fly a lot and commute on the subway to work; I check out the books people are reading. In the past few years, the series by Stieg Larsson, starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, has shown up in the hands of my seatmates. I like mysteries and gritty police procedurals, so I settled down with Netflix and the Swedish film version to check out the buzz.
What I saw—and what I have since found out about the books—was a stew of sadomasochistic violence, most of it involving objectification of women in degrading ways. The book plots revolve around rape, sexual abuse, torture, and cruel murder. The back story of virtually every character seems to include abuse.
Note to readers: Slaughtering women is not a particularly creative or new plot device.
Why do I care if people are reading this stuff? As an economist, I’m used to the idea that people have different and non-comparable preferences. “De gustibus non disputandum est” is important in basic microeconomic theory. And I’m liberal. I hold fast to the value the state should not censor what adults can read or say. (Yes, yes, the state should not allow you to yell “fire” in a safe theater.)
Media experts and cultural historians identify the crucial role pornography has played in spurring technological advances.
But the intensity and level of the violence and degradation of women (and, therefore, men) in this movie (and presumably the books) repulsed me. So, I turned off the movie; I won’t read the books . I’m doing what the free speech defenders advise. But I am stunned.
How does this level of sadomasochistic violence become the legitimate reading of the upper-middle-class readers in business class?
Daniel Patrick Monyihan’s essay, which coined the phrase “defining deviance down,” was an attack on liberal acceptance of crime: He predicted liberal attitudes would create a cascading acceptance of deviance. He identified a phenomenon—boundaries keep on getting crossed—but not the cause (liberal thinking).
Unlike street crime, pornography is profitable. Jackson Katz of the Huffington Post interviews Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Dines implicates the market for the “spread” of porn.
Economists note that the cultural response, labels on video games, movies, and age limitations on purchasing adult products, restricts access and lowers profitability and thus production. That is one response to the logical consequence that markets spread deviance.
But now I realize, people sitting and standing close to me on public transit with Stieg Larsson’s books are lapping up sadomasochism.
That’s creepy.
Putting labels on books is creepier.
My only alternative is to call this stuff out, the subject of these books and content of the movie was violent , unwatchable sadomasochism. Mean and not in a good way.
