Monday, January 21, 2008

Stealing Your Soul


The belief that a photograph can steal your soul is still held by many cultures, from Native Americans to Australian Aborigines. It is a religious superstition which evolved from the mirror, which was seen as having the power to steal souls, and that breaking mirrors was bad luck. One would think that progressive civilizations would have set aside such foolish beliefs, but fear of images is very much alive today.

Photographs of some Orange County high school water polo athletes have turned up on gay porn web sites, right alongside graphic nude photos of young men engaging in sex acts.
The presence of the photos on these Web sites has alarmed local parents, coaches and school officials and traumatized high school athletes who were unaware they were being photographed. In some cases, boys have sought counseling after learning their photos were on the Web sites, parents said.
It's just as if their souls had been stolen.

Some of the comments from students and parents are as follows: "It made me sick to my stomach"; "I feel my life wasn't respected as it should"; "It's disgusting"; "This is why we have to enact some stricter laws to protect our kids."

Chances are the taking and posting of the photographs was legal according to the First Amendment. Was it a lousy and even creepy thing to do? Of course, but the overreaction of people in this case is alarming. These are, after all, merely images. Had they been published in Sports Illustrated along with the bikini models, there would have been no outcry, but the association of the students with gay porn has set people off like an atomic bomb.

I have news for you. Every single Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue has served as masturbatory material for millions of young males all around the world, so we had better start banning all images of high school students from that magazine, too.

People had better get used to the fact that there is no longer any reasonable expectation of privacy in this world. From digital cameras, camera phones, video cameras, surveillance cameras, etc., everyone who is out in public is likely having his or her "soul stolen" by someone somewhere. In London, it is estimated that a person is caught on camera 300 times in an average day. It's very difficult to argue that the taking of photographs at public events should be illegal when the government is putting cameras everywhere.

The metaphorical toothpaste is out of the tube. The lesson learned from Prohibition was that the banning of alcoholic beverages was an unenforceable law. It is likely that the control of digital content will also be unenforceable. We simply have to get used to the fact that if we take one step outside our homes, our image is in the public domain, but our souls still remain our own.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments: