The Blowfish Blog

OTAKU MAnKO: Dammit, Let’s Have Sex —Labor, Politics, Television and Copious Boinking

While I stand in solidarity with my fellow writers even when they suckerpunch me with quality programming like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Season 3 of LOST, my decision to stop watching TV in response to the Writers Guild of America Strike actually owes more to my living (and sleeping) with a strongly pro-labor chick who’s decreed that the picket line starts at the remote control.

This follows a decision by her and me a few months ago, the morning after the disappointing finale of The Sopranos, to call local cable provider Comcast and tell them to shove Tony up their ass (in somewhat less colorful language).

Since that happy day when we turned off the cable box, my partner and I have discovered the delights of broadcast television, sometimes referred to, with a charming naivete, as “free” TV, enjoying such weekly entertainments as “The Office,” “30Rock,” and “Heroes.” That means that that the padlocking of our television has left a big open space in our evenings which has led, naturally, to more sex.

It’s a widely held belief that the Great Blackout of 1977 led to an upsurge in births nine months later, as did the blackouts of 1965 and 2003. The idea, of course, is that with the lights turned out and the television off, humans naturally revert to the most animal methods with which to entertain themselves. Demographic statistician J. Richard Udry observed dipolomatically in his article on the ‘65 blackout that it “is evidently pleasing to many people to fantasize that when people are trapped by some immobilizing event which deprives them of their usual activities, most will turn to copulation.”

That makes me wonder if nine months from now (and for maybe 22 months thereafter, more or less, we’ll see a sharp rise in births to far-left labor activist children. Sadly, that’s all we’d get, because the WGA has done a crappy job of making suggestions for how regular Joes and Janes can add pressure on corporate forces to end the strike. Nowhere that I can find have they suggested that people stop watching television; rather, they’ve just had their members stop writing, which is supposed to create a void of quality programming that’ll drive viewers away.

The WGA’s reliance on the excellence of their members’ writing and the taste of the viewers reminds me of H.L. Mencken’s famous (and possibly apocryphal) quote about how nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. It also reminds me that most of the US thinks of Hollywood writers as elitist and impossibly distant from the American mainstream, a view probably reinforced by the fact that WGA couldn’t be bothered to ask the public to honor their picket line. A recent Entertainment Weekly poll, however, did find that the vast majority of Americans support the WGA strikers while only a tiny percentage support the corporate execs — and hey, nobody likes reruns. So maybe as the shows in the can quickly run out week by week, the average American will head from the living room into the bedroom (or better yet, just stay in the living room, why do you think God invented couches?) to make some more babies, or at least a little big whoop.

But as a recent study by advertising giant J. Walter Thompson found, Americans are already relinquishing activities like face-to-face socializing, watching TV and having sex for the Internet (that sound you hear is me snickering). Perhaps more directly to the point, SF Chronicle sex columnist Violet Blue recently observed with glee that the writers’ strike may drive consumers away from mainstream media and into the arms of interactive and other new media activities, including blogging, online video games, and presumably sexually explicit online chats, not to mention stalking their ex-lovers on MySpace and ordering crap they don’t need from Overstock.com.

Even though new media revenue is an important part of what the WGA is striking over, is it possible that Hollywood’s labor troubles will actually make things tougher for the world of corporate entertainment, forcing mainstream media online to compete, 22 months on (or whenever) with a well-trained street army of adorable kittens and beauty pageant contestants performing Star Wars on the trumpet? If that’s the case, then also on the front lines will assuredly be online porn, which I remain convinced is the frontal lobe of that Gremlin of the Internets JWT is so worried about. Then again, a more recent Entertainment Weekly poll indciated that 31% of respondents would rent more DVDs if the strike drags on, while 39% will investigate “these things called ‘books,’” so maybe after the strike the Hollywood execs will have to take out a hit on Sandra Brown and Stephen King to regain their market share.

I can’t help but wonder if, separate from the labor politics of the average American, ongoing reruns will lead to a larger percentage of those DVDs watched being porn — which has always had a steady foothold in that market. That might naturally lead to a more active sex life, both in and out of couplehood, for lots of people who previously vegged out to the tube.

Since Urban legend site Snopes debunked the 1965 upsurge in births, as well as the related urban legend about 9/11, and J. Richard Udry pretty much put the kibbosh on horny reveries about other people fucking during blackouts in his article on the subject (”The Effect of the Great Blackout of 1965 on Births in New York City,” J. Richard Udry. Demography, Vol. 7, No. 3, 325-327. Aug., 1970), perhaps porn will be be the standard-bearer that makes the WGA strike lead to better, or at least more copious, boinking.

In the meantime, I encourage you to earn some pro-labor street cred: turn off the television, turn to your partner — or, better yet, to the mirror — and say “Dammit, let’s have sex.”

Thomas Roche is the managing editor of Eros Zine, teaches at San Francisco Sex Information, and also blogs on sex, drugs and cryptozoology at thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.