On the one hand, the Beast has been let out of its cage.

Miley Cyrus being attractive.
On the other, the Banker is holding the chain.
***

I have taken to viewing the “Disney sweetheart” phenomenon as a trap: a role-model time bomb, set on purpose to go off for maximum impact, maximum headlines, and to sell maximum copies of the first semi-nude photo shoot. In this model, the sweet-innocent-girl-next-door is an image carefully crafted and curated to ensnare as many hits as possible. The sweeter and more innocent the better, because then the more sensational the headline when she Goes Wild.

There is, as you know, a thriving and only partly underground market in the images of young women who appear to be anywhere from twenty-one down to about sixteen. When a young woman who was recently well-known as an underage star comes of age and hits the centerfolds, there is a valuable association — “Is she even old enough for that?!” — that her handlers must rush to exploit before it expires.

In other words: The Disney-Channel sweet and childlike girl next door is merely Phase I of “Hot, Wild, and Barely Legal.” These girls are not going off the deep end on their own. They are being groomed to go off the deep end, because a lot of people stand to make money when they “discover” the next Britney, the next Lindsay, the next Miley.

***

Those of us who are still in the mainstream and who (by the grace of God) stay away from porn have no idea how pornographic our culture has become.  Rod Dreher links to a very disturbing piece by a journalist who attended a porn shoot in San Francisco, to which the general public was invited; invited to watch and to participate as a willing young blonde was bound and beaten and sexually molested in a variety of brutal ways.  The journalist, a promiscuous but rather bored young intellectual, unmarried and mildly unhappy, ultimately sees nothing wrong with this and finds it all a new way of exploring our humanity.  But, for some reason, she turns her head away from the internet video clip of the degradation she witnessed in public.

My 15-year-old tutoring student brags about Gifyo, an internet site for teens to post short “gifs” or mini-movies on, each about four seconds in length.  At least one in ten of these “gifs” appear to be pornographic, and the other nine disturbingly inappropriate.

And keep in mind that probably 98% of the cute and silly teen girls at my daughter’s all-girls Catholic high school adamantly support “gay marriage” – which is nothing but forcing everyone to approve of and to celebrate acts of such depravity that civilized people wouldn’t even mention them in public thirty years ago.

And when I post this on Facebook yesterday …

Are we really so foolish these days to think that we can unharness such a beast as sexual desire and not have it wreak havoc in society? To take the marital act, which is an expression of intimacy open to the possibility of procreation between a husband and a wife, and to make it just copulation or sodomy or mutual masturbation or what have you between whomever or whatever or where ever … this will lead to untold human misery. Can’t we see that?

… I get dozens of comments, many of which are disagreeing with me, and one of which is a Christian friend who boldly and indignantly announces she’s “de-friending” me over this.

And my Facebook friends are mostly conservative Catholics!

***

But the great irony of it is that while there’s more and more sex, things are less and less sexy.

Miley Cyrus’ performance at the Video Music Awards was simply repulsive.  There was nothing at all provocative about it, but it was “provocative” from start to finish.  It was vulgar and offensive, but here’s a girl with plenty of charm who is usually fun to look at – but not in that performance.

And so we have a great explosion of pornography and near-pornography in our culture, and yet who benefits?

The “porn industry”.  And Disney Corporation.

And girls in college are pressured into Lesbianism and “polyamory” and anal sex as a kind of rite of passage, thinking they’re being rebellious and counter-cultural, when it’s all a lie that’s lining someone’s pockets.

The beast is out of the cage, but the banker is holding the chain.

***

And why oh why oh why is it impossible to point this out?  Why is participating in the public bondage and abuse of a willing victim “exploring our humanity”?  Why are teen girls cheering on the Forced Institutionalized Celebration of sodomy?

And why is sex suddenly brutal, suddenly devoid of all charm and appeal?

Chesterton answered this question long ago …

There are two human relations which modern rulers are everywhere disposed to resolve. And they are the only two relations which ordinary people are so naturally constituted as to desire. A man can desire woman as a thing of beauty or woman can desire a baby as a thing of beauty. These two relations, that of a man and wife and that of a mother and child, are the only two recognized combinations founded on this natural satisfaction of a thing in itself – these are also the only two recognized combinations in a capitalist civilization which that system has set out to destroy. It is essential to note that no other relation is really being attacked.

The devil hates the family, hates love-making and babies, loves pornography and the abuse of women, is ecstatic over the loss of a child’s innocence.

And the capitalist is making money off it all.