EUPHORIA SEX

Sex and Doom in a Failing Economy

Kofi Fosu Forson

History fails me as to when we as a universe were plagued by sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia or the commercialization of The Eros in antiquated art or further modernized in art by Picasso, Louise Bourgeois or surrealistically dramatized in DALI, Khalo and FINI.

This Revolution began with the birth of Rock and Roll. What was a term coined by blacks as "getting their groove on" started a new means of music hypothetically instituted by Ike Turner's Rocket 88. It was later commercialized by white radio disc jockeys as Alan Freed bringing a white audience to performances by black musicians. With television shows like Ed Sullivan many tuned in to watch The Beatles and many other rock and roll acts including American bands like The Doors. Much of this hilarity and euphoria was however censored as these flamboyant performers were told what to say and what not to say.

Movies like Black Board Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause and somehow To Sir With Love created an atmosphere for the youth to rebel. This was seemingly the first time in history when youth was commercialized with its sense of raucous behavior both sexually and violently.

In literature Norman Mailor, Henry Miller and The Beats, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac introduced a different kind of language spurned by the use of drugs and a heightened sense of sexuality. Matinee idols included ELVIS, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. They were marketed as icons and brought a charge of licentiousness not only among the young but political figures.

This decade of the 50's as an allure and set as an example in Donald Fagen's NIGHT FLY talks about the future where there'll be "more leisure for artists everywhere". This is where we are where technology has principally become our means of communicating. Social networks as Facebook have made communication much more common among those living in different countries. As is evident in the sentiment within the album there's an element of doom. In a song entitled New Frontier the main character builds a fall out shelter where he has a time of his life.

The idea of Facebook becomes our fall out shelter as we fear not so much a nuclear war but rather an impending doom fueled by circumstances as September 11 and our failing economy.

So what is euphoria sex. The relevance of politics to sex is great in how evolution and moments marked in time transformed our sexual behavior. Once again history fails me in surmising what is love and sex at a time of war, economic depression or a renaissance. But with the birth of rock and roll and its lyrics of revolt and outrageous performance acts with their front men, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, people were inspired to copulate. Rock and roll was the drug among the actual drugs people were introduced to. Woodstock culminated this behavior and unofficially started the Sexual Revolution. Much followed in the following decades as AIDS in the 80's brought our sexual conscience to an end. The aftermath was the 90's and the introduction of sadomasochism to a popular culture, heroin and sex and the Barely Legal.

Post 9/11 technology and PORN, love, death and sex plus gender politics and the establishing of the post post feminist has brought an awareness which is more or less an acceptance that love, dating and the 50's Playboy bachelor and 70's Gloria Steinem feminist had manifested into Hollywood house wives and porn stars.

The circumstances surrounding sex now is a prison sensibility where men have sex with other men what is known as "down low" originally prevalent among African American men. As actor Jamie Foxx said "Everything starts from the ghetto". Society has been permeated with a dismissal of intellectual thought. Sex is as form of dry humping. Group sex is less tantric and more hilarious, a celebration of orgiastic behavior evident in centuries past. In this case it is less 70's cocaine and sex at Studio 54. It is much closer to stupidity as internet porn features beastiality and fecal behavior.

This means of nothingness in sex is the understanding that love has left what we know as sex. That the allure of the bachelor is now an example of anal sex on the first date. There are no rules. Internet porn is evident on television especially cable television where these television programmers are forced to compete with the internet. MTV has changed its programming completely as many of its shows revolve around sexual activity.

Sex therefore has become disease. This is marked considerably in the persona of the youth as queer culture an example of sexual freedom has resulted in primal behavior. The lives of most of these young men and women revolve around meaningless sex and outright violence.

In an interview with Kyle P Silvers, an editor with a newspaper at a Wisconson College admitted that 9/11 changed forever the lives of people among his generation.

That this euphoric sex among pre teens, teenagers, twenty somethings, the fearful thirty somethings, the future 40's and those who have been there done it all is a cause of sensational fear, virtual reality, technology, our failing economy and the supposed impending doom.

Like the fantasy of the old man with a young woman he'd rather be having sex the day the button is pushed.