The Love Guru and the Pornstar culture

The other day I went to see Mike Myer's film "The Love Guru". First of all let me say that it contains some favorable (to devotional service) elements that have stuck in my mind - like the name of the village his character grew up in: "Haremakeester", and his greeting: "Mariska Hargitay" (a pig latin-inspired "Hare Krishna").

I think a lot of the humor is very childish. It's crude and relies more on being silly than on being clever, which is the kind of humor that I appreciate more, and that Mike Myers is capable of delivering.

The moral tale that Myers tells in "The Love Guru" is good. It's a tale of accepting and loving yourself for who you are, rather than what you can achieve. Both the guru and his student learn the lesson in parallel.

Myers presents Hinduism from within his own cultural context, and speaks to the experience of his North American audience. As such he lampoons the foibles of such familiar and visible personalities as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Satya Sai Baba, Rajneesh, and other super star gurus who have come to the West.

His gurus have questionable sexual morals and behaviour and are motivated by personal ambition as much as anything else.

Myers is making a comedy, a genre which exploits preconceptions and stereotypes for a laugh. He's not trying to educate his audience about religious and cultural traditions. However, his film does run the risk of reinforcing and perpetuating misunderstandings. The fact is that the majority of people gain their picture of reality from popular culture, not academic education.

He neglects the fact that Guru has become a respected position of authority for a reason. The Hindu tradition has evolved in that way because there really are people worthy of respect. While there are charlatans, the reason that the unscrupulous have an opportunity to trick people is because the real thing exists. Westerners, lacking the cultural experience and context to discriminate, have been repeatedly fooled by imposter gurus, and Myers film takes this dynamic and turns it into the normative experience, painting the entire tradition of guru as one of charlatanry and sexual deviance.

But what really makes it offensive to me is nothing specific to Hinduism or really Myers himself. It's the growing "Pornstar" popular culture in the West that this movie reflects and reinforces.

The Internet has taken pornography from being a marginal aspect of culture and turned it into a central pillar.

I get emails in my inbox every day telling me how I can "act like a Pornstar". Celebrities are busy making (and making profit from) sex tapes. There is a YouTube style website where anyone can upload and share their own amateur pornstar creations. The questions fielded by Aunt Bossy, an agony aunt on news.com.au, reveal that people are increasingly feeling like they are in a porn movie when they get it on with someone.

One popular internet website portrays a couple of men driving around and picking up women and having sex with them in a van. It's been revealed that the women are all
actresses paid for their participation, however the story relies on and reinforces the stereotype that women should make themselves freely available for sex, and that they should "do it like pornstars".

Porn portrays sex without commitment, without consequences. It divorces the emotional aspects and removes relationship from the picture. It dehumanises the participants, presenting a one-dimensional view of them.

Porn puts performance in the center, turning sexuality into a freak sideshow, sometimes literally.

Porn destroys intimacy and breeds insatiability.

Myers tells a tale of loving yourself for who you are and not for your achievements, but porn is all about achievement, with no room for love. The mainstreaming of porn encourages men and women to perform, and increases their anxiety about their performance.

Mike Myer's movie is so full of the mainstreaming of pornography as the new sexual norm that it's not funny.

This movie has an M rating in Australia, which means that anyone can go and see it, although it is recommended for 15+.

I would not want any young girl or boy to see this and accept the cultural norms that undergird it. In order to experience the movie you have to accept underlying assumptions that involve the mainstreaming of pornography.

Maybe that *is* becoming mainstream for a lot of the population, but I do not think that this will lead to a happy place. Am I just bemoaning the inevitable? Am I struggling with out moded Victorian morals and pushing back against the tide of history and progress? I don't think so. Porn will always have its place, just like prostitution, but it shouldn't be in the mainstream.

The strength of any society is derived from the strength of the family unit, and mainstreaming pornography leads to the weakening of the bonds that hold the family together. Ultimately this will lead to the destruction of the society.

Myers is not only playing to the cultural context of his audience, he's also creating it at the same time. He's not just an observer, he is a contributor to culture. The word Guru means "heavy", and whether he recognises it or not, Myers carries the heavy responsibility for giving leadership and guidance to popular culture. His moral tale is good, but it is mixed with something that I personally find offensive.