This week’s musical mental health break goes out to a friend whose husband is addicted to porn and has been for years. She loves him. He loves her. And yet there is much to thwart that love in a world in which the objectification of women (and men to a lesser degree), the commodification of sex, and our mass consumption of these things, threaten what it means to be perfectly human. The longing to find genuine erotic connection with our neighbor can instead be subsumed in pornographic imagination\u2014whether it be air-brushed images of naked women pandering for the camera or a whole secret fantasy world untethered from reality. (And both men and women can both live in and contribute to these damaging distortions of reality.)<\/p>\n
Which is why Arcade Fire’s song “Porno” is a fitting antidote this morning as a show of support to my friend and her husband and to those who struggle with porn and\/or love and sex addictions.<\/p>\n
NOTE TO VIEWERS: the images that appear in the video are mildly sexually explicit and won’t be suitable for children under 13 or (possibly) some people struggling with sex addiction;<\/em><\/strong> I’ve decided to include this unofficial video because it helps to embody the social commentary that runs through the lyrics.<\/strong><\/em> This is really a song, I suspect, about finding true love and connection in a world where it can sometimes be hard to see in the dark and where our wounds can tell us who we are. Taking off our masks. Telling the truth about ourselves. Looking for and living in the Light. Wanting True Love to conquer all in the end. My guess is that these are the themes that run through this song.<\/p>\n But, what do you think after watching the video?<\/em><\/p>\n