The animal rights group PETA has always walked a fine - and, some would say, wavering - line between earnest activism and shock value. First, it was holocaust imagery. Then, a proliferation of naked celebrities (some, like Pamela Anderson, took the “All Animals Have the Same Parts” ad concept a bit more literally than others). And now, in a bizarre but not completely illogical move, PETA has decided to take its vulgar ad campaign to the extreme, by launching a porn site.
So PETA is launching their own porn site. Given their previous over-the-top efforts to draw attention to their cause, doesn’t this seem like the next logical step? It would be easy to dismiss this as vulgar, but in a world overwhelmingly populated by meat-eaters, it kind of makes sense that in order to attract media attention, and by extension, the attention of the public, PETA would have to be increasingly and ever more outrageous. I admire PETA’s passion and commitment, if not always their methods, but even I have to admit that they excel at drawing attention to the cause of preventing animal cruelty. The question I have is how long will it be before PETA simply can’t sustain the side show?
The problem with being outrageous is that over time it requires more effort to achieve the same result. Naked celebrities? Yeah, who gets excited about that anymore? Strip tease faux stump speeches? Yawn. No, in order to achieve the same impact, PETA is having to face the reality of their method: when outrageous becomes the norm, eventually people become inured to the norm, and so you have to ratchet up the crazy in order to get anyone to pay attention. A porn site might just be the next logical step in trying to attract attention, but I can’t help but wonder how many people, especially guys, are going to have any real interest in a porn site with a message. Sex and politics, which occasionally similar (both involve screwing), aren’t things that would seem to be conducive to raising awareness about cruelty to animals. Guys who like porn usually aren’t looking for education on an issue…and if they’re looking for education on an issue, they’re probably not looking at porn. Of course, I have no idea how PETA plans to tie all of this together, and who know? Perhaps they’ll figure out a way to do it that actually works. I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around how one might combine graphic sex and nudity with animal cruelty.
If nothing else, PETA has already achieved a measure of success, in that people are talking and writing about it. When you traffic in the outrageous, ANY publicity is good publicity, no?
