The New Porn

Please forgive my recent absence; I've been feeling a bit under the weather. As such, I've been watching rather more varied TV than usual, and have been struck by what appears to be a burgeoning new television genre: I call it "Job Porn."

Several years ago, Job Porn emerged in the form of auto-related programming, with fare such as "Monster Garage." Basically, this was a show which enthralled men and puzzled women; a bunch of guys take a scrapyard reject and turn it into...a different car that does stuff. There was a great deal of men yelling whilst dangerously close to terrifying shop tools, and a happy closing scene in which the happy owner of the old-new car appears sufficiently overjoyed and impressed.

Fast forward to the present, and Job Porn has become a pan-network phenomena. Each weeknight, ratings seem to indicate that red-blooded American males cluster pantingly around their tellies to watch...fellow red-blooded American males do their jobs. Fishing and crabbing shows seem to be perennially popular, as do shows about just how crappy and dangerous jobs can be. What is it about watching freezing, miserable guys lose fingers and Frenchmen who rake centuries-old sewers that fires the imaginations of America's white collar hordes? I have my own ideas.

Porn is now the Old Porn. Any cable subscriber is now privy to essentially endless reams of substandard cable soft-porn. Access to birth control and post-feminist thinking means that a new generation of Western women are more ready than ever before to explore- and enjoy- the carnal pleasures of life, often after only a few dates. I want to make it clear that I'm not judging women (or men) in my previous statement; I'm only stating the facts of mainstream, modern life. The mystique of "does she or doesn't she" is no longer central to womens' desirability...because she most likely does. In fact, as statistics have borne out in the past 10-15 years, the girls who protest most loudly that they "don't" are the likeliest to "do." Just, you know, without using condoms. So what's a guy to do?

Enter Job Porn. Nobody sane and/or credible is going to deny that the post-9/11 world and current economic meltdown aren't on everyone's mind and lips. As was the norm during this country's Depression-era, most men that still have jobs these days count themselves lucky, and most entrepreneurial dreams are on hold, if not utterly cast by the wayside. And the fantasies laid out, so to speak, in common porn media are nowhere near as fantastical as they once were...more like the stuff of inter-office IM traffic. So where do daydreams trend? Job Porn.

Whether it's watching stoic men's men fell trees, wrassle flounder or stalk the posh, snappy suites of early 1960's Madison Ave., American guys have fallen head over heels for Job Porn. Millions of men pine away, in cubicles across the nation, for a job that offers something more than the next month's rent and decent health insurance. Any guy can go home to "HOTT RUSSIAN MODELS 4 U," but can they wake up filled with the moxy that it takes to make it on a snow crab trawler? A safe, biweekly payday can't kill the secret yearning to spend five days a week knocking back old-fashioneds, smoking Luckys and castrating business rivals by the bushel.

And why should it?

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlxi6Ec92kw