Once again, sex is in the headlines. The news that distributors and purchasers of pornographic VCDs and DVDs can and will now be prosecuted has no doubt sent shivers down the spines of the curb-crawling denizens of Malaysia.

Those who inhabit the demimonde of the porn industry are no doubt cursing their luck, and the fact that in its effort to bolster its own religious credentials before the electorate, the government has decided to strike out against them in particular.

Perhaps the only people who are truly relieved by this move are those concerned parents who have of late been worried that their pirated copy of ' Snow White ' or ' 102 Dalmatians ' may contain more than they bargained for.

It may be trendy for those of the post-structuralist school to de-construct the persona of Snow White herself and to claim that underlying the whole story is a sublimated sub-plot which involves sexual repression and unspoken desire.

But to suddenly find Snow White undressed and in the company of several men who certainly do not look like dwarves is another thing altogether.

Then there are those who are hungry for American propaganda and who just cannot wait to get home to watch their own bootleg copy of ' Pearl Harbour ' or ' Independence Day '.

Imagine their consternation and surprise when they are instead confronted with the image of humping couples in various compromising positions five minutes into the Hollywood epic which has turned out to be more wooden than most.

As a laborious aside, one wonders why the authorities have not pulled the same trick on the punters of porn themselves. Just imagine the shock and horror of the poor chap who goes out to buy the latest ' Gang Bang 2000 ' or ' Babes in Bondage V ', only to find that five minutes into the film the screen suddenly changes and he is confronted with 'The Waltons' or 'Little House on the Prarie' instead.

But there are, as always, many other interesting developments, twists and turns to this latest moral campaign on the part of the powers-that-be.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that this latest move has just as much to do with economics as it has with morality.

Malaysia of late has been hammered by the international media and foreign multinationals for not doing enough to control the spread of illegal DVDs and VCDs in the country. This is also true for the pirated computer software which one can get easily over the counter anywhere in the country, and needless to say Malaysia's new friend Mr Bill Gates does not appreciate the Malaysian interpretation of laissez-faire economics.

Indeed, in many ways the economy in Malaysia is so free of any real regulation that one can get almost anything one wants, provided that one has the money and the street sense to know where to get it.

The economic crisis of 1997 has only broken down the established barriers even further, making it even more easy to get one's hands on any product, good or service in the country.

Those who would like to defend the porn industry by saying that it is a form of artistic expression or an aesthetics should also disabuse themselves of the fallacy. The fact is that pornography today is nothing more than an appendage of the capitalist system and that the production and sale of porn is nothing more than an industry.

Furthermore, the porn industry is not being run by painted 'madames' in their clandestine boudoirs, but by boring accountants and sales managers instead. Art went out of the window along time ago (along with eroticism and taste) and all we are left with is the MacDonalisation of the media.

Contemporary porn is just as crass, crude and unsophisticated as any of the junk that comes out of Hollywood these days, except that its production costs are much lower (and the returns much higher, relatively).

The international business community is understandably ticked off by the fact that video and VCD pirates are robbing them of the profits that they would rather keep for themselves, and that is where the pressure for regulation and control is really coming from.

But the fact that Malaysians consume porn at all is something that nobody has raised, and no attempt has been made to ask the simple question: Why?

Repression breeds desire

It may sound like a clich to state that repression breeds desire, but it also a truth nonetheless. When I was in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan recently I was amazed by the extent to which the country was literally drowning in guns, drugs and pornography.

Everyone with the sense and eyes to see it could see that porn was readily available anywhere and everywhere in the country that calls itself 'the land of the Pure'. Purity there certainly was, but only the hardcore 'XXX' version.(1)

That such things take place in such a puritan environment where women are not even allowed to show their faces in public should strike anyone with even a modicum of intelligence as commonsensical. The same I would argue is the case with us here in Malaysia.

Malaysia, as we all know is an Asian country with the purest of Asian values. Sex, of course, is something that none of us really want to bring out into the open like this because it is regarded as taboo and private.

Talk of sex and sexuality is strictly off-limits and there are quite enough moral guardians among us to remind us that it is not allowed. We balk at the thought of revealing our private lives and private fantasies, for the simple reason that these subjects have remained consigned to that private sphere and that other Malaysia that we never seem to want to acknowledge.

But as long as this complex and highly emotive subject is not brought out into the open and treated with the intelligence and respect that it deserves, should we be surprised by the developments in the country of late?

The mad rush for porn in all forms - DVDs, VCDs, video and in cyberspace - is proof that there are millions of Malaysians who think about the subject of sexuality all the time. The fact that they are not allowed to bring this out into the open only forces them to go underground and this is why so many of them have resorted to pornography in the first place.

The worse thing about this is that it merely leads to even more repression and the distortion of reality itself. Contemporary commercial porn, lest it be forgotten, is a fantasy that has nothing to do with reality.

The porn actors/actresses themselves are unreal figures made up of silicone and plastic and they bear no resemblance to the rest of us who have to live with warts, cellulite and receding hairlines.

By forcing people to turn to such unreal fantasies our own fantasies and desires become twisted by unreal and unrealisable wants and desires.