HOLLYWOOD – In the past 24 hours alone, I’ve seen come across my cable TV guide listings for multiple competitive video gaming broadcasts, a reality television show in which people try to guess which of two (or maybe more?) chefs preparing their food isn’t really a chef, approximately 700 different programs centered on pawn shops and/or storage locker auctions and the fifth installment of a low budget, made-for-TV sci-fi movie about a tornado made of sharks.
I probably could go on for days listing unlikely sounding, but real, televised entertainment options like these — and yet, for some reason, many people act as though Rule 34 applies only to porn.
In a recent article on TheNextWeb, Lynsey G examined the phenomenon of neo-Nazi porn, attempting to ferret out the why and how of its existence. She began by citing Rule 34, then dug deeper into the roots and history of Nazi imagery in erotica, noting works like Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS from the 1970s and Skin Gang from the late ’90s as evidence Nazi-related imagery in porn is nothing new.
The TNW piece is an interesting article, one certainly worthy of reading, but part of me wonders if the author overthought the question a bit, looking for reasons why such depictions and themes would exist in porn. The answer is as obvious as Rule 34, only even broader than the oft-cited, meme-friendly, internet-born axiom.
As I see it, Rule 34 — which states sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject — is applicable just about universally, not just to arts and entertainment but to life itself. In other words, if people can conceive of something, some percentage of those people will endeavor to bring that thing into existence — at which point they or someone else eventually will market the thing as a form of entertainment.
Forty years ago, my hunch is nobody thought there would come a day when we had several 24-hours-a-day TV networks dedicated to covering nothing but sports, much less that such networks eventually would dedicate hours of their programming to people playing video games, flying remote-control drones or fishing for large-mouth bass. Check your local listings, though, and I’m confident you’ll find examples of each.
Given the modern tendency to make TV shows covering virtually every occupation, I can assume only that there soon will be a reality program in which the mothers of professional videogamers vie against each other in a cooking competition, the winner of which then marries a millionaire truck driver who made his fortune selling antique 18-wheelers to mountain men and/or hip-hop moguls.
Once Who Wants to Marry a Rich Trucker Video Game Mother-Fucker has run its course, I’m sure Hollywood (or wherever it is this kind of crap is conceived these days) will uncork another show on which hairstylists and tattoo artists fight each other MMA-style, while Mark Cuban decides whether they are good enough dancers to be released naked in the Amazon, where, of course, they’ll search for buried treasure and evidence of centuries-old space aliens living among the Brazilian sloth population.
To me, it seems like American Idol and its singing-competition ilk are just about played out, at least as currently constructed and conceived. Networks urgently need something new to spice up these crooning competitions — something eye-catching, unexpected and controversial.
That’s right: It’s high time for Springtime for Hitler: Reality TV Edition. Each week, the viewing audience gets to up- and down-vote a group of would-be musical Nazis, from Chrissie, the charming, alt-right coed from Boston who has always dreamed of being a pop diva, to Bill, the ballroom-dancing skinhead from Skokie, who yearns to prance across the stage in his Doc Martens to the strains of Strauss.
Does the above sound too outrageous to be possible? I’m sure the producers of The Simpsons thought something similar about a different, seemingly implausible outcome, once upon a time.
At any rate, you get my point: Rule 34 needs a new corollary. Rule 34(a): If you can conceive of it, entertainment will be made of it, pornographic or otherwise.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask the latest winner of Who Wants to Race a Shark to the Struggling Restaurant Where Mob Wives Get Their Nails Done by the Gold Miners Who Design Duck Calls for the Kardashians?
