Sadly, some of Huxley’s apprehensions regarding technocratic society have already become true. There is a well recognized correlation between political oppression and sexual escapism. The ever growing pornographic industry of recent decades hints at the decline in political freedoms across societies. Pornography is a social revolution of sorts and it has grown to a $10 billion industry of late. Receipts from pornographic video rentals offer a sobering illustration of this: “In 1985, rental of hardcore smut videos generated an estimated $79 million; by 2001, that figure had increased nearly tenfold, to $759 million…approximately 25,000 video stores in the United States now rent and sell hard-core films.” (Grigg, 2003)
The explosion in pornography is eerily reminiscent of the sexual promiscuity prevalent in Brave New World. Just as “everyone belongs to everyone else” in the novel, porn is an egalitarian enterprise at one level. One could celebrate the liberty, fraternity and equality witnessed in porn if only one could momentarily forget the commercialization and gender oppression that is intrinsic to it. In the novel, promiscuous sex, intoxicating drink ‘soma’, and mock religious orgies were devised to adapt the population to accept the social order they’ve inherited. The masterminds of society, the technocrats, who are mostly from the highest caste, do not want the population to engage in critical thinking or independent action – “When the individual feels, the community reels” (Chapter 6, p.78) These offerings of hedonism are an easy substitute to confronting real issues, be they political, cultural or interpersonal. But access to unlimited pleasure of this form is actually a mechanism through which the population is controlled and made to serve the established order. In this respect, one could see why porn, despite its appeal to an individual’s sense of liberty, choice and equality is actually a force mitigating these values. As World Controller of Western Europe, Mustapha Mond, chillingly observes
“The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children…they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma.” (Chapter 16, p.220)
By allowing a citizen to realize his fantasies in the pornographic world, he/she is distracted from attempting meaningful changes in the real life. Hence conflict and control is at the core of the rampant hedonism of Brave New World and the porn culture of real contemporary world. The lines of conflict are drawn between the individual and the ruling elite in both cases. Superficial pleasure is offered as a bait to keep the individual’s attention away from the reality of his/her own existence. Huxley endorsed this role of sex in his preface to the 1948 edition of the novel. He wrote,