RESEARCH SUMMARY
“Society of spectacle” refers to a postmodern reality that fetishism of images is being celebrated, a state of “concrete abstraction” is observed in which complexity in reality in which complexive social relations and affections are being simplified and substituted into images. Image has become depthless and only the appearance of images can be consumed. In the status quo, how the new generations deal with the topic of “sex” which is a core question in their life that answers how a being is born to life under the state of postmodernity. Nevertheless, sex is more than biological and reproductional needs, but it is also culturally, associated with social practices and moral codes as well as taboos. It is therefore essential to discuss how the postmodernist consumption of pornography has influenced the perception on sex and the sex culture by the new generations.
The first reason that contributes to the phenomenon of of spectacle could well be the lack of sex education in Hong Kong. Based on the student’s survey we found in one of our groupmates’ final year project, majority of respondents think that students in Hong Kong have not received adequate sex education. It may refer to the fact that the guidelines on Sex Education in Schools compiled by the former Education Department in 1997 which have not be revised for 20 years.society
Moreover, the sex education provided are rather preserved and obscure. According to the news from oriental daily and HK01, they emphasized that no concepts and theories are deepen elaborated, the evaluations and reviews between government and schools in HK are also not centralized. As a result, students would be confused by the concept of sex in their daily life easily.
Base on the lack of element and concentration on sex education, most of the students would try to acquire sex knowledge and content from the internet as the primary source and they would also treat pornographic movies as their main text to consume.
On the other hand, the advance of internet and globalization is also one of the reasons leading to the society of , because the proliferation of images and the high malleability of digital media has increased the passivity of the spectator. It may also draw a question that, will the influence of the online culture also reinforce the phenomenon of society of spectacle?
