Gilligan's Island: Then and Now

For anyone who denies that America is racing toward sexual anarchy, The Real Gilligan's Island, which appears on TBS, offers irrefutable evidence that we are in a rapid state of moral descent. Not only is this program sex-obsessed it is frankly devoid of any real creativity.

As with every prior civilization that travels from absolute monogamy to libertine sexual ethics the process is usually first made manifest in its creative arts and entertainment. One only has to watch the commercials for this program (as well as many others) to understand that this is precisely and almost exclusively the emphasis in most of today's arts and entertainment. Even the tagline for the Real Gilligan's Island, "hold on to your coconuts" accompanied by a close-up of Mary Ann and Ginger's breasts emphasizes the sexualized theme.

I am not simply appealing to some puritanical view of sexuality rather I am pointing out the parallel to every prior culture that has followed the road to sexual anarchy and its ultimate demise. This is both a moral and sociological fact.

The noted British anthropologist, J.D. Unwin observed in his famous 1934 study, Sex and Culture that "the cultural condition of any society depends upon its social and mental energy, or creative energy." Furthermore he observed that, "those cultures which allowed sexual freedom do not display a high level of social energy - their energy is consumed with meeting their physical appetites - they do not think large thoughts about the physical world - they are not interested in metaphysical questions regarding life and its meaning. In these cultures, life is for now."

Pitirim Sorokin, founder of Harvard's Department of Sociological Studies, wrote in 1956 regarding historical societies that experienced decline, "their periods of social and creative growth have been almost uniformly marked by a very tempered sexual regime, while the periods of their decline have been stamped by sexual anarchy."

In every instance, those cultures that embraced a liberal sexual ethic, as we have now done, expressed this libertine ethic most clearly in its creative arts. This in turn worked to advance this liberal view throughout the society to the point that unless there rose a counterrevolution; these societies all lost their former glory or collapsed altogether. I would argue that with the modern mediums of television and cinema, which serve to disseminate these ideas more broadly and more quickly that the process of demise is only hastened.