Soon, obscenity which offends morals became muddled with vulgarity which simply offends taste. If a book was well written, and therefore as a piece of art did not offend taste, there was no sexual scene which could not be graphically depicted. John Updike, in our own time, demonstrates this in many of his books, particularly in his Couples. Unfortunately, writer Susan Sontag's idea that pornography is the last frontier left to the adventurous has been overtaken by the candid sexual realism in movies, literature, magazines, and in our talk. When nothing is unspeakable, the adventure is gone.
Shame has many voices, some good and some bad.
Good shame is the siren of our moral nature, and good shame is what also cordons off our private life from what is public. What is intimate cannot be nourished and what is vulnerable cannot be protected outside this screen. In our therapeutic culture, all shame is taken to be an appalling affliction for which a remedy must be sought. The ultimate liberation, it is thought, is to be utterly shameless. False and bad shame are scourges but good shame is a precious gift.