Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 60
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Popular Culture Review
culpability by describing the factors that led them to justify their actions at the
time. Their approach is decidedly based on the following premise: “Don’t judge
me until you’ve had a chance to walk through the mine fields of life in my shoes.”
This theoretical framework is informed by Sissela Bok’s three levels of ethical
justification. Bok’s first level of ethical justification is the appeal to one’s conscience
for guidance as whether to lie or engage in some form of unethical behavior. For
one thing, Bok says, a vested interest in certain outcomes and an unnoticed bias
can impede the rational vision required by ethical justification. In other words,
Bok believes that an appeal to conscience may be too permissive if it still justifies
an unethical action (1978, 99-101).
Bok’s second level of justification involves consulting with peers before
engaging in unethical behavior, or at minimum trying to imagine what one’s peers
might think. However, Bok warns that this consultation might not be sufficient,
especially if it involves a like-minded group with limited understanding and a
biased outlook (pp. 101-103). The third level of ethical justification, Bok observes,
involves widening the representative sampling of possibly divergent points of view.
Here, one must try to convince an audience of representative, reasonable people
that one is justified in engaging in an unethical action. Bok maintains that such
action should not be taken without first subjecting it to this “test of publicity.” This
test is aimed at achieving a measure of impartiality in moral reasoning (1978, pp.
103-108).
Additionally, the theoretical framework for this article is guided by Bok’s
examination of self-deception and self-imposed ignorance. In the former, Bok states
that if a false belief about oneself is judged harmless, “as may be the case with the
benevolent light in which most of us see our minor foibles,” little problem exists.
But she notes that there are times when people are “dangerously wrong about
themselves,” such as the alcoholic who denies having a drinking problem or the
anorexic close to starving to death who thinks she looks fat in the mirror (1983, pp.
64-66). Concerning self-imposed ignorance, Bok states that the capacity to act and
knowledge that acting is required must be present for there to be a moral obligation,
and responsibility for its breach. And she acknowledges that there are times when
pleas of ignorance are insufficient in acquitting one of responsibility, particularly
when one has failed to remain alert to the signs of danger (p. 66).
Thus, by applying the theories of ethical justification, self-deception, and selfimposed ignorance to the autobiographies of expiation being examined in this article,
the intention is to illuminate the ways in which wounded public personas are
attempting to be rehabilitated or reinvented in narrative form.
Participation in Pornography and Gambling
In Linda Lovelace’s 1980 autobiography Ordeal, she recounts her journey