Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 60

52 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