Hulk Hogan Sex Tape and the Complicit Voyeur

Unfortunately it's the price of celebrity: if you are famous, everyone will want to watch you fuck.

I don't have the video, but the evil people who do, Gawker, have it available HERE.  I haven't seen it.  It's apparently over thirty minutes long.  But I included the above link so that everyone may read the description of the tape.  The description is probably better than viewing the tape itself.  The author appreciates the absurdity and stark humanity of the act.  That Hulk Hogan having sex isn't simply a man having sex: he can't be divorced from his wrestling character and be simply a man getting his dick wet.  

When I heard about the tape, I went searching gleefully through Ecosia (browse with them and plant a tree!) to find it.  Lord Ristretto and myself are wrestling fans, he much more than me.  When I asked if he wanted to see it, his response was something like, "Fuck no."  I laughed and said I wanted to see it because "I like watching car wrecks."  

I can't help but feel guilty.  It is spying, an invasion of privacy, and, apparently in this case, filmed without Hogan's consent.  He isn't a sexy young superstar who had taken naked pics on her phone and then had them splashed over the internet by hackers.  Both are violations, yes, but he wasn't at all complicit in the film's creation.  This doesn't make him more of a victim than, say, Jennifer Lawrence or Kate Upton.  It makes it that much sadder.  

This is truly a car wreck, just as with Lawrence and Upton.  And we truly enjoy it.  It's not out of malice, I believe (and I want to believe).  It's because we love them.  I have no opinion about Pamela Anderson and have never had an interest in watching her leaked sex tape.  When I learned that Jennifer Lawrence's photos were leaked, I immediately searched for them while I was standing in the middle of Best Buy.  And we love Hogan.  Because he's the Hulkster, the inventor of Hulkamania, a wrestler who reveled in his absurdity and whose absurdity made him brilliant.  We can refuse to watch the video out of respect for his privacy, but we shouldn't be entirely condemned for watching it.  After all, we will always want the things we love, and as naked and raw and completely as possible.