To Porn or Not to Porn?

The problems of fixed boundaries

Madanthonywayne said:

Pornography? In as much as lust is an emotion, I say it is art.
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As a general principle, I agree. But the particulars are a bit more complex, as diverse opinion on the subject suggests. The obvious example is child porn. We actually throw art out the window on that one, and I tend to agree in most circumstances.

Or, perhaps ... well ...

Content Warning

Ellis, Warren. "America Broke Sex". Sunday Hangover. November 4, 2007. SuicideGirls.com. Accessed May 5, 2009. http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/22595/​

For most people, there is a limit. And while those limits are marked all over the Universe, what would the Venn overlap look like?

Is shitting on a retarded woman (the "Hot Carl") art? I mean, I can actually conceive of circumstances where it might be, but presented for sexual gratification? How about trying to kill a woman by beating her skull in while fucking her in the ass? Does it evoke an emotional response? Sure. Is it art?

Art is dynamic. Fixing the boundaries of artistic expression has, historically, proven problematic. The outcomes are occasionally hilarious. Check out porn mangas. I mean, okay, so two pre-teen boys with enormous cocks show up at their aunt's house and gang rape her. And, of course, she decides she likes it. (Isn't that always the way with women?) And yet, despite the horrible dialogue, the cookie-cutter sex scenes, and the obsession with a childish outlook on sexuality, what the Japanese worry about is genitalia. For all these comic books offer, there is this tiny black stripe over the genitalia. Apparently, if you redact the urethral opening, you're not actually seeing the genitalia.

This is how extreme it is: You're familiar with the digital masking that hides genitalia, or people's faces, or a controversial logo on a t-shirt, right? It's not even that. Take a page out of a comic book, get a flair pen, and draw a thin black line directly over the urethral opening. Sure, you've got a couple of children with nine-inch cocks double-ending their own aunt, but you've moved beyond obscenity with that. Literally, 1/16" line over your pee-slit is all the difference in the world.

And, yes, that's a Japanese standard, but I think the underlying point is still valid: Fixed boundaries for decency and obscenity just don't work. And trying to create a fixed definition of art amounts to the same.

The problem is that anyone can assert art, and at some point we must judge the validity of that assertion if we intend to censor or otherwise prohibit it. Now, perhaps one might say that the child rape story in which the victim screams and fights until she realizes how much she likes being gang-banged by all the men in the family has artistic merit in depicting the folly of the myth that women like to be raped, but if you repeatedly fail to deliver that conclusion, people will eventually conclude the statement is bullshit.

I have a fairly broad definition of art. Did you ever see Steve Martin in L. A. Story?

Harris: (viewing a painting) I like the relationships. I mean, each character has his own story. The puppy is a bit too much, but you have to over look things like that in these kinds of paintings. The way he's holding her ... it's almost ... filthy. I mean, he's about to kiss her and she's pulling away. The way the leg's sort of smashed up against her ... Phew ... Look how he's painted the blouse sort of translucent. You can just make out her breasts underneath and it's sort of touching him about here. It's really ... pretty torrid, don't you think? Then of course you have the onlookers peeking at them from behind the doorway like they're all shocked. They wish. Yeah, I must admit, when I see a painting like this, I get emotionally... erect. ​

The painting, as I recall, was a not-quite monochromatic red square. On the one hand, Martin was making fun of the pretentious art crowd. To the other, the red square is still art.

We have somewhere in storage a painting by a guy named Reynolds. It's a picture of a bridge in some port town somewhere, dominated by strange shades of green and orange and gold. Known that painting all my life; we never took great care of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was molding in a storage unit somewhere. In my late teens, I encountered another Reynolds painting hanging in a gallery. A black canvas with bright oils spattered and smeared. I recognized the brushstrokes from afar, and when I got close enough to see the name scrawled in the corner, I grinned. And then I saw the price tag. $5,000.

I prefer the one we have. At least it has form. But holy shit, five grand? At least Wilson and Cannetti made forms out of their splatters.

But it's all still art. Might be a hard case to make, a bunch of bright, formless spatters on a dark canvas, but it's not as tough a case to make as shitting on a retarded woman, or trying to donkey punch a whore into the grave.
 
Tiassa said:
I though it worth pointing out that the Wikipedia definition you provided is political. That pornography makes no claim to artistic merit is, in the first place, bullshit and, to the other, a statement intended to characterize pornography against the Roth Standard, which is a bar for judging obscenity. One of the key elements of the Roth Standard. From Roth v. United States:

All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance -- unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion -- have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance. This rejection for that reason is mirrored in the universal judgment that obscenity should be restrained, reflected in the international agreement of over 50 nations, in the obscenity laws of all of the 48 States, and in the 20 obscenity laws enacted by the Congress from 1842 to 1956. This is the same judgment expressed by this Court in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 ....

(Brennan)​

To reiterate: But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

This is what whoever wrote that bit for Wikipedia was aiming at.

(I'm aware of a user-generated pornography website that recently claimed it was facing a lawsuit for allegedly violating some user's rights. Their explanation was brief—excuse me, concise—but never did explain the core legal issue. One thing I do recall, though, was the strange explanation that the complainant had come to the site because he thought he had a small penis and was searching pornography sites in order to confirm this and understand the notion of an average penis, or some such. But it literally had to do with a guy with a small penis claiming to be trying to view other penises, and how the site treated galleries featuring any penises. Really, it gets strange trying to figure out what the alleged tort actually was, but the point is that there are plenty who would assign some sort of redeeming social value to pornography.)
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Notes:

Brennan, J. William. "Opinion of the Court". Roth v. United States (354 U.S. 476). Supreme Court of the United States. June 24, 1957. Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. Accessed May 5, 2009. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0354_0476_ZO.html
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Perhaps something to consider is this; when the words are stripped away, all we have are actions. I think that someone untouched by the hardships of life would only want depictions of people consenting to pleasurable things. However, most people have, in fact, been touched by the hardships of life, to varying degrees. As extreme examples, you get some of the recordings that you mention in a later post.

I think the rule I mentioned earlier should apply to 'good porn': that is, if the people depicted benefit, then it's good, if not, then it's not. There is, ofcourse, also the issue of the audience. What happens between 2 people may be beneficial to them, even if it's recorded and seen by others. But is it always good for those who see it?

Ofcourse, these are what one might call 'moral niceties', when reality is as at times as you describe in the post above this one.
 
The main problem with porn is actual sex isn't photogenic. People having intense orgasms look like they are in agony and the positions which are the most stimulating in reality don't show anything to an on looker. So you get these weird goofy shots with people who are desperately faking it. Add in cookie cutter actors, poor acting, no plots and poor productions values and the only people who could possibly get excited about porn are religious prudes.
 
swarm said:
The main problem with porn is actual sex isn't photogenic. People having intense orgasms look like they are in agony and the positions which are the most stimulating in reality don't show anything to an on looker. So you get these weird goofy shots with people who are desperately faking it. Add in cookie cutter actors, poor acting, no plots and poor productions values and the only people who could possibly get excited about porn are religious prudes.
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I think you're thinking of mainstream porn, which I have generally found to be rather dull. Amateur porn, which is found much more easily online, is different. As to looking like agony, perhaps if a person has never actually had sex; however, if one has, I think that that one would know what's really going on. Note that I'm not getting into the BDSM stuff, something that I generally don't like.
 
swarm said:
You haven't seen many good orgasms, have you?
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We may differ on what good is, but remember my caveat; if you know what's going on, you don't see it in the same way then if you don't. Or are you getting into the BDSM thing?
 
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