On March 8 (International Women’s Day) I started a GD thread concerning porn and feminism, inspired by Iranian and Egyptian women who are using nudity and a nude calendar to strike back at partriarchal repression in their countries.
But a side-issue has arisen that is sufficiently different and wide-ranging to merit its own thread.
At least one reader of my posts noticed that I use “naked/nude”, “porn” and “erotica” almost interchangeably. I admit that I do, and that is because I see no practical distinction between the three. Or, to put it another way, I think any line in the sand you care to draw can be virtually wiped out by all the exceptions that arise and by all the grey zones that quickly reduce any “firm” distinction to absurdity.
I think “pictorial nudity” is self-explanatory (I include films and still pictures), but allow me to deal with the other two expressions.
1) Pornography
“Pornography” is a much misunderstood word, especially among anglophones. For our purposes, I propse the Wikipedia definition: “Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.”
You will note that there is no implied judgement or condemnation here. Yet, I have often heard anglophones vigourously deny that a product is “pornographic”, as if the word naturally implied: illegal, unpublishable, unacceptable.
In fact, the word comes from two Greek words: πόρνη: meaning prostitute and γράφειν: meaning to write.
In French-speaking countries, the word is used in its neutral sense. A nightclub that offers erotic films will refer to them as “pornographique” without a hint of shame.
In English-speaking countries, these would almost certainly be advertised as “adult” or erotic.
2) Erotica
Again, the Wikipedia definition seems usable: “Erotica (from the Greek ἔρως, eros “desire”) are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions.”
The first thing we note is that both definitions are strangely similar. They essentially use different words to say much the same thing.
But the usefulness of both of these definitions can be challenged by a single example.
a) During the up-tight fifties, one of the most popular and profitable programs on our black-and-white screens was called “Cheyene” and starred a huge, muscular, hairy-chested he-man with a sexy voice by the name of Clint Walker. This program was officially a western, and westerns do not normally offer a lot of skin. But in “Cheyene” it would seem that there was always a reason for Clint to take his shirt off. Sometimes the pretext was slightly believable (when he suddenly became a blacksmith minus the apron that would have covered his chest) herehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p3XfsqjiWI
Other times, the excuse for showing off Clint’s bod led to incredibly funny lines such as “Rip his shirt off and tie him to the rail.” Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PnGTzT7N18&feature=related
Now my question is, to whom were the producers of Cheyene appealing with all this skin and muscle? I have to think it was to gays and women. And I know that many gays old enough to remember that show remember using the topless scenes as masturbatory imagery.
So let us revisit the definitions shall we?
Pornography: the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.
Erotica: works of art, including … film, …, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions.
The problem with the words “stimulating” and “arousal” in a definition is that they are relative to each individual. Are you going to tell me that no nude painting, no matter how classical and allegedly non-erotic, has ever been used as sexually arousing by some persons somewhere?
I say, to hell with the distinctions. The ONLY place we can and should draw a line and defend it is in the area of child pornography. We can and do draw the line at 18 years of age. As a consumer of porn/erotica/nude films, I am grateful for the US law that obliges porn products to carry a declaration that all models are over 18 and that proof of age is on file with the producer at a specified address. It gives me security that I am not technically breaking the law by unknowingly possesing a porn product in which one of the actors is underage.