Is there any useful distinction between "porn", "erotica" and "pictorial nudity".

Great Debates
1

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.

2

One distinction I’ve heard made in the past is that pornography is what men like, erotica is what women like, therefore pornography is bad and erotica good. The woman making this distinction was serious as far as I could tell.

3

Not all nudity is prurient. Is a picture of a nude child considered porn? Is a medical illustration?

4

Well, you have added a new word to the debate: prurient. Let’s look at the Oxford Dictionary.

prurient *adjective *

having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters, especially the sexual activity of others: she’d been the subject of much prurient curiosity

In answer to your first comment, “Not all nudity is prurient”, at what point does interest in sexual matters become excessive? There is a great deal of individual value judgement involved in that word “excessive”. I confess that, given the above definition, I am not in a position to judge whether ANY nudity is prurient, since I have no way of knowing to what extent it encourages “excessive” interest in sexual matters.

A friend of mine, when we were pubescent teens, once showed me a page of bra and panty ads from a Sears catalogue which he used for. . . well you get it. It had served him for the last six months, he said. Was the ad prurient? Was my friend prurient or just a normal horny teenaged boy?

Is a picture of a nude child considered porn? Well, if by porn you mean “bad”, I can’t generalize to all pictures. If we use the Wikipedia definition of porn it is “the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.” The important word here is “purpose”. It would seem that the producer of the image must have the intention to cause sexual arousal. Then again, can you always prove intention?

Take the play Equus. There is very obviously a sexual component to the naked youth rubbing against beautiful horses. In a 2007 revival of the play in London, the role of the disturbed youth Alan Strang was played by Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), who was only 17 at the time. As the Wiki article says:

“. . . .the casting of seventeen year-old Radcliffe caused some controversy, since the role of Alan Strang required him to appear naked on stage. This was despite the fact that many other young actors over the years had performed the play naked. Radcliffe insisted that the nude scene was not “gratuitous” and that he should portray the character and the scene as called for by the script.”

One interesting fall-out of this controversy is that pictures on the internet of Radcliffe standing naked in front of a horse were quickly cropped up to eliminate any view of his penis as soon as it was realized that he was under 18. The play opened in February 2007 and Radcliffe turned 18 in July. This picture of Radcliffe http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&biw=1120&bih=599&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=kH7vvgQ951SdqM:&imgrefurl=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1062493/Well-Harry-Daniel-Radcliffe-receives-rave-reviews-AGAIN-Equus-moves-Broadway.html&docid=PCigqHNckh18wM&imgurl=http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix//2007/01_wk4/1RadcliffeEquus_468x331.jpg&w=468&h=331&ei=u7BbT-H9Henl0QHB4KjFDw&zoom=1 and many like it are available onj Google images.

If he is indeed 17 in this picture could someone consider this child pornography, even with the picture cropped up to his navel? Could the producers of Equus have been charged with child porn for presenting the play? Do you think it would have been impossible for the prosecutors to find people to testify that the play excited them sexually?

I frankly have no answers to give you.

I agree 100% with laws against child porn that draw the line at 18. We have to draw a line somewhere and we have to defend it, for the sake of children.

What I am trying to say is that when it comes to defining terms like “porn” “prurient” “erotica” and so on, there is no area where we are more likely to rush forward with certitude only to discover, when we get down to practical reality, that the devil is in the details.

5

Do you also get upset that people are not using precise terms when they say it’s “chilly” outside? Does it freak you out when you can’t figure out why sometimes it’s “chilly” and other times it’s “nippy”?

These are different words that describe similar things, with a bit of poetic nuance.

6

Well maybe I should have been less subtle in my presentation, but I am not just nitpicking about vocabulary choices.

What I am really trying to generate is a debate as to whether these things can be defined for legal purposes, whether we can say that one or the other should be restricted in some way or not.

I have started by saying that I believe the law should hold the line at fighting child porn (must be over 18) and leave the rest alone, because trying to set out laws that can be applied fairly and rationally in all the other cases is folly.

Sorry if that was not clear.

7

Which is all well and good, but in that case it’s strange that you make dictionary definitions of “pornography,” “erotica,” and “pictorial nudity” the centerpieces of your case, since, at least under American law, none of these distinctions has any weight.

Under American law, the speech that can be regulated by law is “obscene” speech, which is defined in the law by Miller v. California:

So if you’re going to start a discussion on American obscenity law, you should start with this three-part test, instead of the dictionary definitions you emphasized.

8

Well, look, maybe I didn’t present the debate with a precise enough focus. My bad. Let’s drop the matter

9

So shouldn’t “pornography” then be restricted to explicit depictions of acts that in at least some other context could count as prostitution?

If a man pays a woman to come over to his house and get naked for his viewing pleasure, but doesn’t he touch her in any way, has any prostitution technically occurred? I don’t think so, but maybe others would argue that it has. Maybe we should start using the word “gymnography” for the “pornography” that is simply nudity with no sex acts depicted.

10

The problem is that’s not much of a definition to work with; it’s not much better than “I know it when I see it”.

11

Now that I have read that test from *California v. Miller *more closely, I am really wondering if, as Der Trihs says, it is not much better than “I know it when I see it.”

The three-part test, as quoted by Acsenray, above, is:

*The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. *

Part (a) seems to call upon judges to speculate as to whether the work appeals to “prurient interest”. Now remember that the word “prurient” means, according to Oxford, “having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters, especially the sexual activity of others”. What is “excessive” when it comes to sexual interest? Does that not vary enormously from one person to another? Was it Joan Rivers who said “I know what a nymphomaniac is, it’s a woman who gets laid more than I do!”:smiley:

In fact, part (a) does not even ask the judge to decide whether the work appeals to prurient interest. No, no, he has to step back and put himself in the mind of “the average person” (anybody care to start a separate thread on whether the “average person” really exists?). The judge must put himself in the mind of an average person who has an understanding of “contemporary community standards” and then determine if that “average person” would, in the light of those standards, find that the work, “taken as a whole” (???) has or encourages an excessive interest in sexual matters.

Have you ever seen such a pile of subjective bullshit so open to individual whims and feelings? And that is just part (a)!!!

12

While there are many legitimate criticisms of the Miller test and, particularly, the community standards prong of the test, your particular criticisms miss the mark.

  1. Understand that the finder of fact might be a jury rather than a judge.

  2. The concept of an “average person” or, more commonly, a “reasonable person” is indispensable to the common law. It’s not considered much of a mystery at all.

  3. Any judge who merely speculates regarding these findings would find himself quickly reversed on appeal. A finder of fact in the common law system is expected to use evidence as a basis for such findings. And under the Miller test, the burden is on the state to come forth with evidence regarding community standards.

  4. You will probably find that in practice much of the action happens in the third prong of the test. Most sexually explicit material is going to to win on this prong.

  5. While there certainly are valid criticisms of Miller, what is most interesting about it is that, as a practical matter, it really amounts to a victory for free speech rights under American law.

13

How would most porn win on this prong? I’m not sure I can link to a porn video sharing site so we can talk about a specific sample. If you’re familiar with it, how would Debbie does Dallas win on that prong? Or porn where the actors start sex as soon as the video starts and it ends with the money shot?

14

TBH, I’m not really sure how to answer the question the way you’ve phrased it, but I’ll give it a go.

There are a hell of a lot of grey areas between pornographic, erotic and nude, and it’s all due to context, especially between erotic and pornographic.

For nudes, it’s fairly easy to think of depictions where there is clearly no sexual gratification intended. I mean, even when it comes to child porn, you’ve probably seen that picture of a naked little girl running away from the Hiroshima bomb; that’s a naked child, but it’s not intended to sexually arouse anyone.

I guess there are people who could be sexually-aroused by it, but there are people who could be sexually-aroused by a picture of an octogenarian picking his nose. This is where the ‘reasonable man’ concept comes in.

When it come to erotica vs. porn, some of the differences are due to historical context and a bit of artistic snobbishness; Greek urns with massive erect penises get a pass, for example.

If you see a modern picture of a naked woman lying back with her hand on her pudenda and a blissful expression on her face, that’s definitely not just nudity. But if you put it in black and white, give it an enigmatic title and publish it in a hardback book, it can be called erotica, whereas in full technicolour in a magazine, it’s porn.

I don’t think people mean to imply that pornographic means illegal per se. Just that in some contexts it is. I assume it is in Francophone countries too - you don’t have rules about, say, pictures of erect penises on billboards?

And you’re the one misunderstanding the word by thinking that the ancient words it’s derived from are the ‘true’ meaning rather than the one that people actually use. For example, if an English speaker told you they were arrested by a cop the other night, would you think that they were held back, or would you think they were probably taken to a police station and questioned?

But if the word did have that ‘true’ meaning, then, since prostitution is usually illegal in the Anglophone places you’re thinking of, it would actually makes sense for depictions of it to be illegal too.

Although prostitute has multiple meanings too, of course.

15

That’s some dedication. No need for Coolidge?

Anyway, this is a case that failed the Miller test.

16

Well the difference is, in common parlance porn is the bad thing, the thing you should not look at, the thing that should be censored, and the others … not so much! Nobody is proposing censoring chilly! Nippy … well, hmm …

17

Catharine MacKinnon’s (rather hilarious, IMHO) distinction is that pornography is sexually explicit material in which one party (ie the woman) is degraded, while erotica is “sexually explicit material premised on equality”, whatever that means.

Actually, prostitution itself is rarely illegal in the Anglosphere. With the major exceptions of most of the US and at least some of English-speaking Africa, it’s legal to sell sex provided you do it under certain conditions.

18

Catherine MacKinnon’s definition is constructed so that porn can be construed as a violation of the civil rights of the participants. It’s a sneaky, back-door means of reinstating censorship that worked in a few locales (Canada, some cities in the US) but which most American courts wisely did not fall for, as the same logic could be used as the basis for censoring a whole hell of a lot of things besides porn.

19

I can think of one use!:smiley:

20

The main reason it failed in the US is because the courts saw it for what it was: an attempt to discriminate against expression based on its content, and to dictate that sexual expression must treat women in an approved way. This made it unconstitutional irrespective of whether or not it could also be used to censor non-pornographic materials.