On Art and Porn

Once again, I'm catching up on a few things that have been waiting around for me to write. This is something from last week's "ooh, I need to say something about that" pile...

As regular readers will know, I am a big fan of Renegade Evolution, whom I consider to be one of the most intelligent writers about alternative sexuality and sex work. Nevertheless, I am going to disagree with her in this post.

This is a response to a post that originally appeared as friends-only on her LJ blog, although she has now reposted it on her public "blogspot" blog too (this is why I have sparse quotations from the original piece). The post is part of a series about Ren's job(s) as a sex worker, and inasmuch as Ren writes about her experiences in those fields, I am not qualified to question what she says. What I do question is how she defines pornography, and its relationship to "art" and "erotica".

Ren writes:

Both art and erotica can have nudity…but if your shit is spread and you have a cock or other object shoved in you somewhere…it’s porn. It can be artistic, but it’s porn. Art and erotica can be suggestive, but if a work's sole or primary purpose is to make cocks hard or cunts wet? PORN.

Now, while I would certainly agree that everything where "your shit is spread and you have a cock or other object shoved in you" (where "you" is the person or persons appearing in the visual media) is indeed porn. But I would also say that there's quite a lot of porn out there that doesn't involve any of those things, and yet most people would want to draw a line between that and "erotica" or "art".

Secondly, while the legal definition of pornography is indeed "a work [whose] sole or primary purpose is to make cocks hard or cunts wet" (which admittedly is paraphrased slightly when it appears in legal precedents and Acts of Parliament, but the words mean the same thing), I am sure that there is plenty of "erotica" that fits this definition, that many people would regard as quite distinct from "pornography".

Now,to me, what all this comes down to is the conjugation of the verb "to look at pornographic materials":

I appreciate adult-themed art

You enjoy erotica

He/She/They use porn.

[NB Ren seems to reverse this in her own desires]

In other words, I think that porn, erotica and "adult art" are actually synonymous, and the only distinction is one of the language-user's personal prejudices concerning sophistication or acceptability of different types of pornographic themes or presentations. "Erotica" and "adult art" are just words that people use to avoid admitting that they like looking at pictures of naked folks, or folks fucking, and that they get turned on by it. It's a way of separaing themselves from the hoi polloi, the plebs, the "great Unwashed", and of saying "we are better than them!"

When Ren categorises "Art", "Erotica" and "Porn" (by personifying them as three brothers), she treats them as separate entities (which obviously, I don't), but she reveals the truth of what I say when she makes this remark:

Now see, I like Art, and I like Erotica…but I’d rather hang out with Porn. Because Porn is honest. He does not pretend to be anything he isn’t. He doesn’t play himself off as deep, or necessary, or culturally savvy or intellectual.

Obviously, I don't see porn that way, because to me porn and erotica are the same thing. But this "pretending to be deep, culturally savvy, intellectual" thing - that's what people are doing when they talk about erotica. You know what? You can do all sorts of intellectual, culturally-aware, deep, stuff with porn, both in analysing it, and in making it. If you feel the need to call it something else when you do so, that's fine, but it's about you, not about the type of porn that you choose to write/talk/think about - or the type of porn you choose to write, film or watch.

If "porn" and "erotica" are the same thing, what of art - and how does porn relate to art?

Ren says:

Art ... is a legend in the hallowed halls of academia, a cultural icon. He’s smooth, articulate, educated and thoughtful. He inspires, he makes people think, he believes that emotion, vision, passion and expression are absolute pillars of human existence. He can be shocking, or disturbing, or unsettling, but no matter what he is doing, there is a message.

I say, "phooey!" to most of that! While some art definitely does all of those things, other art is just there for entertainment. Some is for the simplest of pleasures. Some of it is poorly executed (i.e. not "articulate" or "educated") and some has no thought to it at all.

I steadfastly refuse to draw a distinction in kind between, say, Shakespeare and Tom Clancy - or Patricia Cornwell, or whoever the latest "summer holiday reading" thriller author might be (or romance author, for that matter - but I don't read those novels so I don't have as much to go on to mention names there). Or, between Mozart and Girls Aloud. It is all art as far as I am concerned, and while we may have views on the value of various artists' contributions relative to one another, to deny that some of it is art at all is to make "art" into an exclusive club that confers status and privilege to its members, while excluding anyone not seen as "highbrow" enough.

Everything, from the doodles in the margins of your notepad or newspaper right the way through to the Cistene Chapel, is art. And those doodles? Unless you intend to show them to somebody, they don't really have any "message", unless maybe to yourself. I suppose some people might derive meaning from them, but to my mind, so much of that kind of analysis is assigning meaning to everything regardless of more direct forms of communication - i.e. I think it is claiming special knowledge of people that really isn't warranted.

In a way, though, all art is either about emotion or expression - even if that emotion is just "hah, you fell over!" slapstick humour. Or that expression is just the random churnings of a mind at rest (like those doodles). Art can have one other purpose, which is "technical study" - musical exercises in scales and arpeggios, drawn studies of anatomy, simple compositions of photography or drawn objects... such things might be considered explorations into the nature of art itself, as opposed to art as communication - in the same way that some "pure maths" is exploring the nature of numebrs without any particular consideration of whether they have "real" meanings.

And if all art is "Art", regardless of how trivial or base we might consider its emotional or expressional content, then where does that leave porn?

Well, we said before that "porn is anything that is intended primarily to make cocks hard or cunts wet". I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that, right there, is an emotional content. Some people might not think of, "Phwoar, that's making me horny!" as a very important or groundbreaking emotional content or communication, but it is still an emotional reaction. Porn is (a part of) "Art". To illustrate the point, here's a Venn Diagram. Note that I've also demonstrated the elitist use of "porn" versus "erotica" when referring to sexual art:
In my opinion, of course, all "art about sex & sexuality" is porn - or all of it is erotica, if you prefer that term. In "Art" I am including visual arts, the written word, and song/music. I suspect that, while in the very broad definitions that I am using here it would be valid, to suggest that pole dancing and lap dancing are porn would be very contentious, and would skate far too close to treating sex work as a monolith. But I do what to point out that I believe treating them, by virtue of a "sleazy" reputation, as somehow separate from the performance art of dance (ballet, contemporary, whatever) is just as wrong as making the elitist distinction between erotica and porn.

It seems that, for at least a century, the boundaries of "art" as opposed to "that rubbish" have been being driven back in most areas, so that now, the power of the Blues is universally recognised as art, whereas once it was low, and base noise. Likewise, in another generation, the music of Kurt Cobain. I am sure that literary examples can be found for the same phenomenon, and also visual art. To be direct, and distilled, and forceful (that is to say, unsubtle or un-nuanced) is not always to be lesser in depth or meaning, and so it is with porn: much of porn is very direct in its expression of sexuality, having just one response as its goal - but that doesn't stop it having a deep and penetrating artistic effect (pun intended!) By "artistic effect" I do not mean that it influences people in a "monkey see, monkey do" way, but rather that it still can provoke thought, even deep consideration, about things both sexual and non-sexual in nature. And yet, always we see "porn" being divided from "proper art" in a way that has endured. Yes, it is true that the erotic art of the Victorian age is now a subject of academic study, giving it a slight air of acceptability, but it is still labelled "porn" in the most part, and treated as something "other", in a way that the popular music of those days is not. Only in sex has the line between "Art" and "That other stuff" not particularly shifted. As Ren says, "...but if your shit is spread and you have a cock or other object shoved in you somewhere…it’s porn." I think the line catches a little more than that as porn, but the principle remains across the decades.

I think we should reject that line, and insist that Porn is Art (how come the two brothers have never been seen in the same room at exactly the same time as each other? *smirk* ). Porn performers and producers, pole dancers and lap dancers, even (willing) prostitutes - yes, all sex workers - are artists and deserve to be recognised for it. Their individual arts are different from one another, just as a sculptor's art is different from a painter's, is different from a musician's, is different from a dancer's.