The first time I discovered the salacious attraction of porn, I was young, perhaps eight. A friend next door found a pack of playing cards with pornographic images on them in her parent’s room, and a group of us third graders huddled in hushed wonderment – filled with fear, fascination and disgust – staring at the photos of men and women engaged in various sex acts. Of course, this was the sort of secret no child could keep, and once my mother found out, she banned me from playing there ever again. I was furious, and secretly glad for it. It was scary.
The next time I ran across nude photos of men and women, we were visiting a friend in a remote, artistic community, the sort of town to have an eclectic and independent bookstore. That’s where I encountered a coffee table book devoted to ‘Nudes.’ Big, bold and filled with hundreds of photos of men, women and children, I sat for a long time on the floor, mesmerized. Instinctively, I knew these were okay to look at, these were different. At the time, I couldn’t explain why.
The continuum of art and porn has fuzzy
boundaries. In general, one could say that in art, subjects are
“‘Nudity’ is a state of personal intimacy and trust, without pretense or artifice… ‘Nakedness’, on the other hand, entails more than an absence of clothing – it is a mental state (both for the person lacking garments and for those observing the undressed body). To be naked is to lack an element of protection, to be stripped of dignity or decency. Nakedness is about objectification, reducing a person to a mere object to be appraised, to be used.”
If this is the case, then art elevates the nude – photographer, subject and viewer as well – so that we are left with a sense of awe and appreciation for the human form. It appeals to our higher mind. Yes, it is evocative, and quite often we may have a sexual response to it, but that is secondary to rendering us free from shame and embarrassment. Nudity sanctifies the human body, and is therefore art. Pornography exploits the human body, and is therefore not.
Or is this the complete story? Recent reports (from Oprah for example) suggest there is a growing demand for ‘better porn.’ Some viewers of porn want more art put into their jollies; aroused by the voyeuristic pleasure of watching others have sex, they prefer class over crass when it comes to their private affairs. It certainly is food for thought: if the exploitation were taken out of the mix, and if tenderness, intimacy and awe were put it, than what might we find ourselves with?
Erotica is hardly new. Click here for a slide-show to demonstrates this: the illustrations by Eduoard-Henri Avril show men and women, monogamous and not, enjoying their sexual unions; not appropriate for children, but tame compared to that deck of cards a group of kids discovered 30 years ago.
Notice the rapture on the faces of the women. Not usually something seen in most porn today, where everthing is hot and furious, and her pleasure seems secondary to the man's (and the viewers'). Perhaps at the time they were distributed, in the late 1800s, the establishment was outraged, but today they are a colorful expression of sexuality from a bygone era, as well as evidence that lines between art and pornography have been blurred before.
That is my Modern Love point of view. What is yours?
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