But, in addition to our “make love, not war” poster, I also remember my mom having discussions with her other mom-friends about what they’d let their kids see and saying, “why is it okay to let them see guns that shoot death, but not guns that shoot life?”

As a bunch of you noted, the very word porn denotes that whatever comes under that rubric is in some way “wrong.” But, we all define what it is that makes it right, wrong, or okay with very different criteria. And, I actually think that’s a good thing. I want to define it myself.

Which is why my concern is that labeling something porn versus art has extraordinary social, economic and legal implications. When we hand that task over to people who are often more than a generation behind and steeped in the morality of a single culture, that’s a bit of a scary dance for me.

Even more interesting to me is who is behind the porn/art wheel at the major online social networks, many of which have barely an employee over the age of 30. Who’s deciding what’s art or porn on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Myspace and beyond?

If there were no social, economic or legal implications, I’d be more comfy with handing over the decision to others. And, I don’t really write content that pushes the porn/art buttons (though I certainly could). It just seems, at least in the U.S., increasingly the folks who’d make the decisions are farther and farther from my own value system.

Instantly recalled to me an issue of IdN magazine I have, here’s a link to the frame on their site:
http://www.idnworld.com/idnworld/magazines/v13n5/v13n5.htm

They asked artists who use “explicit” imagery or themes about their opinions on the topic.

Great issue!

Not waters I like to wade into, but as someone who got my degree in Fine Art I’m gonna give it a shot.

1. No, the medium is irrelevant. Robert Mapplethorpe’s work is considered by most to be art, though both photographic and overtly erotic.

2. To an extent, yes. Seeing it on a shelf at the 7-11 gives us a certain opinion of its “merit,” so setting does play a part. (Just as the 7-11 itself is a setting that tells me I’ll find no artisan cheeses or organic produce inside.)

3. Nah, there are plenty of women who create “porn,” and many women who are consumers and advocates, though far fewer than men. The gender of the creator doesn’t play a part in whether it’s pornography.

4. It might have an effect on opinion if known, but at least in magazine photography, you generally don’t know. In film the creator’s own story is sometimes part of the branding, so there it probably has some relevance to who views it, but on whether it’s called porn or not? I don’t think so.

5. Of course opinions of influencers have something to do with it. This is why Mapplethorpe’s work was accepted in the narrow art world far before it was accepted by a wider world (being told by influencers that his photography was pornographic), and why many still do not accept or understand it. Then again, my grandmother could never accept Monet. Art’s tricky that way.

6. Culture’s got to be a part of it. The French president’s wife just had a nude photo of her (15 years ago) sell for some insane amount of money. No American president would consider marrying someone who might go on the block at Christie’s for anything but her handwritten dinner invites or her Valentino suit. Long prudish history back to the Puritans, etc., etc.

How about class? Somewhere I read that there is a certain ugly immediacy to a lower class of porn, and that the more money/ status you have, the more you are likely to want distance/ filters/ “artisticness” on the erotica you will look at. A class scale from Mr. Flynt’s version to Mr. Hefner’s version to Van Gogh’s Nude Woman on a Bed?

Oh, and what about writing? Michael Martine wrote a great comparison of Twitter and sex recently, and nobody called it porn. Maybe because it was funny. Writing probably gets greater latitude.

What is porn is so close to impossible to say. Probably, there was a sexually provocative intention when it was made. I think that is true in a lot of erotic art also, but it’s a matter of degrees. Possibly, it has exploitative connotations. But not always. Often, it may seem objectifying, reducing people to functional parts. But not always.

The Supreme Court’s answer is sort of right. It’s individual, and what it is to you is not what it is to me. Unfortunately as our official guidance on the law it’s a terrible answer.

I couldn’t resist looking around for opinions. A “porn” filmmaker who wrote on the subject says: “I am uncomfortable with the word ‘porn’… because for many people, porn means something is going make them feel bad if they watch; they’ll feel bad about themselves, or bad about the people on the screen, or bad that they’re aroused by something they know is cheap and shabby, made without care or craft.” He tells people he makes “sex films,” instead of using a word with negative connotations.

Well, I waded into the water a bit more than I thought I would! Yikes!

Regards,

Kelly

I wandered through my OED, which defines ‘pornography’ as “the explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc, in a manner intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings.” Hm. Then flipped to ‘aesthetic’ and got “things perceptible by the senses” and “of or pertaining to the appreciation or criticism of the beautiful or of art.” Which led me to ‘beauty’ which is “that quality or combination of qualities which delights the senses or mental faculties.”

Mulling those defs, i think perhaps it’s less about the intent of the artist, and more about the experience of the viewer. If something elicits strictly erotic feelings but doesn’t touch the soul or ones sense of beauty, it may well be simply porn, but if it triggers an experience which fills the senses (which experience may well include the sexual), you may well be veering into art. Which would put art vs. porn in the eye of the beholder. Which in a way would make “I’ll know it when I see it” on the money – the only problem is when one beholder insists that their view is the ONLY way to see and begins to legislate on that basis. I mean, I can buy that some people experience Maplethorpe photography or the paintings of Egon Schiele or even a Manolo Blahnik (in the case of the foot fetishist) as porn. I just wish those people could accept that others may be having a different experience.

Thanks for inspiring a swim through the OED, and then some!