Taliesin the Bard
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LESSONS
IN X TM
By Taliesin the Bard
Lesson One
Pornography is a presentation of sex for the purposes of entertainment, education
or edification. That's my definition. It's not the only definition — you
probably have your own — but it's the one we'll use in this column so that
all of us are on the same page in our thinking. Further, I can make a distinction
between porn and erotica. Pornography is a presentation of sex between the
legs only; erotica is a presentation of sex between the ears. In no way,
however, does this diminish the value or straightforward elegance of porn.
Erotica is not somehow mysteriously 'higher' or more 'cultured' than pornography.
But it is different.
To call something erotica — a photograph, a film, a story — is to imply that
it has been structured in some way to arouse without offending. That's a
cultural bias, a prejudice imposed by a society afraid of its own sexuality.
To call something Pornography is to imply that it is explicit, bold, thrust
upon the unsuspecting in such a way as to shock, to go beyond the preset
limits of good taste or moral rectitude, to bypass ethical values, to be
extreme. This is true, except for the fact that the definitions are backwards.
Pornography is not about limits, and the audience of women and men who enjoy
the artform expects none. This audience expects to see sexually explicit
activity, wants to see
sexually explicit activity, benefits from seeing sexually explicit activity,
even if the existing culture cannot fathom the how or the why. So the action(s)
presented in a particular pornographic project — oral sex, anal sex, group
sex, etc. — do not take the reader/viewer past any culturally established
point. The Audience is already there, already operating with a mindset geared
to seeing/reading/hearing things pornographic before the seeing/reading/hearing
begins.
A common complaint from women who do not particularly enjoy porn is that
there is little, or nothing, there to arouse them, that there is no foreplay.
And they do not understand how a man can find just the hard-core arousing.
These women miss the point. When a man chooses to watch a porn video it's
because he is already in the mood to watch a porn video; he is already operating
in a sexually-oriented mindset. When a man is in a mood to watch sports he
turns on ESPN. He doesn't put ESPN on to get himself in the mood to watch
sports; mentally he's already ready to watch sports. With porn, the elements
of arousal found in real life lovemaking are (often) bypassed.
For erotica, limits are required. With porn, the audience expects to see,
hear or read hard-core sexual imagery/descriptions. A man's hand touching
the knee of a woman and then sliding up her thigh and under her dress is
an erotic image only if there is the preconceived limit that that may be
the extent of what one will see. This imagery of the hand sliding up the
leg may be quite erotic on a network TV show because of the limit in the
mind of the viewer that that is all that might be possible to show on network
TV. In an R-rated movie, that same image may be considerably less erotic
because of the expectation of seeing more; bare female breasts and butts
are common in R-rated entertainment, as are simulated sexual acts.
In a hard-core XXX movie (in pornography) the hand trailing up the thigh
signals almost nothing erotic to the audience because that audience is expecting
to see much more in the way of sexual activity. What is erotic is defined
by the limits the erotic image goes beyond. In porn, the scene of the hand
on the thigh may not even be shown. It may be skipped over entirely, because
the audience is expecting to see images that are more explicit, much more
explicit. The pornographic movie or story usually gives only the hard-core,
the most explicit, images of sexual activity.
Porn movie star Gloria Leonard was once asked the difference between pornography
and erotica. Her answer: "In my opinion, it's the lighting." Lighting, by
use of shadow, by what is shown and what is not shown, is another way of
creating a limit. For something to be erotic it must first recognize or establish
a limit and then take the viewer beyond that limit. Pornography is not less
than erotica. Erotica is not a higher artform than porn. They are simply
different.
We'll explore those differences, as well as how to create the best of both
erotica and porn, in future installments of this column.
Copyright © 2002 Taliesin the Bard. All Rights Reserved. Used With
Permission.
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