The Ethics and Politics of Pornography

D. Rose

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780230371125
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Pornography is seen as morally problematic for a variety of reasons: coercion, exploitation, harm and the promulgation of inequality. The book looks at various ethical and political discussions concerning the production, exchange and consumption of pornography to propose a radical new approach centering on the concept of objectification.

1

Risky Business

When I was eighteen, I manipulated two male friends into coming to the cinema with me to watch Betty Blue, informing them it was a French film with an 18 certificate and letting their own imaginations do the rest. Copious amounts of beer helped my machinations and we went to the late showing in Norwich’s Picturehouse. This was to prove to be a mistake. If you are not familiar with the film, my mates would probably recount it thus: ‘French bird gets her kit off a lot, is quite mad and pokes her eye out before dying’. There is much more to the film than that. It is a very fine film that, now comfortably in my middle age, I would recommend to most people. The film, though, opens with a very well shot and, in relation to most other films, rather long sex scene. Between my mates’ giggling and the furtive looks of those more mature than us, I had an excruciatingly embarrassing experience. The reason I am recollecting this now is that I remember several cinema-goers walking out of the film during the opening scene, as though the offence caused by the representation was so shocking it was better not to experience it. The scene is explicit, but it is not hard pornography nor truly soft pornography, if that distinction makes any sense at all. It occurs to me now that if those persons who left were asked then their reasons for leaving, they would have responded that they would rather not watch pornography and that the scene was pornographic.

Let me continue with a further piece of odd personal information. And here, as in so much of this book, I am taking a risk; uncomfortably lying down on a rather comfortable leather, Le Corbusier chaise longue and beginning to ramble. I confess that I used to know far too much about French cinema (hence my desire to see Betty Blue) when I was an adolescent and the cause of such knowledge was BBC2’s late night Film Club series, which I used to watch in my room on an old, flickery black and white set. I had mixed motivations for watching such films, but one definite motivation was that it was one of the few places to consume representations of sexual activity. There were, as I have said, other motivations for watching the best of continental European cinema, but it would be disingenuous to deny that my perseverance through some of the more boring French offerings was the hope of a flash of breast or an image of copulation.

Such perseverance was due to the fact that, when I was very young, there were only three television channels in Britain (becoming four when I was nine years old) and, besides the ubiquitous and largely unerotic presence of Page Three in The Sun, pornographic or erotic imagery was not easily available. Things soon changed. First, Channel Four, with its pretension to some imagined right of expression of aesthetic value, then more unashamedly, Channel Five, with its seasons dedicated to such great actresses as Shannon Tweed and its ‘penetrating’ documentary series about the porn industry, soon meant that sexual imagery became almost commonplace. However, it was the internet explosion that changed the whole nature of the game, making sexual imagery easily available and widely consumed. One study reveals that the third most common term to be typed into an internet search engine is ‘sex’; coming before ‘the’ and behind only ‘of’ and ‘and’ (Spink et al., 2000: 231).

It would be naïve and hasty to deny that the consumption of pornographic objects has been a constant throughout history, although in the next chapter I shall dismiss such a claim. It is in the era of mass production and pornography’s increased consumption in line with other goods that it truly presents itself as an urgent ethical issue (Traeen et al., 2010). If you want to be titillated or excited by sexual imagery, there is no longer any need to labour through the existential angst of French cinema or the excessive aestheticism of Italian films. The images and representations are already there, prepared for use. One could argue that this is akin to everything in late capitalism: if you want a luxury vegetable to eat, you no longer need to toil to produce it but will find it readily available, lying before one and ready for consumption. And there is sufficient surplus wealth and leisure time to make such consumption a possibility. The relationship between capitalism and pornography is, perhaps, not a trivial one and is in need of interrogation.

But later, not yet.

So, you may ask, why on Earth one would write a book about pornography and, specifically, in a philosophical idiom. It would seem, in the field for which such a book is primarily proposed, that such an endeavour may well invite ridicule. Philosophy ought to concern itself with loftier objects of reflection. And, yet, such a risk is perhaps akin to a film director seeking to make a serious film about sexual relations. There is a long list of such films that testify to such absurdity and self-indulgence: Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Bertolucci’s The Dreamers immediately jump to mind. The possibility of ridicule rather than the more normal rational rejection (‘his ideas are wrong’, ‘there is no logical connection between the premises and the conclusion’, or ‘the film is an artistic failure’) may well reveal something of interest, like the embarrassed giggle of a schoolboy at the back of the class (or the cinema!) during a sex education lesson, even if such a lesson is handled with the utmost professionalism and delivered in an informative, entertaining and appropriate manner. One can imagine when women first began to wear trousers, there would have been red cheeks, averted eyes and childish giggles and, to accompany such adolescent responses, there may well have been ideological expressions of reasons why such wearing of trousers is an abomination, why it should be stopped and why it is immoral. To believe that thinking alone is enough to overcome conventional prejudice is naïve. If there had not been women brave enough to invite ridicule, the status quo of inequality might well have remained unbroken.

And, of course, even if Bertolucci failed with The Dreamers, he did make the far more elegant and profound Last Tango in Paris. Other successes do of course exist, Medem’s Sex and Lucía being foremost amongst them and perhaps also Ferrario’s Guardami. And just as it is possible to make a serious film about human sexuality, so it ought to be possible to talk seriously and reflectively about the representations of sexual activity. Such activity is, after all, a staple of human action and a central, even if a silent, constituent of human culture. Just as we turn sustenance into complicated rituals of social play and regulated desire, so too does sexual activity institutionalize a physical need into a social code of meanings and behaviours. Meanings and behaviours we must somehow learn, incorporate into our behaviours and modify when the circumstances demand it. Just as we learn to hold the fork in our left hand, but as we develop, we learn that it is acceptable to move it to the right if we are eating pasta, so our behaviours are judged as appropriate or not in a social milieu.

My interest in the subject of pornography is neither an aesthetic one nor directly a cultural one; it is an ethical (and consequently) a political interest. A constellation of ethical issues attach themselves to the production, exchange and consumption of pornographic objects, be they films, photographs, novels, poems, computer games, lithographs, or whatever. We most naturally concentrate on examples of mpegs and jpegs but any evaluative moral judgements, made (irrespective of any aesthetic evaluative judgements) on the basis of the pornographic nature of such objects, ought to apply equally to Sade’s and Bataille’s novels, to Crowley’s poems and to ancient Indian and Japanese drawings. If Debbie Does Dallas or 120 Days of Sodom is morally problematic, and are so because of their sexual content, then there is also at least a query to be raised about texts such as Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. One cannot believe that there is a class of individuals with the requisite aesthetic sense to appreciate sexual representation, and that they alone can decide what is or is not a valuable representation without inviting the charge of elitism. Our intuitions concerning pornography are either the expression of a brute, emotional response such as disgust (or unease) or they are statements which are rationally defensible (and hence defeasible). Such responses or statements apply equally to Lawrence’s work, as history testifies. Such intuitions are moral in nature.

So, one might hold that pornography is offensive, a worthless pursuit, aesthetically without value, or that it harms specific individuals or groups. Such judgements correspond to well-defined moral positions: emotivism; conservatism; utilitarianism; and Kantianism. Politically, one might argue that pornography ought to be tolerated as a consequence of the right to freedom of expression and autonomy. It might well be a worthless pursuit, but it is not the business of individuals or groups to dictate to others how they should spend their time or money. Alternatively, feminists may well argue that the production, exchange and consumption of pornography violate the rights of individuals or the group of women as a whole because it sustains and reinforces a state of inequality. It is obvious that the ethical and political dimensions of pornography are not that easily disentangled. More controversially, I shall attempt to argue that the simplistic modern approach to applied ethics actually collaborates with the maintenance and reproduction of unequal sexual relationships precisely because it fails to consider that pornography properly conceived and executed may well overcome such inegalitarian relationships and have a positive moral value. And such a refusal to think through the basic axiology of pornography may well be based in the same immaturity as the schoolboy’s giggling at the back of the class.

So, my risk has doubled. Not only do I intend to direct philosophical thinking to the most unserious of subjects, sexual representation, but also to argue that the proper representation of sexual activity is morally worthwhile and to be encouraged. I am sure that Bertolucci squirmed in his director’s chair when delivering instructions to Brando (especially concerning the use of the butter), but did so because he was aware of the potential prying eyes of the faux puritanical media. Similarly, when the feminists slipped into their trousers for the first time, there may well have been apprehension. Risks can lead to success as well as failure. And failure as well as success.

The existence of pornographic objects is itself a moral issue and the limits of censorship and toleration are political consequences of such moral discussions, but the risk is worth taking for a second reason. When I boldly state that a puritanical immaturity resides at the bottom of the (seemingly) most rigorous reflections on the philosophy of pornography, such immaturity is pathological to much applied ethical thinking. Pornography is to be prohibited because it has a negative effect on individual welfare or because it violates rights. Or, it is to be tolerated because it is expressive of a right to personal autonomy or because personal choice is constitutive of individual welfare. I said that most immediate intuitions concerning pornography corresponded to established moral positions, and the debate concerning the production, exchange and consumption of pornography was located in a familiar landscape. Many issues in applied ethics share a similar fate: abortion is basically about the philosophical rights of the person and what is ontologically a person (Kantianism) or the welfare of a mother (never, oddly, fathers!) versus the child (utilitarianism); euthanasia is about the welfare of individuals and suffering (utilitarianism) or the secularization of the sanctity of life principle (Kantianism); and the morality of behaviour in warfare is about means to ends cost–benefit analysis (utilitarianism) or about the deontological limits of action even in life and death situations (Kantianism). Two points of view dominate modern moral discourse: Kantianism and utilitarianism. (Every so often, it is true, the dominant schools of thought allow the virtue ethicists to chime in with acceptable if, for the other two, quaint and idiosyncratic comments.) Because of this, the modern moral landscape displays an undeniable paucity, if not full bankruptcy. And the immature, puritanical ground of our more sophisticated moral judgements is perhaps symptomatic of this comfortable dichotomy. Discussing pornography may well allow us to begin to think more subtly about a whole range of ethical issues and ethical judgements in general.

Utilitarian and Kantian vocabularies dominate moral thinking about contemporary issues to such an extent that their polar framing of all issues determines the conditions and limits of any rational discourse. There should, though, be an alternative. Virtue ethics has for a while been touted as just such an alternative, even if its treatment in most moral discourse is equivalent to an old spinster aunt at Christmas, whose opinions are listened to in a patronizing manner because it is better not to encourage her to continue. Such an attitude is a shame, but it is grounded in the fact that Kantian ethics and utilitarianism both seek to rationalize moral problems by identifying those features which are transcendental to a specific culture and can be applied universally across history. Such thinking may well corrupt what is actually important. Euthanasia, for example, was not a real moral problem for the Ancient Greeks since they knew that when you were seriously ill or wounded, you were probably going to die anyway. Making such a death as humane as possible was obviously the right ethical path. Modern medical technology changes the debate because life can be preserved at the cost of human dignity and with an increase, rather than an alleviation of suffering. Or a life can be preserved but such preservation will also raise the question about what a ‘life’ actually is and what is worth preserving. Technology, not thinking, raises such questions. Add in a cultural heritage that has a real, central commitment to the principle of the sanctity of life and we can see why the problem of euthanasia is a specific, cultural problem in the here and now. Attempting to find a solution solely in ahistorical utilitarian and Kantian responses, may well obscure the very problem that one is seeking to investigate.

Technology and heritage play an equal role in determining our intuitions concerning pornography. When the perception of sexual activity as a base pleasure that rather unfortunately accompanied the religious obligation to reproduce was dominant, the representation of such activities was predominantly morally wrong. When the representation of sexual activity was the exclusive pursuit of the rich and of the few who had the means to defy conventional normative systems, there was no real urgency in discussing the value of such images and their consumption. Society can tolerate the few idiosyncratic perverts such as D’Annuzio or Crowley, so long as it is just a few. However, the internet and generalized media coupled with the secularization of society have changed the terms of the debate. Everyone is at it; or so it seems. Pornography is a problem of the here and now, demanding a culturally sensitive ethical response. A grown up response free of schoolboy tittering, one might say.

The separation of ethical and political judgements, the simple belief in a positive or negative moral value to be attached to a set of objects, and the belief in the identification of universal properties that distinguish one set of objects (pornography) from another (literature, art, erotica) are all comfortable ways of thinking that are supported by our usual moral positions. But, perhaps there is a need to think in uncomfortable ways, to take some risks, in order to advance our general responses to those moral problems most urgently in need of discussion. But, let us start with pornography in order to attempt maturity in discussing a problem which most obviously encourages immaturity.

The present book, then, has two interrelated objectives. First, and most substantively, pornography itself is an ethical issue which still requires appropriate discussion because it is politically subject to sanction and morally subject to disapproval. The argument will dialectically proceed through the moral and political arguments in support of and against the production, exchange and consumption of pornography: offence; aesthetic disapproval; harm; toleration; exploitation; feminism; and equality. The aim of challenging the traditional framework is to argue that pornography may have a positive moral value but only if we can see through the immaturity of the more common arguments. Of course, the word ‘immaturity’ is at this point mere rhetoric and I plead for patience before dismissing it as merely so. The nature of the immaturity is, although this needs to be shown in some depth, a non-philosophical tendency to beg the question in a normatively silly way when defining what pornography actually is, as well as an inability to acknowledge a puritanical cultural heritage that sees sexual activity as worthless because it belongs to the so-believed baser side of human nature, probably an Enlightenment secularization of specific religious themes. Again, to reiterate, such a claim needs a more subtle presentation and that will follow.

More importantly, and the argument will hinge upon this, the immaturity that obstructs thinking through a proper rationalization of sexual identity and its representation centres upon the notion of objectification. By far the most sophisticated argument against the existence of pornography is that it objectifies individuals or a certain group, thus denying these individuals or groups recognition or treatment as equal subjects in society. Pornography fosters attitudes inhibiting equality. Objectification, though, adequately comprehended is a necessary part of human relationships and there is nothing necessarily coercive about the objectification of groups. A proper understanding of objectification, alienation and power should reveal the intimate connection between contemporary pornography and our own social reality, that is capitalism. Pornography and pornographic objects may be valuable. The conditional nature of that sentence, though, is very crucial, as most contemporary examples of the genre do not exhibit any moral value – often the opposite – but such empirical contingencies lead many thinkers to assume that there is a necessary relationship between pornography and moral wrongness, whether it be in instances of harm, objectification, or the reproduction of institutional inequality.

The other aim of the argument is to demonstrate that Hegelian social ethics is a viable alternative to the dominance of utilitarian and Kantian thinking on issues of interest to contemporary moral, political and legal debates. I shall use the moral problem of pornography to show that a sea change is required in our moral thinking to move away from a moral sphere insulated from social and political concerns. Hegelian social ethics engages with the substantial norms and values implicit in a society and discovered through hermeneutic interpretation of one’s cultural fabric (the realm of ‘right’). It is an ethical method that attempts to rationalize these values and norms with respect to two standards: one, coherence with the central axiomatic values of that culture (for example, liberty and equality); and, two, whether or not these central values and their concomitant institutions and policies (for example, capitalism) actually promote autonomous self-determination or inhibit it. The radical conclusion of this work will suggest that pornography, like other aesthetic objects, has a determinant role to play in the individual’s self-understanding of her or his identity. Pornography as a representation of sexual mores and practices can be didactic, like the other arts, and also can be a form of emancipation. Appropriate pornography can liberate human beings from immediate desires; allow agents to rationalize the sexual libido; demonstrate how to reconcile agents’ natural egoism with the roles required of sexual behaviour and, most importantly, allow agents to articulate particular preferences in a socially coherent manner. Of course, such a defence of pornography rests on a distinction between progressive and regressive forms of the discourse and one of the objectives of the argument is to demonstrate what a progressive pornography would actually be. Pornography is an aesthetic production and, like other aesthetic productions, constitutive of an agent’s self-understanding and a rational element of full social existence. It will argue that there can, and normatively should, exist progressive pornographic objects, and that such objects, like wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1 Risky Business
• Interlude 1 Sex and Luca
• 2 The Mull of Kintyre Is Not in Naples: The Definition of Pornography
• Interlude 2 Crepax and Manara
• 3 Oblique Suggestions, Polarized Pumpkin Eaters and Women Haters: The Morality of Pornography
• Interlude 3 The Marquis de Sade
• 4 Otherwise, Well Have Words: The Politics of Pornography
• Interlude 4 Baise-moi
• 5 Rae Langtons Photo: Domination, Subordination, Equality
• Interlude 5 The Devil in Miss Jones
• 6 I Cant Do It by Myself!: Social Ethics and Pornography
• Interlude 6 Guardami
• 7 Money-makers and Shadows
• Notes
• References
• Index