Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography

H. Maes, H. Maes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137367938
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

What happens when art and pornography meet? By providing a plurality of disciplinary approaches and theoretical perspectives this essay collection will give the reader a fuller and deeper understanding of the commonalities and frictions between artistic and pornographic representations.

Part I

Art or Porn: Clear Division or False Dilemma?

1

Pornography, Art and Porno-Art

Mari Mikkola¹

Introduction

Much of the porn-or-art debate has tended to turn on sexual arousal. Pornography is said to have the function or intention to sexually arouse its audience, while art does not. Sexual arousal need not be the sole intent of pornography; but it is considered to be its central or ultimate intent. In the current debate, this is seen as ‘the big stumbling block for any artistic redemption of pornography’ (Maes 2011b: 392); and the view that pornography is ‘centrally aimed at sexual arousal’, which is taken to be a necessary condition of pornography, is one that ‘almost all theorists’ agree with (Maes 2011a: 60). The following are some representative samples. Jerrold Levinson (who takes pornography and art to be mutually exclusive) claims that pornography has ‘a paramount aim’ of ‘the sexual satisfaction of the viewer’ and that pornography’s ‘central aim [is] to facilitate sexual arousal in the name of sexual release’ (2005: 229, 236). Further, pornography involves ‘images intended to sexually arouse in the interests of sexual release’ (ibid.: 230). Christy Mag Uidhir, who also endorses an exclusivist view, holds that ‘a necessary condition for something’s being pornography is the purpose of sexual arousal – [sexually arousing its audience is] what pornography does and what it is supposed to do’ (2009: 195).² Even Matthew Kieran, who criticizes Levinson’s view, takes pornography as such to seek ‘via the explicit representation of sexual behaviour and attributes, to elicit sexual arousal or desire’ (2001: 32). Though pornography may have other aims too (like artistic ones), ‘the primary goal of pornography’ according to Kieran is ‘the elicitation of sexual arousal’ (ibid.: 36). Hans Maes takes a different route to arguing against the exclusivist position, although he too accepts that pornography is ‘centrally aimed at bringing about sexual arousal’ (2011a: 60).

My contention is that Kieran and Maes are right in rejecting the exclusivist position. However, their arguments are misguided because, along with the exclusivists, they endorse a highly questionable and probably false assumption about the nature of pornography: that it is centrally or ultimately about sexual arousal. Pornographers use sexual imagery that can and does arouse. But looking at both historical and contemporary examples calls into question the view that this is (in some sense) the central aim of pornography. Determining such an aim is actually quite tricky and focusing on pornography’s sexual arousal is too simplistic. Let me be clear: I am not saying that pornography has nothing to do with sexual arousal – obviously it has. My point is that the standard focus on this sexual aspect of pornography misses something important, and hinders the possibility of settling the question about whether some x can be both art and pornography. In fact, I submit, there is no central thing that pornography ‘is about’, just as there is no central thing that art ‘is about’. There is, then, no prima facie reason for thinking that it is impossible for some x to be both pornography and art. Or so I will argue here.

Some clarifications are in order. First, my argument is not a radical feminist one that takes pornography to be about eroticized dominance and submission (for such a view, see MacKinnon 1987). Although pornography can be and sometimes is subordinating, I do not take this to be a necessary feature of pornography. Saying that, I will not provide a definition of ‘pornography’ or outline what are its necessary features. Rather, I will speak of ‘pornographic artefacts’. Ordinary intuitions (and philosophical elucidations) about the conditions that the term ‘pornography’ encodes differ and there is no agreement on what those necessary and sufficient conditions are. But it strikes me that intuitions about whether something is a pornographic artefact are fairly uniform: I have in mind particular films with sexually explicit content usually labelled ‘pornography’ and sold in particular outlets; magazines like Hustler; pictures we can find on the internet with ease; books with sexual scenes not (usually) sold in the ‘Literature’ sections of bookshops; and so on. Such pornographic artefacts typically have certain features: they are sexually explicit; contain nudity and scenes of a sexual nature; they have the potential to arouse sexually their viewers; and they are often used as ‘masturbation material’. However, I am not putting these features forward as the necessary conditions for something counting as pornography; they are merely typical features. Finally, my class of pornographic artefacts contains only those that are not obviously harmful. So, it does not cover child pornography or snuff movies. Given the clear harms that such works, pictures and images have on those depicted, involved and forced to participate in, I take it that they fall outside the scope of pornographic artefacts that are even prima facie candidates for being both art and pornography.³ When I speak of ‘pornographic artefacts’, I have in mind artefacts whose production does not (at least obviously) inflict comparable harms.

The chapter will proceed as follows. First, I will argue in more detail why pornography may not centrally be about sexual arousal. Then, I will propose a way to understand what makes some x (film, book, image) a pornographic artefact. Finally, I will suggest that following my formulation of what makes something a pornographic artefact we can see how some thing could count as an instance of (what I will call) ‘porno-art’. However, contra Maes, I suggest that this category is not one that already exists for us to simply recognize – it is a category that still requires invention. Further, the creation of some x that is both pornography and art leads to the creation of a wholly new category of things.

Pornography and sexual arousal

Sexual arousal is said to be the central aim or purpose of pornography: pornographers allegedly make pornographic artefacts with the intention of sexually arousing their audiences. Whether their works can also count as art hinges on whether they have some additional non-pornographic intentions that make this possible. But I will argue that things are much more complicated than this, which are revealed when we consider why pornographers make pornography. This shows that the intentions of pornographers are, perhaps surprisingly, much more varied and not clear-cut. I want to highlight two complications, which suggest that we should endorse a highly general account of pornographers’ intentions (namely, all we can say for certain is that pornographers intend to make pornography):

1. Producing sexually arousing material may be a means to some other end, rather than the end of pornographers per se.

2. The supposed pornographic intention of soliciting sexual arousal may be constitutively intertwined with other intentions in a way that makes it impossible to separate the central pornographic intention from additional non-pornographic intentions.

The following examples aim to advance these points. Consider a historical example. In her examination of pornography’s history, Lynn Hunt claims ‘if we take pornography to be the explicit depiction of sexual organs and sexual practices with the aim of arousing sexual feelings, then pornography was almost always an adjunct to something else until the middle or end of the eighteenth century’ (1993: 10). Pornography in this sense was widely used to ‘criticize religions and political authorities’ (ibid.), as was the case during the French Revolution when pornographic imagery was used to attack Marie Antoinette and the French Court. This, I contend, tells us two things. First, arousing sexual imagery was the means for social criticism and not obviously the end in itself. Second, it is difficult to separate the pornographic sexual intention in this case from the political revolutionary intention. This is so because the sexual arousal generated and presumably intended by the images is essentially tied to the particular figures depicted (like Marie Antoinette). Sexual arousal has an intentional component well demonstrated by Seiriol Morgan’s example of ‘fucking the Police’:

When I was a young man I had a friend who for obvious reasons was popularly known as ‘Johnny Drugs’. One summer, to everyone’s astonishment, Johnny had a brief sexual relationship with a female police officer. He cheerfully told me that his attraction to her was dramatically enhanced by the fact that she was in the police force, to the extent that he found himself repeating the inner mantra ‘I’m fucking the Police! I’m fucking the Police!’, as he was penetrating her. This activity, I was informed, had the effect of dramatically increasing the intensity of his physical pleasure, in particular his eventual orgasm. (2003: 7–8)

To accept that we can separate the pornographic sexual intention from other intentions, in the manner that even the critics of the exclusivist thesis like Kieran do, implicitly buys into an account of sexual desire that fails to take such intentionality of desire into account. Putting forward a full account of sexual desire is not possible here; but Morgan’s example undermines the idea that sexual arousal is entirely distinct and separable from other aspects of a pornographic work.

Some contemporary examples are also instructive. Consider contemporary US mass-produced pornography. This is no fringe industry: according to a 2004 CBS report (‘Porn in the USA’), Americans spend around $10 billion a year on pornographic materials. Call the makers of such materials ‘the mainstream pornographers’. This group’s interests were at the time represented in Washington by their very own lobbyist, Bill Lyon, who noted: ‘[the US porn industry] employs in excess of 12,000 people in California. And in California alone, we pay over $36 million in taxes every year. So it’s a very sizeable industry’ (ibid.). Further comments made by Lyon are illustrative: ‘[when I started as the lobbyist for the industry] I was rather shocked to find that [those involved] are pretty bright business people who are in it to make a profit. And that is what it’s about’ (ibid., my italics). When asked about the reactions he receives in Washington for lobbying for the porn industry, Lyon responds:

Initially, I think there’s a degree of shock. But when you explain to them [the politicians] the size and the scope of the business, they realize, as all politicians do, that it’s votes and money that we’re talking about ... This is an extremely large business and there’s a great opportunity for profits in it. (Ibid.)

Profit and money play a huge role in the production of mainstream pornographic artefacts. This raises serious questions about whether eliciting sexual arousal is the central intention or aim of mainstream pornographers. To clarify: I am in no doubt that pornographers intend to make sexually arousing artefacts; that they sexually arouse is not an unintended accident of the production process. But whether this is their ultimate intention is far from obvious to me. Instead, it is quite conceivable that making money is the central intention and aim of mainstream pornographers, and that the use of arousing sexual imagery is just a very effective means to do so.

This is an empirical matter and not something we can deduce a priori by examining pornographic artefacts. So (one might claim) I am wrong to focus on the money-making incentive of pornographers. True – but my opponents (who take pornography to be about sexual arousal without further empirical investigation) may also be deeply misguided in that they eschew the empirical reality of pornography’s profit-generating potential. For instance, take another large industry, like car manufacturing. Cars enable us to travel and get from one place to another. But it strikes me as false to claim that therefore the automobile industry is about giving people the freedom to travel at their own convenience. Rather, given the profit-making aim of the industry, it is about making money by means of giving people the freedom to travel, creating certain desires, perhaps even blocking the development of a workable public transport network. It is not inconceivable to me that the same could be true of the pornography industry – just because pornographic artefacts may and do arouse their viewers, it does not follow that therefore such artefacts are centrally about sexual arousal.

Now, mass-produced mainstream pornography is not the only game in town. Consider so-called ‘alternative pornography’. I do not have in mind here the alternative wings of big mainstream production companies, like that of Vivid Alt (which is the ‘alternative’ wing of Vivid Video, one of the largest pornography production companies in California). I have in mind the small but growing number of independent pornographers – the ones who describe themselves as genuinely alternative to the mainstream. Many such pornographers are females with explicitly feminist beliefs and aims. Call these the ‘grass-roots independent pornographers’. One of the most famous examples from this direction is the film Dirty Diaries consisting of 12 shorts of ‘feminist porn’ (see www.miaengberg.com/dd/). The film is accompanied by a ten-point manifesto, which is instructive. Out of these points, only one specifically pertains to the intention of making something sexually arousing, the call to create an alternative to the mainstream porn industry by making different kinds of ‘sexy films’. Other manifesto points include fighting against: prevalent beauty myths; capitalism and patriarchy in general and in the mainstream porn industry; and censorship that represses images of liberated female sexuality. They also include fighting for: a change in our conceptions of and judgements about female sexuality; reproductive and bodily control; and diversity in expressions of sexuality. The critically relevant point is this: if we merely focus on the ultimate intention to make a ‘dirty’ sexually arousing picture, we seriously miss the point of the film. And since the entire porn-or-art debate starts from the assumption that the central or ultimate intention of pornographers is to make something sexually arousing, philosophers have potentially based the entire debate on a misguided assumption.

Dirty Diaries is not the only example of this kind. Let’s briefly look at some interviews of grass-roots feminist pornographers.⁴ When asked why she directs porno films, Petra Joy (one of the best known independent feminist pornographers) states that she aims to portray a realistic picture of sexuality and to provide an alternative female perspective to mainstream pornography with its male point of view. The main difference Joy sees between her work and mainstream pornography is that, unlike the latter, the former is not profit-driven. Therefore, it is possible to retain ‘artistic freedom’ (Feigenblatt 2010: 12). Erika Lust is another explicitly feminist porn-film maker, who wants to bring in the female perspective which is entirely missing in mainstream pornography. Further, her reason for directing pornographic films is that ‘there are no good ones!’ (ibid.: 15). As she sees it, mainstream pornography has poor to non-existent storylines, the films are badly made with low production values and they portray utterly unrealistic and laughable sex scenes. This is because (in her view) the mainstream aims to make ‘fast-food-porn’ in order to make maximum profit at a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I Art or Porn: Clear Division or False Dilemma?
• Part II The Aesthetics of Pornography: Philosophical and Ethical Considerations
• Part III The Aesthetics of Pornography: Historical and Cultural Perspectives
• Part IV Pornographic Art: Critical Explorations
• Part V Pornographic Art: Theory in Practice
• Index