pornography, in creativity and mediocrity

Actors can ~act~ like they enjoy something, whether it's eating food, having sex, listening to music, or anything else, while ~actually~ doing it, and can even enjoy it while they're acting like they enjoy it. They can expand on what they would normally express, and play a role -- recreate reality -- for the camera, audience or each other. And such a recreation of reality doesn't stop being a recreation of reality merely because you, personally, are uncomfortable with its sexual content.

Johnathan-

Thank you, since you seem more blessed with the art of succinctness than I, for saying what I have been at a loss to express without pages of theory. I do wish to provide some examples.

I've met Candida Royalle,

http://www.candidaroyale.com/about.aspx
a pornographer and ex-porn star, whose mission is life is to create an an erotic cinema for what she sees as a more related female sexuality. She spends as much time staging a sex scene as any other director would on a scene of comparable length (granted an indie budget). She chooses actors and actresses among other things for apparent or expressed mutual chemistry, working with real-life couples wherever possible. I personally don't quite share her outlook and sense of life, which seems to imply that 'romantic' and 'tender' sexuality is specifically feminine, but she is certainly an artist expressing her vision in a pornographic medium. In terms of artistic ability, I would consider her work high but not spectacular- though in the historical perspective of the stumbling first steps of an art form, I would not be harsh on her; Howard Roark would not have built skyscrapers if he had lived in a culture where mud huts were considered the nature of architecture. Nevertheless, she is one of a number of a new generation of porn directors, most of them women, who take themselves seriously as artists. Some of them have fought terrible battles; Annie Sprinkle,

http://www.anniesprinkle.org/, an independent porn actress and former sex worker whose dazzlement is far more to my style, was censured personally by Jesse Helms.

It should be remembered that, contra stereotypes, there is a section of contemporary sex workers (of which those in the porn industry are a subset) who are highly educated; I am far from the first person to transition from the humanities or liberal arts to sex work. This is true for a number of reasons; sex work is an an available means to buy time and liesure for writing; its cultural climate is far more tolerant of nonconformity than most American institutions; sex work's rhythm and psychology is compatible with the psychology of many artists and literary intellectuals where straight jobs are sometimes not. Ultimately, as I wrote down in a recent poem, sex work has and always has has a serious intellectual side for all of the social reasons why women of intelligence had little choice but to become courtesans in previous ages; for some women, things have not changed all ~that~ much. Aside, many contemporary sex workers are very much inspired by their continuity with an aesthetic and spiritual heritage; unfortunately, my own professional code will not allow me to defend this by naming examples (I may be able to answer private questions on this). But I can say that while I often hear people reacting with surprise than an escort could be so intellectual, I assure that it's not all that particularly unusual, although a specifically philosophical education is a rarity.

I wish I was better educated in pornography myself, but I recommend those who want to see for themselves browse the video portion of the Good Vibrations catalogue.
Good Vibrations http://goodvibes.com/

is a sex shop here in California that was set up by pro-sex feminists, many of them sex workers, as a counterblast to the kind of feminism that has given the concept a bad name. GVs sells sex toys, books, and videos, and conducts after-hours classes on topic related to sex- their mission is to celebrate sexuality in every form, and their products are the highest quality,and many of the books and videos are nearly impossible to find in mainstream sex or porn shops. Many libertarians do not realize it, but PC feminism has been sharply contested within the feminist movement, not only by recanting moderates like Betty Friedan, but by sex-positive radicals demanding the liberation of desire from both patriarchal and sexually-repressive norms, and the PC feminists are clearly by now an old guard hanging on to power in the subcultures where such ideologies are made- I know very personally because PC feminists are usually viciously hostile to transgender women and sex workers, and yet I have recieved relatively little rejection here in San Francisco, not even in Valencia or Oakland.

Aside the politics for a moment however, however, I seriously suggest that those who wish to question whether pornography is a form of art- and I say that in full awareness that 99% or so is the equivalent of the visual art in hallmark cards- to investigate the best, not the worst, examples of the genre and decide for themselves whether this is a tragically lost excellence of high potential or whether pornography as such deserves classification in its traditional sub-aesthetic Inferno.

my regards,

Pyrophora Cypriana ))(*)(( - "not all those who wander are lost

Post 41

Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 10:25pm

Clearly, aesthetic considerations can apply to erotica. And a person with artistic skill can certainly make porn artistically, but I'm still having a hard time seeing porn as a serious artform. I guess I look at it from the perspective of a male: I see porn as a sexual stimulant, nothing more. For example, someone could scuplt a dildo with great artistic skill, but at the end of the day, it's still a dildo, right?

That said, I certainly see possibilities where an explicit sex scene in the context of a great drama might be worthwhile. This is only because the explicit scene is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

Post 42

Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 10:17pm

Michael wrote,
"So let�s switch gears a bit, Jonathan, do you think pornography is art in the same way that movies are?"

If your earlier statement -- "I draw the line at explicit sexual engagement of real people in photos or film" -- is the definition of pornography, then, yes, pornography can be art in the same way that non-sexually explicit films can.

Michael wrote,
"Do you think that art has any defining limitations or that anything can be art depending on context?"

Yes, I think there are defining limitations. Since this is an Objectivist forum, let's use Rand's. Can images of explicit sexual engagement of real people in photos or film be "a selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments" in the same way that non-sexual engagement of real people in photos or film can? Yes, they can.

Best,
J

Post 43

Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 11:10pm

Jeanine, I think you are arguing with Michael about something he hasn't said. You say, if I understand you, that pornography can be artistic; he is saying that pornography is not art.

Mme. Branden-

To clarify, I am making two statements,

(i) that art can be pornography,
                                                  and
(ii) that pornography qua pornography functions by the same methods as art.

As for whether pornography *is* art, this is based on a complicated question of whether the response to value in sexuality is different in kind or merely a special case of the response to value is art. I believe the latter, but this is a complex and radical notion that our language and society makes very counterintuitive,so I am not for now defending this thesis. I am at this point asserting that aesthetic and sexual objects are valued by a homologous process, and that pornography can only arouse by an implicit appeal to the values that determine the form of an individual's sexual desire. Despite Rand's explicit statements on pornography, this conclusion seems much more in line with her theory of sexuality, which I find myself surprised to concur with while most Objectivists have moved on to sociobiology.

Yet in a larger perspective, Rand's spiritual theory of sex is not so unusual- not only in Plato and Nietzsche, but Blake, Freud, Sartre, and Reich all held variants of the same perspective; there is even a strain of this view within Christianity; C.S. Lewis shows strong traces of it. What is common to all these theories is that erotic emotion (usually just eros) is in itself given in human existence but that the nature of desire is not innately determined; this view is also a common theme in some forms of Pagan, gnostic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist spirituality. I think in this case the modern world's hegemonic concepts, including the vast majority of the pornography industry and its customers (and my customers.... ~sigh~) have a very shallow sense of sexuality which they take as simply a given natural fact. Quite seriously, I believe this is the same issue as your recent piece on addiction; the majority of people are self-hypnotized into experiencing their sexuality as given biological drives, but it is the same issue as the view that terrible cravings for cigarettes are natural given- which is why I was kicking myself for not reaching your conclusions on my own. It is simply my own personal experience that sexual desire is far more mutable than people now believe; in my recent life I have altered my gender preference, experienced full-body orgasms, and learned to become erotically inflamed by changing perspective via a shift in persona; some pornography which once excites me no longer does so, and much that once did nothing is now overwhelming. Simply put, none of this makes sense unless one constructs sexual desire on the model of art; this is precisely how aesthetic 'tastes' change and expand. And we must remember that art also has a physical basis in the senses yet that is no objection to its essentially conscious nature; indeed, I think sexuality would be far better classified as a sense than a drive.

I wish I had my copy of Ayn Rand, the Russian Radical, because Chris's discussion of Russian dialectical and organicist theories of sexuality is very relevant here; the concept of sexual desire as "spiritual" and highly mutable and reflective of one's sense of life has precedents in Plato and Nietzsche which to my estimate echo loudly in Chris' discussion of the Russian Silver Age. I wish I could prove this more than coincidence, but Rand's theories of sex are conspicuously similar- though definitely not identical- to the erotic tradition in philosophy that has greatly inspired me. My argument for pornography's artistic value is premised on a notion that human sexual desire is not in form but only in inheritance biological. This seems strange enough to moderns that even most Objectivists have functionally abandoned the substance of Rand's theory of the nature of sex, keeping only her sexual morality where sex is teleologically oriented towards romantic love.  Effectively, most Randians now believe something like: sexual desire is mostly biology, but romantic love is based on values.  This doesn't seem logical to me; the implication is that only the friendship component of love (assuming Sciabarra's reworking of Rand's concept of love) is value-based; the sex is more-or less biology; but in this case the Objectivist would treat romantic love as mostly a special case of friendship and not place romantic or sexual love on a special pedestal. Or perhaps the difference is that I think of friendship as something already as demanding as Objectivists think concerning love (Aristotle's "friendship of the good"); Rand did portray friendship in this matter, but her theories never articulated it, and ironically in regard to friendship I might take a more "highest ideal" notion than many Objectivists. And ironically I simply think Rand's radical value-based notion of sexuality simply recaptures a lost and much-needed truth.

BTW, I do want to say that while I do not regard sexual values as biologically given, I do think it is both possible and very likely that a human being may begin with, not innate drives, but an array innate percepts and/or concepts available to awareness, which can be changed but until and if not changed will determine a course of action like any other ideas, including in the sexual realm, where heredity has likely highly clustered them.  It it quite possible also that changing these ideas may be prohibitively difficult, but it not because of inherent desires but only because of the immense difficulty of changing a complex array of likely subconscious and imperfectly integrated premises. This is another theory that is difficult to explain, but thankfully Roderick Long had addressed the general principles in "Prisoners of the Helix" http://www.praxeology.net/unblog.htm, search for 'prisoners of the helix' and "Slip out of those Genes" http://praxeology.net/unblog09-02.htm#04. Oddly, I know four Randians, including my former self, who seem to have come up with this theory independently to reconcile empirical fact with axiomatic volition.

I also think that hormones and physiology may influence what sexual values are more "profitable" to an individual, but this is also very complicated. Still, none of this changes the spiritual nature of sexuality any more that the physical basis for competitive sport changes the spiritual nature of its value.

That's all for now.

my regards,

Pyrophora Cypriana   ))(*)((   - "not all those who wander are lost"

Post 44

Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 11:29pm

I think that whether or not the sex act is actually performed is immaterial to the issue of the artistic merits of pornography. Many actors actually dine if it's called for in the script and even in non-pornographic movies there have been actors and actress actually engaged in physical lovemaking where the script called for it.

Is it possible to make a movie about sex (with many/mostly explicit scenes of lovemaking and a major plot emphasis on sexual situations) and have it remain in the realm of art, or does the strong emphasis on sex automatically place it into the realm of pornography? Does the sex have to be tied to love?

Is it a matter of intended purpose, i.e. in which one makes this kind of movie for contemplation instead of (or in addition to) sexual arousal? Would such a movie have to be crafted with exceptional artistic skill in order to elevate it into art if it's possible? Can anyone tell me if my idea that follows below, would be art or not?

I have considered the idea of writing an opera that would be about a girl's emerging sexuality. Amy is a English major around the age of 20, who is intelligent, confident, and beautiful However, she is largely unaware of herself sexuality. She never was into the dating scene as most of her time was spent in joyous study. She is happy with herself, her worldview, and how she lives her life. But she has yet to experience love, heartbreak, and desire, and it's beginning to fustrate her. It's not that she hadn't tried to find someone, but she did not know how to meet people. Her confidence and competence and passion for knowledge set her apart from her parents, her teachers, and her peers. She didn't go to parties to drink and revel in meaningless sexual 'experimentation'. That kind of experimenting has nothing to do with the kind of life that she lives. She will not go to church. Religion has never made any sense to her. She found better answers to the questions of life. In one of her classes she meets Sam, a collegue whose strict sense of discipline is driven by his/her (I've not decided on a gender for this character) deeply passionate commitment to his/her writing and is matched only by his/her outgoing and jovial sense of life, the two of them begin a relationship that begins as a meeting of minds that evolves into a strong competitive relationship. The sense of competition unexpected turn when both enter a prestigious literary competition in which they must write a short story where the idea of 'flirting with disaster' is used in some relation to the story. The top two winners are honored at a dinner where they are awarded a first and second place prize and both stories are read to an audience of distinguished writers and intellectuals. Sam wins second place while Amy doesn't win anything. Amy's disappointed at her defeat. Sam invites Amy to be her/his companion for the reception. When Sam reads her/his story, Amy is suprised at the fact that her story has many erotic undertones. After that evening, Amy finds herself fighting a desire to be with Sam intimately. And so the story begins...

There would be some (perhaps quite a few) sexually explicit scenes, but all would remain central to the development of a plot and the main character herself. I'm not currently pursuing this at the moment due to time constraints and the fact that I would like to be a bit more professionally advanced before taking on this ambitious project.

My general concept is exploring the sexuality of a female charcter that resembles a young Dagny Taggart through a relationship with a character (gender undecided) whose sense of life resembles a mix of Fransisco's and Dominque's. Obviously there has to be a lot more to the story than just sex in order for this characterization to come across. To allow for this the opera would have to be set in multiple acts. One of the reason's I have not decided on Sam's gender is that I believe the story would be great either way. If I made Sam a man, it would have a slightly broader appeal for an audience. If I made her a woman, it would add even more angles for the story to develop though I would have to be careful that a lesbian relationship retains the emphasis on relationship and not lesbian.

You've read this far? I'm impressed.
Adam
(Edited by Adam Buker on 11/16, 11:38pm)

Post 45

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - 4:24am

Pornography is a degradation of those involved. Sure explicit sex can be a tool for the artist. But human development should be primary. Art should be secondary.

Sex is a crucial component in our lives. It can be a positive or negative experience but it can't be an indifferent one. Pornography disturbs me because I hate to witness people living such empty lives. The plot becomes irrelevant. It's like a gangster movie where the star gets shot in the head, but in this case, the bullets are real.

Post 46

Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 11:06am

There is a conceptual misunderstanding going on here.

In The Life of Helen Keller, there was a catalytic scene in which Helen grasps the concept �water�. And that then opened up the whole world of understanding.

That kind of thing is missing here and I don�t have the ability of Miss Sullivan to communicate the conceptual nature of art to you and, apparently, neither does Rand.

It does feel like a kind of hopeless effort running around and scribbling �repetitive concepts� into your hands��photography doesn�t re-create; it reproduces�photography doesn�t re-create�doesn�t re-create...hardcore sex on film is pornography not art�not art�

Knowledge is a funny thing, personally I think it is important to understand what something means before one can dismiss the concept or have an opinion about it. Jonathan, of course that is just my idiosyncrasy. I don�t think you grasp what Rand means in her definition of art, photography doesn�t have a similar conceptual nature as painting, it�s a literal transcription�it�s a�

There are some things that are ends in themselves, death is an ultimate end. We all see death daily in movies, the action, often, is rather explicit making the killing look real. In horror films they like to explicitly show the spilling of guts, etc. None of that is real�they don�t really kill people in movie, they don�t really spill their guts�you could not ethically or realistically ask of actor to kill. Can I get an agreement on this from you?

There are snuff films, this is not art, it is a documentation of a real killing. The conceptual deference between a snuff film and a movie (art) is that movie is the actualization of writer�s story and the snuff is film simply shows you what really happened. I draw the analogy that hardcore explicit sex is to pornography what a real murder is to a snuff film.

Michael

(Edited by Newberry on 11/18, 11:08am)

Post 47

Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 12:36pm

Hmm, it does seem there are conceptual inconsistency in the definition of art.

From my Webster Dictionary, which is always at my hand, art is "the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance."

By this definition, I don't even think that all movies, or even all paintings, musics, fictions, plays are necessarily art. Some movies are so bad, they had to be the opposite of what art stands for. I am sure those movie makers were not at all aimed at producing something beautiful or something with any significance.

There are distinctions between art and entertainment, or between art and a physical exercise.
Art can entertain, and a beautiful figure skating routine can turn into art. I think the stimuli have to be above the physical and physiological levels.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 11/18, 12:50pm)

Post 48

Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 2:10pm

Adam, the Opera sounds fantastic GO FOR IT!

Michael

Post 49

Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 4:32pm

Michael, my own Annie Sullivan, vented,
"It does feel like a kind of hopeless effort running around and scribbling �repetitive concepts� into your hands��photography doesn�t re-create; it reproduces�photography doesn�t re-create�doesn�t re-create...hardcore sex on film is pornography not art�not art�

"Knowledge is a funny thing, personally I think it is important to understand what something means before one can dismiss the concept or have an opinion about it. Jonathan, of course that is just my idiosyncrasy. I don�t think you grasp what Rand means in her definition of art, photography doesn�t have a similar conceptual nature as painting, it�s a literal transcription�it�s a�"

Michael,
A movie (excluding animation, of course) is a series of photographs of people and things which exist in reality. Yet you believe that such photographs can be art. Why? Because, as you say, the movie is "the actualization of a writer�s story," and even though the actors being photographed are real people, the fact that they are ~playing the roles of characters~ makes the series of photographs a recreation of reality.

In playing characters in a film, actors may eat and enjoy real food, make real sexual contact with each other, drive real cars on real streets during real rainstorms in real cities during the real days of a real summer, or engage in any number of other real activities, none of which would alter the fact that they are playing roles in "the actualization of a writer�s story."

And if a movie -- a series of photographs -- can be art because it uses real entities in fictional roles, then a single frame of film can do the same. For example, if I were to take a photograph of actors dressed and posed as ancient mourners at a hero's deathbed (similar to, let's say, David's The Death of Socrates), I will have "recreated" reality, not merely "reproduced" it; I will not have made a mere "documentary" image of things as they are, or a "literal transcription," but will have created art -- a visual, fictional representation.

Michael wrote,
"There are some things that are ends in themselves, death is an ultimate end. We all see death daily in movies, the action, often, is rather explicit making the killing look real. In horror films they like to explicitly show the spilling of guts, etc. None of that is real�they don�t really kill people in movie, they don�t really spill their guts�you could not ethically or realistically ask of actor to kill. Can I get an agreement on this from you?"

I wouldn't ask an actor to kill or die. But if an actor wished to actually die while playing the role of a character who dies, the film would not cease to be art. Your (and my) discomfort with it would not stop it from being a recreation of reality. The fact that the actor's death would be used to portray the character's death would not erase from existence the character, story, or the purpose for filming it.

Love,
Helen
(Edited by Jonathan on 11/18, 9:14pm)

Post 50

Friday, November 19, 2004 - 2:48pm

Deleted

Saturday, October 22, 2005 - 10:26pm

     Some people seem to have a hard time distinguishing a representation from a photograph, a fiction from a documentary, and a performance from an occurrence, merely because an element of the latters may be a part of the formers.

     An actor walks across the stage in a 'live' performance, or movie. He is not 'pretending' to walk. He is walking. Ergo, 'art' inherently referentially includes all actual occurrences as part of what makes art "art"? I-don't-think-so. Such actual occurrences are necessary, true, for a representation or performance, but, we're talking the scaffolding for art...not the art itself. For instance, Di Nero must've eaten 7 hamburgers for all the takes done in a scene with Stallone in Copland where De Niro is arguing with him during a lunch break. He's not pretending he's biting the burger and talking with his mouth full; he IS doing it all. This is not 'acting'; this is using a 'schtick' as a prop in the acting of the character's anger. --- Otherwise, one might as well say that the stone of a statue is itself inherently part of what makes the statue a sculpture (nm an 'art' sculpture.) As far as I'm concerned, not so, for sure. There is a diff.

     Re what I call 'dynamic' art, a musician, skater, dancer, or singer is 'performing.' They are truly skating, etc, true, but, there's a diff 'tween what they're actually doing and their performing the actions. Think of the scene in Singing In The Rain with Gene Kelley dancing, singing, splashing in the rainy street. Is he actually doing it? Yes. (Let's skip "Is it an actual street?") But, what exactly then is he performing if he's really doing it? What he's performing is that it is actually spontaneous, and, that he isn't Gene Kelley doing it. Rehearsals are where all that there is to point out is that he, Gene Kelley, is actually doing it; not the performance itself. The former is documentary (if filmed/taped/photo'd); the latter is art. --- Same applies to skaters, ballet, etc. One is practicing at creating a work of (in this case, dynamic) art; the other is the 'actual' creation. So, I'm with Newberry on this, granted, hard to pin down, difference. This includes actors that perform a go-through-the-motion of kissing via their characters vs the actors non-actingly actually kissing. Again, there is a diff.

    Now, back to Porno...

    Well, it's clear that the term really doesn't mean the same to all users (sorta like the term 'fairness'), ergo, most arguers are working from different pages of their favorite porno books/movies. Worse: it seems that no one realizes this. Some talk about soft-core, others about erotica, and the rest about what makes the subject interesting to legislators: hard-core. Let's work on the h-c angle; methinks ideas about the others will thence be easier to disentangle.

     It's safe to say that no movie is h-c without a scene that's unequivocally h-c (male tumescent, minimum; penetration [of some kind]/ejac max), so, primarily, we're talking about scenes in a story (book or film) and only secondarily whether or not they relevently 'fit' into the whole story.

     Much has been said re the h-c/XXX industry, but, to expect art from those who find it legally-safest to stick to the tried-and-true is to expect Disney Corporation to do a sequel to Deep Throat. Nevahappin. Apart from this...

      The main conern that I read is "Could h-c Porn be done artistically?" --- (Depending on definitions [rarely used in this thread], I'd say some soft-core has been done, and fairly well, in some R-rated movies.)

      However, re h-c, I got some thoughts, but, I really don't know. Like actual walking, there can be an 'art' in how to do it different ways (Kama Sutra and all that), indicating different things about the actor(s) character. But, unlike walking, there's an obviously 'personal' aspect in the behaviour that I think can't be separated in watching someone doing it. On the one hand, if Kubrick, in Eyes Wide Shut had Tom and Nicole (before their actual relationship prob) in an h-c scene, conceivably the act could have been 'artistically' done showing different aspects of their characters' views of each other (beyond mere desire) whilst one simultaneously knew that the 2 really (then anyway) cared for each other. A slight difference, though, with Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet (though that scene wasn't in Bill's original, of course) re R&J's one night together. You knew these 2, as actors, otherwise had little to do with each other. So, if they did an h-c scene in the movie, the whole 'milieu' would be different in watching. In both movies, whether the actors themselves or...fill-in doubles (pardon the pun)...were used, the scene itself might be inherently distracting, causing one to wonder how the actors as actors viewed each other. --- Whereas with standard XXX stuff, we all know that all participants have no prob regarding each other as prostitutes/whores, whether they use the names or not. They couldn't care less about who they're doing it with...as long as the other has proof of health, and they get paid enough. Ironically, possibly, this is where 'art' can be applied, and be non-distracting; but, the industry practices, as pointed out, pretty well prevent this. Yet, methinks exceptions had been made: Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, and one or two other 'old' classics. As an aside, I never saw the performance Deep Throat, believe it or not, though I caught the documentary Inside Deep Throat (recent; worth checking out).

     Overall, I'd have to say that, cinematically, a director, or even writer, could be an artist in handling an h-c scene; but I really don't think that any 'actor' could be called an 'artist' in THAT scene, even if they are 'pretending' a performance of caring for the other...unless they're 'unknowns.'

     A last point on this porn-movies as a supposed 'genre': it has to lack. If all that a movie is seen in terms of is that it has an h-c scene, it's lost worthwhileness already. Little different than talking about a blonde-movie.

     Finally, apart from 'dynamic' art, specifically re painting, I have no doubt that h-c porn definitely has a place (along with s-c) that deserves the proper name of erotica...when done in a better-than-graffiti style.


LLAP
J:D

P.S: I have nothing to say re the debate about static photos being regarded as 'art.' I think Rand is right, given her definition of art, and her reasons about photos showing nothing more than skill, but...mesuspects some caveats might definitely be in order there. I just don't know what ones. So, Playboy Centerfold photos (et al) may not be 'art' (though the subjects are a piece-of-work), but, then again...

Post 52

Sunday, October 23, 2005 - 3:56am

Once again - there is a difference between aesthetics and art, for there are many things which are aesthetical yet not be art, else you run the slippery slope of everything being art and thus obliterating its meaning...

Post 53

Monday, October 24, 2005 - 11:29am