Pornography Follows Media or Is Media Developed For Porn?
Posted: Monday, September 05, 2011
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
Pornography has always been with us. Every time communication took a leap, so did pornography. I do agree that some of what others call porn is really art, but we're talking porn here. It is an industry fueled by men. Men think about it . . . a lot. Young men think about sex all the time, their bodies rebel against a repressive society, everything excites them. Men have been the inventors and the seers of civilization and the future. They have also been the dominate sexual force. There are women who participate in the making, marketing and buying of porn, but it will never be the same quantities of the men.
There has always been something terribly pathetic about pornography. Lack of social skills, professional standing, too cheap for a date, overworked and out of time, or a physical need buried in the male psyche that women will never understand, pornography becomes necessary as a poor second to actual company and contact with human beings.
What's really troubling is in this industrialized progressive society, everyone knows what pornography is and just about everyone has seen it. Ugly as it sometimes is, sticking to the underbelly of civilization, it has never gone away. Forbidden fruit being the most desirable?
A brief history of porn and the media:
There is porn on cave walls. This is not shown to the general public. It's actually very rough images of sexual conquest, and a lot of people see that as porn. It was part of a very hard, short life for cave dwellers and this was a natural function and diversion.
Enter the empires of Greece, Rome, India and China (circa approximately 1000 BC to 500 AD). These civilizations refined pornography with specific gods, specific holidays, specific coming-of-age rituals, an entire society strata of courtesans, eunuchs, slaves, concubines, prostitutes and everything that went with sensual pleasures -- including books, tapestries, teachers, feasts and drinking.
Jump ahead a few centuries. The Middle Ages (5th through 15th century), throw in the Dark Ages (10th through 11th century), and highlight it with The Renaissance and porn follows the line of art and sculpture. This is truly where art and porn intersect and collide. After Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel was finished, all the nudes were painted with loin cloths at the Last Judgment. This is only one example of art going both ways in the porn world. Just about all the old masters had paintings that were commissioned in private or works they kept for themselves, anatomy studies or porn -- only they knew. Today, so many pieces are considered fine art.
Enter the printing press (approximately 15th century), and moveable type, and the world opens up for the common folk. It wasn't just bibles on the Gutenberg Press. Mass production of paper, prints and books was not only for the intellectual any more. Engravings and etchings quickly followed suit, again, under the guise of art. Don't get me wrong, a lot of it is art. This is simply a time line.
Photography developed around the 1830s. Because of the optical illusion "persistence of vision" (an image stays on the retina longer than an instant, blending into the next image), movies were the next visual feast. Live yet passive entertainment, this porn was refined and distributed to 'adult only' cinemas. The image of men pulling down their hats and tying up the front of their trench coats forever haunts the back rows of "art" theatres. Hollywood actors and actresses, while waiting for their big break would make "blue" films -- though poorly shot, they were more than anyone had ever seen outside the bedroom with real people. This was considered underground, hidden from the general public but still available.
Early television was not porn friendly, as an open cultural media, adult content was not sanctioned yet. Surprisingly, murder, violence, verbal abuse, and a host of other action stories could be viewed, but no one making love to anyone, especially by consent was deemed appropriate viewing.
But in the swinging 70s, media innovations sky rocketed porn to new heights. Or perhaps the demand for porn made it necessary to invent new delivery systems. The baby-boomers were still coming out of the Free Love 60s and more than ever before, people could talk about sex and ask for pornography. Polaroid instant self-developing photographs and VHS/Beta video cassette formats brought porn into each and every home, hotel room and adult theatre on a world-wide scale. Porn actors and actresses were beginning to be known by name and quality of product. Anyone could make porn at home -- no embarrassing developing, no editing, no outside help was needed to produce or view porn.
Cable television with multi-channels and ease of transmission, took porn into every house and on every television, on demand, any time. There would never be a way to stop pornography, assuming there was a call for that. With porn on every media, available any time, anywhere, where does anyone begin to contain it. Or should we?
Porn will always follow the development of communications. Now with the internet, no one even has to buy anything, there are massive numbers of free sites waiting for everyone, over eighteen or not. To try to contain porn now is almost impossible, and the question is: should it be contained? Forbidden fruit automatically claims a certain excitement, like prohibition. Sex is a basic human instinct, a hard wired drive for continuation of the species, and between consenting adults, is there a problem?
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)Wow. So well written and intellectual. I love that this isn't a "go get'em 'cause they're evil" or "porn is as American as apple pie" type article. You've done a great job of presenting both sides to this controversial topic. And, it's truly a conversation for everyone because there is a style of pornography for everyone. Lastly, I really liked your hinting at the transition of pornography to the status of "art" or even "fine art." Sometimes, all it takes is a couple of decades, right?
Interesting, Octavia, and well-written. Ever since I was a 'tv repairman' decades ago, I've heard the rumor that VHS and Betamax became commercially viable because of the home porn market. I've suspected the same of Polaroid cameras, too.
Not to be crass, but in the past few weeks there's been a lot of discussion in the tech world about some statements that technology Guru Clay Shirky wrote in his latest book, and then later on twitter. I can't find the exact quote, but it was something to the effect of "for any new social media platform to work, it must offer at least the possibility that it will help a person get laid."
I'm fascinated with social media, but I've never looked at it this way! We know that the most popular social media platform is Facebook, and we also know that it started out as a way for Mark Zuckerberg to meet girls in college. Maybe Facebook should be included in the history of pornography?
I think technically, all forms of communication were developed to get lucky with someone else. Otherwise, a hermit's life would be infinitely more attractive than it is. So what? Ever since cells split we've all be trying to get back together. I think it's just that trying to hide it seems so silly. Take away the "forbidden fruit" aspect, and it's just another facet of existence. Ahhh, food for thought . . .
I think whatever people want to do with their sexual drive is their business, and I like that you've avoided the morality thing. What I don't like about porn is that it so often demeans women. It bothers me that people get off on that, and I don't like it that women let themselves be used in that way. I also get scared at how the boundaries have gotten very blurred between fairly innocuous porn and dangerous stuff - involving violence and children. It's all got out of control now with the internet.
I agree with Jennifer in that it demeans women and children.... probably men too if truth were known, eh?
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