Porn - Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink (27 page)

Erotica, as I have characterized it, serves more than a narcissistic interest; it may approach works of fine art if the viewer is able to intuit the work on the basis of its aesthetic expression alone. If so, then it bears a much closer relation to fine art than it does to pornography.

What this essay amounts to is an attempt to categorize erotica and pornography in contrast to norms of fine art. We will admit that more issues emerge about fine art than are answered here. Be that as it may, the parameters I have suggested, and the reasons given for drawing them, demonstrate fundamental differences between two types of work that are often fused together: the allurement of erotica and the vulgarity of pornography.

NOTES

1
For an example of an erotic object, as opposed to a pornographic one, consider the scene of a Tahitian woman swimming nude in a lagoon or the film of Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to President Kennedy.

2
A. Berndtson,
Art, Expression and Beauty
(Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 267.

3
J. Feinberg, “Obscenity, Pornography, and the Arts: Sorting Things Out,” in B. Leiser (ed.)
Values in Conflict: Life, Liberty, and the Rules of Law
(New York: Macmillan, 1981). Reprinted in R.Trevas, A. Zucker, and D. Borchert (eds.)
Philosophy of Sex and Love
(Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1997), p. 291.

4
S. Pepper,“Principles of Aesthetic Design,”
Principles of Art Appreciation
(New York, Harcourt, 1949).

5
A. Schopenhauer,
The World as Will and Representation
,
vol
. 1, trans. E. F. Payne (New York: Dover, 1966), p. 231.

6
E. Bullough, “ ‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle,”
British Journal of Society
5 (June 1912): 88–9.

7
See Feinberg, “Obscenity, Pornography, and the Arts,” p. 295.

DAVID ROSE

CHAPTER 14

THE PROBLEM WITH THE PROBLEM WITH PORNOGRAPHY
The Problem with the Problem

There is a problem in assuming there is a problem with pornographic images and objects. Not because they are not problematic, but because that problem itself is very difficult to articulate. It rests on the assumption that we ought to treat pornography as very different from other aesthetic objects (literature, films, paintings, etc.) because pornography necessarily involves immoral practices. Accepted artistic objects are judged aesthetically separate from any considerations of immoral practice in their production or immoral ideas in their expression, and immoral practices or decisions on the part of artists, such as Gauguin’s treatment of his family, are very often excused because of the value of the object itself. But this is not so with pornographic objects. Art can be immoral and the artist who exploits others is censured or punished, but art need not involve these practices. An accepted intuition about pornography is that one cannot make or participate in pornography (including consuming it) without being party to some wrong. However, what this immorality might be is more difficult to discern.

So, we must first identify something about pornographic objects which is different from other aesthetic objects and, second, be able to ensure a consensus of agreement that this thing deserves an attitude of disapproval.

It is no good me, the individual David Rose, stating that pornography is obscene for me personally and ought, therefore, to be banned because I might also object to use of capers in cooking, but that would be just my opinion and no one is obliged to agree even if they respect my right to express it. Let us also, initially, distinguish between two levels of moral judgment. If you steal or kill (in most cases), then you will be punished by the state and subject to its laws. Moral wrongness of this sort requires legal sanction. If you are unfaithful to your wife, the state will not intervene, but you will probably be subject to the disapproval of friends and family. If the wrongness of pornography is of the first form, then pornographic images should be subject to law and censure. If its wrongness is of the second sort, then the images and their use will be subject to public condemnation.

In this chapter, I hope to show that it is impossible to identify anything about pornography which can ground the specific disapproval of pornographic objects, much less legal sanction, and that there is no real motive for treating pornography as different in kind from other aesthetic objects. Oddly, though, treating pornography as an aesthetic object does not admonish its producers and consumers of social commitments and obligations and actually allows us to engage with it in a less simplistic and moralistic manner.

What is Pornography?

There is, of course, a very serious problem with defining what is and what is not pornography. Many definitions have been proposed: the production of sexual material for the purpose of exchange; artistic material with little, if any, aesthetic value; material that represents persons as mere sexual objects; material that represents institutional inequality between the sexes; and material produced with the aim of aiding sexual gratification. Most of this analytical work is, though, unnecessary for the present chapter, simply because for once I can proceed with a paradigm example of pornography in order to begin the discussion. Definitional work is important when we have already agreed that a practice is immoral. So, for example, we all know that killing is wrong, but there are gray areas: self-defense, abortion, euthanasia, and war. So, the vague term “killing” is replaced by “taking an innocent human life” and then we avoid irritating counterexamples by adding “without good reason.” Then the argument moves to discussions of these other concepts: “life” (in abortion), “innocents” (in war and abortion), “good reasons” (in self-defense and euthanasia). However, there is no such controversy over cases where a man walks into the high street of a town and shoots dead a passerby, be it for pleasure, whim, or money.What the man has done is uncontroversially wrong.

The difference between the case of killing and the case of pornography is that killing is, in most cases, immoral and all we need to do is to decide whether such and such an action is a case of killing or not. However, we do not intuitively agree that pornography is wrong. Here, all we need to discuss is a paradigmatic example of pornography in order to see whether it can rationally be judged immoral.

Imagine a professionally produced and marketed seven minute scene downloaded from youporn.com, or some other similar site, which involves explicit scenes of fellatio, cunnilingus, and penetrative sex. There is no plot or characterization and it has very little, if any, aesthetic value: the camera work is poor and the mise-en-scène is hackneyed. Furthermore, there is no evidence of what we would normally understand to be violence, the presence of which would make the moral discussion more complicated.Violence, at least as we normally use the word, is normally wrong and does not have to be present in pornographic material (although there is obviously a very intimate relationship which we do not have time to discuss, unfortunately).

I believe anyone would be hard pressed to deny that this is an example of a pornographic object. In the case of killing above, the wrongness of the act was not an issue; here, however, the very issue is whether or not this object is immoral or necessarily involves immoral practices. If there is anything necessarily wrong with pornography, then such a scene ought to express, embody, or communicate that wrongness.Thus, we can avoid the problem with definition because if we can show that this paradigmatic case of pornography is wrong, we can later worry about defining porn in order to deal with the gray areas. If we cannot, then morally, the definitional work would be a waste of time (but may not be for other discourses).

The Wrongness of Pornography

Standard characterizations of the wrongness of pornography could be reduced to four major objections: it is obscene; it involves coercion and exploitation of the participants; it specifically harms women; or, it harms society as a whole. Let us consider these reasons one by one.

Avoiding the difficulties with the term “obscenity” is very easy by reducing it to the term “offense.” Obscene images cause offense. Offense is, of course, justified (or excused) in art if the object in question expresses some sort of aesthetic value. So, Medem’s
Lucía y el Sexo
definitely has aesthetic worth, whereas
Debbie Does Dallas
does not. Bataille’s
Story of the Eye
and de Sade’s
The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom
would be controversial.
¹

Obscenity can pre-reflectively center on concern whether the object in question is a simulation of an act or a record of a real act.There seems to be an intuitive need to distinguish between “real” and “simulated” acts since it apparently tracks the distinction between soft and hardcore pornography. More significantly, it has some moral bite because snuff movies are immoral because the killing constituent of them is real and not simulated. Snuff movies are a matter of legal sanction because the “actors” actually die rather than pretend to die. But, as we have seen, killing is wrong and sex is not.We sanction people for killing but not for having sex. (Laws may still prohibit certain sexual practices such as sodomy, but they are rarely enforced.) However, we do sanction sex in public places because it is obscene and so there might be more to this than we first thought.

But such a claim is puzzling. It is often difficult to judge whether the actors did or did not actually have sex:
Last Tango in Paris
and
Caos Calmo
are examples which jump to mind.
²
Most softcore films are equally problematic – all of which is incidental to our paradigmatic example. It is obviously a case of actual rather than simulated sex and so is a prime candidate for moral disapproval. One may believe it is obscene because it revels in its veracity; we see penetration and the cum shot in close-up in order to, arguably,
prove
that the sex being observed is real.

However, actors in mainstream cinema kiss.They actually kiss and do not pretend to kiss. In softcore films they kiss, lick, bite nipples, and so on.There is no simulation of these actions.What changes is that certain practices are deemed offensive when they are not simulated: actual penetration, the tongue on the vagina, the penis in the mouth, and so on. So, it is not the distinction between simulation and reality which matters but what actions are being filmed.

Of course, some might say that “One can kiss, but not mean it, whereas one cannot have sex and not mean it.” But on what basis can they hold such a claim? Both are simple, physical actions that involve emotional connotations.Those connotations will differ from person to person, from historical age to age, and, more importantly, from culture to culture.

So, is our seven minute scene obscene because it reproduces an action which is not publicly acceptable?

The word “obscene,” though, does not track any identifiable quality of the object in the same way that the word “salty” tracks a quality of the sea. Rather, “obscene” describes the way in which a viewer is affected. Something is obscene if it kindles in the spectator an attitude of distaste, disgust, or revulsion. Such responses are therefore dependent on persons and their attitudes. Attitudes cannot supply the foundation for a consensus; they will inevitably change with age, place, and time. Obscene may be defined for a specific culture, but even within that culture history will change such attitudes. Given such variables, attitudes cannot form the basis of moral judgments and, much less, legal sanction. However, we shall reconsider the cultural aspect below.

Moving away from the obscene may be more fruitful. Bearing in mind the example of snuff movies, we can see that such films cannot be made without participating in immoral actions. Perhaps pornography is similar. When we say snuff movies are immoral, what we mean is that the actors would not – if they were not coerced or manipulated or simply not irrational – have agreed to act in the film.We might want to say that the intimacy of sex is such that no actor – unless they are coerced, manipulated or irrational – would consent to perform actual sex for others’ media consumption.That moves us on from considerations of obscenity to a consideration of victims.

The Victims of Pornography

Let us take as a starting point that there can be no moral wrongdoing unless one can identify a victim.There can be no wrongdoing, whether moral or legal, unless there is someone who has been wronged. Offense is sometimes included as a form of harm and the offended could then be identified as the victim, but the same problem with relativism and subjectivism will arise: who should we count as the arbiter of proper harm? We should understand harm broadly to include physical and mental harm and violations of rights. Exploitation is a wrong because it violates the individual agent’s right to liberty; I would not have acted in this film had it not been for the presence of another agent who coerces me to do as I do. If he or she had not been present, I would have done otherwise.

Pornography is often cited as a case of exploitation of the women who are coerced into performing. Often, little is said of the male actors. Exploitation is a wrong. I cannot take your wallet from you by threatening you with a gun because I violate your liberty. Had I not possessed the gun, you would not have given me your wallet. I exercise unjustified power over you because of my possession of a gun. A producer may exercise power over an actor because the former possesses money. The offer of money cannot be coercion, though. Neither can the combination of money and some sort of distorted web-celebrity, as sites such as moneytalks.com (if real!) seem to operate whereby members of the public are offered money to perform sexual acts for webcasts. Otherwise, that would rule out any person’s working for another or exchanging goods with another, practices that we implicitly consent to day in, day out. It can, of course, be exploitation when the actor is in extreme poverty and the producer knows this, or when they need the money because they suffer from some chemical addiction that requires funds to satisfy and have no other way to procure the funds. Similarly, if the actors have been brought from their own country on false pretences and their passports have been confiscated, or they are forced to perform by the simple threat of violence, then such circumstances are immoral.