Table Of Content

Art and Pornography This page intentionally left blank Art and Pornography Philosophical Essays Edited by Hans Maes and Jerrold Levinson 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. 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Contents Introduction 1 Hans Maes and Jerrold Levinson I. Pornography, Erotica, and Art 1. Who Says Pornography Can’t Be Art? 17 Hans Maes 2. The Pornographic, the Erotic, the Charming, and the Sublime 48 Alex Neill 3. Pornography, Art, and the Intended Response of the Receiver 61 David Davies 4. Is Pornographic Art Comparable to Religious Art? Reply to Davies 83 Jerrold Levinson II. Pornography, Imagination, and Fiction 5. Imagination, Fantasy, and Sexual Desire 95 Cain Todd 6. Pornography and Imagining about Oneself 116 Kathleen Stock 7. Pornography at the Edge: Depiction, Fiction, and Sexual Predilection 137 Christy Mag Uidhir and Henry John Pratt III. Pornography, Medium, and Genre 8. Why Do Porn Films Suck? 161 Petra van Brabandt and Jesse Prinz 9. Anti-Pornography: Andre´ Kerte´sz’s Distortions 191 Bence Nanay 10. An Aesthetics of Transgressive Pornography 206 Michael Newall vi CONTENTS IV. Pornography, Ethics, and Feminism 11. On the Ethical Distinction between Art and Pornography 229 Brandon Cooke 12. Concepts of Pornography: Aesthetics, Feminism, and Methodology 254 Andrew Kania 13. What’s Wrong with the (Female) Nude? A Feminist Perspective on Art and Pornography 277 A. W. Eaton 14. Taking a Moral Perspective: On Voyeurism in Art 309 Elisabeth Schellekens Index 329 Introduction HANS MAES AND JERROLD LEVINSON Whatever else it is, pornography is big business. With around 420 million webpages devoted to X-rated content, 700 million dvd rentals, and more than 13,000 hardcore films released every year, the worldwide annual revenueofthepornindustryhasbeenestimatedat97billiondollars.People spend more money on pornography every year than they do on movie tickets, and more than they do on all the performing arts combined. So, in terms of output and economic impact, at least, pornography appears to be more mainstream than, say, the $600 million Broadway theatre industry or the 400 films a year Hollywood industry.1 Of course, size is not the only thing that matters. Pornography’s cultural impactandvisibilityhasbeencomparativelysmallinthepast.Forthegreatest part of the twentieth century the stars of Hollywood and the entertainment industryhavecommandedthepubliceyeandshapedpopularculture,while pornographyremainedverymuchaprivateaffair.(Thefirstadultentertain- mentcompanytobetradedontheNASDAQstockmarketwasaptlynamed ‘ThePrivateMediaGroup’.)However,inrecentyearsthishasgraduallybut significantlychanged.Thedistributionofandaccesstopornographyhasbeen facilitatedimmenselybytheinternet,andpornographyhasacquiredagrow- ing presence in and influence on contemporary culture—a process that is usually described as ‘the pornification of society’. Many music videos and advertisingcampaignsnoweagerlycopythegroaningandgrindingaesthetics ofpornography.Whatwascheapandsleazyhasbecomefunkyandfashion- able,withthePornStarlogoorPlayboybunnyprintedonT-Shirtsandother 1 ThesefiguresareborrowedfromRich(2001),Williams(2004),andRopelato(2006). 2 HANS MAES AND JERROLD LEVINSON fashion accessories. The best-paid actors and actresses in the business have achievedgenuinestardom,completewithfanclubsandsigningsessions,and TVshowsandmagazinesnowfrequentlycontainplayfulreferencestosexual entertainment Giventhatpornographyissuchapopulargenre,boastinganunparalleled output and cutting across different demographics, cultural boundaries, and artisticmedia,onemaywonderwhyphilosophersofartandaestheticshave remained silent on this topic for such a long time. Moral philosophers, sociologists,legalscholars,feministandqueertheorists,filmscholars,econo- mists, and cultural theorists have written volumes on pornography, but meanwhile not a single monograph or essay collection has been published by an analytic philosopher of art. This neglect will probably come as less of a surprise if one considers the bad aesthetic reputation that much pornography traditionally enjoyed and stillenjoys.Accordingtoawidelyheldbelief,pornographicrepresentations cannot be art or, at best, can only be bad art. This view seems to be confirmed by a cursory look at these two domains of representation. Of the thousands of hardcore films released every year, there are very few, if any, that are artistically or aesthetically rewarding. Conversely, there are very few, if any, artistic masterpieces that would seem to qualify in any straightforward wayas pornography.Tobesure,thereareplentyofworks, especially within contemporary art, that one could loosely describe as ‘pornographic art’. The paintings of John Currin, the neon sculptures of Bruce Nauman, the stitching of Ghada Amer, the collages of Paul McCarthy, the photographs of Thomas Ruff, the statuettes of Jeff Koons, the installations of Judy Chicago come to mind. But these are works of art that mimic, criticize, or reference pornography. They are like pornography or about pornography, but arguably they are not themselves pornography. The fact that, at least at first sight, there appears to be no substantial intersectionbetweenartandpornographyhelpstoexplainwhyphilosophers of art have ignored this topic for so long, but it also raises an interesting and pressing question: Why is there no significant overlap between these two vast domains of representation? Is this merely because of external and contingentfactorsorareartandpornographyinherentlyincompatible?That is the central research question which this book focuses on. It is a question that philosophers of art are particularly well suited to answer. One cannot hopetocriticallyexaminethemiddlegroundbetweenartandpornography, 3 INTRODUCTION it seems, without seriously engaging with current research on the role of imagination and emotion in our engagement with fiction, the nature of aesthetic experience and aesthetic value, the notion of transgression and its artistic and erotic potential, the relation between ethical and aesthetic judgements, and the analysis of depiction and picture perception. So, in this volume we have assembled philosophers of art with different areas of specialization to bring their knowledge and expertise to bear on the main topic of this volume. Thinking about these fundamental issues in aesthetics in relation to pornography will not only bring a fresh perspective and new arguments to certain long-standing discussions in the field, but it will also help to clarify the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures,films,andliterature,andtoanswerwhatRogerScrutonhastermed ‘oneofthemostimportantquestionsconfrontingartandthecriticismofart in our time: that of the difference, if there is one, between erotic art and pornography’ (2009: 158–9). The chapters in this collection are ranged under four broad themes. Part I tackles the central issue of whether or not art and pornography are mutually exclusive in the most direct way. Part II explores the topic of imagination and fictionality in relation to pornography. Issues surrounding medium and genre provide the central focus of Part III, while Part IV addresses ethical and feminist concerns about pornography. Theopeningchapter,byHansMaes,providesthecontoursofthedebate about whether art and pornography are mutually exclusive and is meant as an introduction to the main themes of this book. It begins by looking at some of the classic ways of explaining the difference between art and pornography. Pornography, some have said, is sexually explicit and focuses exclusivelyoncertainbodyparts,whileartpossessesemotionalandpsycho- logicaldepthandisessentiallysuggestive.Othershavestressedthatpornog- raphy,unlikeart,isinherentlyformulaic,orthatpornographyisexploitative in a way that art is not, or that pornography aims for a particular response, sexualarousal,thatisanathematoartisticcontemplationoraestheticexperi- ence.Suchdichotomies,Maesargues,areilluminatinginsofarastheyhelpus to clarify how typical examples of art differ from typical examples of pornography, yet it would be wrong to see them as absolute distinctions. Whenever one attempts to draw a strict line between the two domains, whether it is on the basis of representational content, moral status, artistic quality, or prescribed response, one can always find examples of art or