Welcome to 2014!
The internet has broken down all the traditional barriers to erotic work leaving only the things practically everyone can agree on in the realm of the forbidden.
The Supreme Court decided long ago that if it had a plot and someone, somewhere could call it art, beauty was no one’s business but the beholder’s and Anthony Comstock is dead; his body is reduced to remnants of moldering bone.
You can read whatever you like and stare at whatever you like. Let freedom Ring! So long as there isn’t a Republican in the White House, you’re safe, you can come out now. The resistance has taken Paris, and the Allies are close behind them.
All of this brings us to an overwhelming question: now that we can see it all, why does so much of it suck?
It’s like looking at bell-curve with the middle erased. At one end, you have the hard-stuff that is written for men whose tastes make you happy that they have pornography as an outlet because you don’t want them to have contact with a woman, any woman, at any time, unless she is carrying something sharp and her name can be written “L. Borden.”
At the other end, you have the “Oh my! This milk is so strong!” writing that fills the many pages of romance fiction that becomes “erotica” once you encounter female readers who can spell the word and it just stops there. There is nothing in the middle that you can call pornography that has depth or subtlety or quirky qualities of feeling that make you think, “how could anyone feel that way?” but still have those feelings ring true.
Where is the excellence that used to get books banned for making some white man in a suit who didn’t get it stretch his eyes as he realized that five lines out of thousands were a slightly empurpled description of a woman having an orgasm?
The Supreme Court decided long ago that if it had a plot and someone, somewhere could call it art, beauty was no one’s business but the beholder’s and Anthony Comstock is dead; his body is reduced to remnants of moldering bone.
You can read whatever you like and stare at whatever you like. Let freedom Ring! So long as there isn’t a Republican in the White House, you’re safe, you can come out now. The resistance has taken Paris, and the Allies are close behind them.
All of this brings us to an overwhelming question: now that we can see it all, why does so much of it suck?
It’s like looking at bell-curve with the middle erased. At one end, you have the hard-stuff that is written for men whose tastes make you happy that they have pornography as an outlet because you don’t want them to have contact with a woman, any woman, at any time, unless she is carrying something sharp and her name can be written “L. Borden.”
At the other end, you have the “Oh my! This milk is so strong!” writing that fills the many pages of romance fiction that becomes “erotica” once you encounter female readers who can spell the word and it just stops there. There is nothing in the middle that you can call pornography that has depth or subtlety or quirky qualities of feeling that make you think, “how could anyone feel that way?” but still have those feelings ring true.
Where is the excellence that used to get books banned for making some white man in a suit who didn’t get it stretch his eyes as he realized that five lines out of thousands were a slightly empurpled description of a woman having an orgasm?
Without the restraint of men champing at the bit to build their careers by imprisoning anyone who showed the world that women had pubic hair or that female orgasm existed, things have just gone to the dogs (and here, “dogs” means diseased Chihuahuas): without the restraint that created a quality-free black-market, pornographers are able to compete with one another in an open market which means vying with another to create thing to attract the largest number of people possible—writing and filming for the broadest audience. Which means, the audience that reads least, has seen the least, and that has the lowest expectations.
Once, there was a lot of stuff that was dreadful and hard to get that nevertheless had the power to drag James Joyce’s “Yes” out of the library with it. Now, you can find the dreadful stuff on every street corner. In fact, if you’re reading this, you know you don’t even have to go to the corner. All you need is a credit card and the ability to think of being considered one of the herd a compliment .
We lost the war by winning it. Irony stings and itches.
We lost the war by winning it. Irony stings and itches.
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