Pornography The Universal Language

AlexSuzeI was thinking a little more about what I posted yesterday regarding cartoon pornography. It occurs to me that there are three universal languages, music, images and mathematics.

As most people’s grasp of maths is only ever applied where necessary and rarely in the bedroom that’s hardly a medium that could be used in a sensual way. And no, typing 58008 on a calculator, turning it upside down and smirking because it looks a bit like “BOOBS” doesn’t count.

Similarly with music, while it has a place in sexuality and sensuality it cannot depict sex in the way that pornography does. You could argue it does a better job in that it has more sensory resonance that a glossy magazine, it can unite a couple, synchronise their moods, remind them of key moments in their relationship. What it can’t do is provide something to masturbate to, unless of course you have a certain someone in mind when listening to it. Therefore using music is a vehicle by which you arrive at a horny state of mind through its associations.

Art and erotic photography can however evoke a sexual reaction in the viewer regardless of their nationality and native tongue. Images transcend language and give them power. Anything with power has to be handled carefully.

Erotic art is at its best interesting and arousing. It can be realistic, depicting the beauty of the human body in any state of undress to bring the viewer to a deeper understanding of the wonderful vessel that we all inhabit. It can take you to a fantasy world of enchantment inhabited by Amazonian women and imposing men, with oiled skin and posed as if to pounce, cat-like, from a canvas. Erotic art and photography can depict intimate beautiful moments of solitude or the climax of a sexual encounter.

Porn on the other hand depicts sex.

I’ve heard it said that the difference between a photograph that is erotic and one that is pornographic is the lighting. The statement works as a sound-bite but doesn’t bear close scrutiny. I can hire a model and take hundreds of images in an hour. It will not make them erotic, even with the best lighting. What matters is thought that goes into each shot. Every time you press the shutter you and the model have to understand the relationship between them and the viewer, a relationship that passes between the subject and eventual consumer of the image through the narrowest of windows. The lens of the camera.

Without applying thought to the process you end up with a series of photographs that have nothing to do with eroticism, or sexuality for that matter. At worst they are simply a procession of images with models in progressively more extreme contortions.

I don’t have anything against porn, quality porn, but there is some crap out there. At the other end of the scale from really pitiful porn is the porn that is airbrushed to a level that makes the models look as if they are made of wax, smooth, perfect and translucent. Not for me either, I don’t have a mannequin fetish.

Whether the subject of an image is real, or from the hand of an artist I want to feel that they have a personality. As a consumer I don’t want necessarily to have a relationship with the subject, but I do want to feel that they know what passion feels like. Without that no amount of pouting is going to turn me on.

Tags: porn, pornography, pornographic images, erotic photography, erotic art, cartoon porn, manga