Excerpts from “Nostos” – 182, 330

Excerpts from Nostos

182.

THE ART OF PORNOGRAPHY

Pornography is an art form. That is my thesis for this essay. I shall expose my argument regarding this strange subject, as well as explain how I understand its nature.

The first counter-argument one needs to dispel is simple. It is the natural, almost guttural response one hears regarding the subject itself, understandably so, I'd say. Someone will ask, how can such disgusting, demeaning, distasteful acts be considered art? Simply put, pornography being art doesn't entail that all pornography, or rather, all forms of sexual behavior documented in images, still or moving, constitute art. In that same manner, one would argue that music is art even whilst acknowledging certain types of atrocious music. It follows with everything else. From this we can draw two implications – either we argue that it is bad music and therefore it can't be art, or we argue that it doesn't meet certain standards in order to be classified as proper music, as they say. In any case though, one always accepts that, in and of itself, music is art. But I need not enter into such debates, I'm satisfied with either answer, at least at this point. However, I do think that there are certain objective propositions that need to be met by any art form in order for it to be considered art. In other words, I don't defend a relativistic point of view according to which statements of value are reduced to pure opinion or context, or that they actually have no value at all, nor do I defend that all sexually explicit materials are art. Regarding the latter case, my reasoning behind it is that I don't consider all sexually explicit materials to be pornography.

At this stage I am urged to make a somewhat unrelated point. I often think people misuse certain words based on their social meanings. Of immediate pertinence here is when people distastefully consider something to be pornographic, which I for one consider to be a categorical mistake. It may stem from the fact that I hold a rather specific interpretation of what pornography actually is or should be, whereas the general view most people hold is one more exhaustive, that is, one that includes all types of sexually explicit materials and, obviously for that reason, it keeps in mind the most distasteful ones as well.

Hence, it is only appropriate that I define the word I've so often repeated and then explain what I believe to be its true nature. Pornography is, or should strive to be, the idealized representation of erotic beauty through an explicit sexual vessel, aiming to evoke feelings of that same nature in the viewer. Indeed, the viewer is the most important element in this equation because his role will promptly eliminate all works that should not be considered pornography nor art in any way. Every pornographic work should be undertaken with the intent of pleasing the viewer, the unnamed and non-existing element. By necessity, this eliminates any and all materials that are produced by the individual to himself, considering that a plural form may well apply here. Although not always, this latter instance often involves demeaning treatment of women during which the men themselves, actors or no, are pleased, and the women, actresses or no, are displeased. This is not what I mean by art. In those specific cases people's usage of the term in a derogatory way becomes understandable. I hope this is enough to discard any possible misrepresentations of my point, namely the common argument that pornography and prostitution are essentially the same thing. They really aren't. Prostitution is a direct service provided by the prostitute to the random person, whereas pornography is a service provided to a distant party, the viewer, who then contemplates it as he would of any other picture or film.

Another important aspect required for pornography's artistic status is the contract. I also suppose this one shouldn't kindle many points of contention either. It is necessary that all individuals involved be made aware of what the project consists of and are thus willing to accept it beforehand. Firstly, it discards the possible case in which a pornographic work is done in such a way that it causes displeasure to anyone directly involved but still with the intent to provide pleasure for a viewer. Secondly, it is a simple point of ethics about which I trust anyone to already understand its almost tautological importance.

Now, as I mentally formulate my next argument I realize that it will inevitably be presented from the point of view of a heterosexual male. Still, I don't think there should be any difficulty to people of either sex, or of any sexual persuasions, to adapt accordingly. If such difficulties present themselves, then... oh well... But I do suspect that the situations to be described herein can indeed apply universally, regardless of personal characteristics. The viewer is also to be classified with the male pronoun, due both to simplicity and due to my binds to my own nature, I suppose.

In my definition of pornography I mentioned its nature as an idealized representation of erotic beauty. This, much like the notion of the distant viewer, is of vital importance. By way of explanation, I find it expedient to include refutations to two popular points often made about the subject at hand – the first being that pornography is not real, and the second being that it objectifies women at the behest of men. I guess we all mean different things when we say that something is fake, but simply put, pornography actually should be fake, at least in some sense. The viewer interested in pornographic art should have no interest in seeing what could truly be deemed to be authentic. In other words, the viewer should have no interest in seeing the awkward intricacies of sexuality, nor should he be interested in biological information, nor should he be interested in witnessing an expression of intimacy. The viewer would watch pornography the same way fans of action films watch impossible and over-the-top shootouts and car chases, in principle, that is. Having said that, pornography should, by its own nature, be fake, although staged, detailed, prepared, scripted, and the like, are all more adequate terms for it.

To the second point about objectification of women I have to say that pornography as I define it cannot possibly be an objectification of women because it is an idealization, not of any individual woman, but of the female form. Consequently, pornography should presuppose a certain distance between the performers and the viewer. In that sense, the viewer sees the woman as an idea, never as an object. To see her as an object, to see her as being real in a mundane sense defeats the purpose. The previous point ties in here as well since all actions undertaken and all appearances displayed ought to be perfected, and thus, in conjunction with the impersonal nature of the performer, it should be enough to address both criticisms. The relation between the woman and the viewer is then one through which he is presented with an idealized form of beauty that, since it's impersonal, is allowed to be a part of the experience onto which he can imprint a fantasy from his own mind, should he wish to, or maintain an impersonal distance. I therefore conceive of pornography as an art form in the sense that it achieves a platonic ideal of beauty through a sexual component established in relation with an unknown viewer. By definition, or by my definition at any rate, pornographic experience should lack contact. It is a distant relationship based on idealized forms of beauty through an intentionally mysterious woman. It should never aim to become the actual search for beauty and companionship. The search for beauty and comfort in pornography is then no different than the search for equivalent sensations in any other art form. It is also important to say that an idealized form of beauty is not the kind of beauty one expects to find in reality. To put it bluntly, geography plays a strong role in the appreciation of beautiful women, an interest perhaps as strong as emotional or perhaps intellectual attraction. It is also important to explain that idealized beauty and impersonal relationships are intertwined, and that is simply because we are experiencing art, not life. In life, one should not search for ideas, one should search for real people, actual people with actual flaws. Performers are no different, they are actual people, and since all actual people have actual flaws, performers therefore have flaws. However, the difference is that the pornographic work ought to capture their physical beauty as flawless, and thereby idealized. As a brief digression, I should say that I'm always rather disappointed whenever I read a romantic string of prose, usually from one man to one woman, and he writes about how he has learned to love her flaws or maybe that he loves them sort of occasionally. I could be hopeless here but I think one should love her precisely because of such flaws, not in spite of them, or at the very least one should be ever so slightly nostalgic to see them go, should they ever leave.

Now all I have left to do is to give specific details on different types of pornography that I consider to be an art form. Again, dear reader, be reminded that your aspiring essayist is bound by his physical nature. Try to read and adapt accordingly, whenever possible.

First and foremost, the type of pornography that attains the status of art is that which depicts one sole performer. This is in part largely because it is the easiest one to make technically proficient, and thus safely achieving the idealized condition, but also because it provides the closest, most intimate relationship with the viewer, who is then free to behold an ideal notion of beauty and to imagine whatever fantasies he may have, allowing his mind to wander free, losing himself in his viewing experience until he can almost feel all the little touches, and all the details, and all the colors. In essence, it's a complete sensory experience that transcends the strictly visual because of how most of the pleasure happens in the mind.

The second type would be the depiction of two female performers. In some sense it changes little from the previous one, possibly altering the status of the viewer to that of a pure observer but also potentially one with imaginative potential for participation through the seduction of the performers. I also submit that love between two women is able to sustain both lust and a strong emotional connection, something which tends to be more complicated in a heterosexual relationship, or at the very least as it pertains to this fantasy realm about which I write. Again, the reality matters little, what matters here is what is being depicted. And it is quite easy to achieve the perfect balance of lust and love between two women in what I can now describe as an artistic setting. It is also rather easy to make it aesthetically beautiful and, perhaps more important than erotic, tender.

The third and final type would be the depiction of one man and one woman. This last one is a bit more complex than the previous two. From a strictly technical standpoint it is important that both performers fully understand their role and place in the scene. From an artistic standpoint it is the woman who holds the real power, regardless of the man's actions, provided of course that we meet all the aforementioned standards. Therefore, whether the man is acting or being acted upon, it is the woman who is actually in control. Conversely, in the latter case it is rather obvious, while in the former case he only goes where she is willing to go. It is all a seduction game during which both performers simply act out their respective roles, and the viewer is free to wonder about taking the man's place and enjoying whatever bliss the woman, in her ideal beauty, is capable of supplying, or whatever pleasure he is capable of giving her, which in turn pleases him as well, both physically as well as a sensory validation of his own vitality. For that reason, I find no artistic value in male-dominated scenes of pornography, and that is a big reason why heterosexual scenes are more complex. They at times tend to crush all art and subjective experience, becoming a mere trigger to more basic physical responses. At the risk of offending my own kin, I submit that pornography as an art form idealizes women and objectifies men, for the male performers should often be blank slates devoid of any personality. However, the female performers can and should have a personality of their own but, due to the nature of idealization, they would always be an idea in the mind of the viewer, made up of whatever traits he conjures up in his own extended imagination.

And in all these instances of pleasure it is still allowed for the performers themselves to be pleased if and only if they do so with the express purpose of primarily pleasing the viewer by creating this idealized experience. Pleasure in pornographic art itself should be an exchange, never a personal pursuit. Hence, it changes little or nothing if the performers themselves find physical pleasure in their work, from which the subjective artistic value derives. It seems to always ebb and flow into the divide between softcore pornography and hardcore pornography. It is my understanding that the former denotes sexual pleasure from aesthetic experience whereas the latter denotes aesthetic pleasure from sexual experience. Both are valid art forms if the aforementioned necessary conditions are duly met.

Now I seem to have nothing else to say... I just hope to have conveyed my defense of pornography as an art form in the admittedly vague sense that it provides a contemplation of aphrodisiac beauty. And it should be no coincidence that such a word came down to us from Olympus, for it is my understanding that true pornographic art elevates already beautiful women into goddesses, even if, alas, only in the mind of the viewer.

330.

THE ART OF PORNOGRAPHY REVISITED

What in the goddamn was I thinking? Luckily I can't remember that first essay as much as I'd like to, seems like it was a long time ago now, but then again I still hold on to some of it, so I suppose I can't completely refute it. Instead, I hereby choose to update it, because though some things are indeed so darn stupid only an intellectual could believe them, maybe it takes an intellectual to refute them as well. So here goes nothing.

I talked a great deal about the distant viewer, about a kind of platonic relationship between the viewer and the performer, but now, much like in other aspects of my life, I wonder just how accurate that idea really is. Can we truly maintain such a relationship? Are we even wired for it? I'm beginning to think we aren't. It just seems to be the case that too much of a good thing can be quite bad... Additionally, it appears to be a recurring theme that our biology simply can't keep up with our technology. In other words, the world of pornography presents us with an infinite array of possibilities we would have never even conceived of otherwise. That might be good but then again, maybe it isn't, maybe the knowledge of what's out there will always loom as a dark shadow over what we actually have. It could be that the healthiest forms of sexuality are things that in pornography would be considered boring and dull, I suppose, maybe what happens between two people is not meant to be about the physicality of it at all. Then again, at this point does it even matter?... What I do know is this – I used to think about this issue with the kind of rationality only a stupid man can have. It isn't at all clear to me now that appreciation of pornography as an art form can ever be undertaken as a rational action because sexual urges predate reason. And more than predating reason, they surely predate technology, especially this kind of artificial mirage island that is video pornography. Truth is, at our core, we're still dumb monkeys with dumb monkey brains.

So, according to old, naive me, what would happen next? We maintain this distant appreciation of idealized beauty but then what? Oh, and by the way, let's face it, a lot of it isn't beautiful per se, it's just over-stimulating, it's detailed and it's colorful and whatever else. It's all brain tricks, so can it still be called art? There's always some technical mastery to it, there's some skill and purpose, it's tough to say it's not artistic in one way or another, but proper art, beautiful art? Maybe it isn't, or maybe I would need to greatly narrow down the requirements for it to be art, I honestly don't know at this point. But back to the question at hand, what happens during or after the experience of said beauty? I think my old idea was to achieve a kind of high where it almost feels as if the viewer is really there, with her, feeling her body, her warmth, hearing her sultry voice... At times I really did experience that chase but it often felt quite awful afterwards, as the fall from similar dream-like sensations often does... Because at the end of the day we all crave real contact, meaningful contact, and pornography is just an addictive replacement for it. It could be that pornography acts first as an immediate replacement but then, by virtue of it being so damn addictive, it locks the viewer in a vicious circle – I'm alone, so I watch pornography, I watch pornography and that's why I'm alone...

And here's another funny thing – what happens when that idealized beauty is so beholden to a specific person? It's called a platonic crush for a reason, although it's more commonly associated with actresses on the silver screen. What happens then is so pathetic it's either sad or hilarious... The viewer develops a crush on a woman who doesn't know or particularly care about his existence, a woman who in all likelihood would find him repulsive, physically or psychologically, and rightly so, more power to her, but more importantly, we're talking about a crush on a woman whose job is to do those things on camera... Or maybe you'll tell me that the one you have a crush on doesn't do exactly that. There are indeed those actresses and more power to them as well, but does that fix the situation or just mildly improve upon it? Then the viewer has only two choices – he can wallow in his weird crush, become her number one fan and tell himself no other such fans exist, maybe he even communicates with her because he's special, oh, he's not like those other fans, she likes him the most... Of course, this is unhealthy to say the least, it's obsessive and delusional... Or there's the other option which is that the viewer resigns to the idea that it's okay for her to do what she does. If you love something, set it free, right? It seems to then open up the viewer's mind, allowing him to be accepting of something he might not have accepted otherwise, something that seems to be a real strange slippery slope. After all, if something is beyond your control, the best thing to do is to just stop giving a damn about it. And if dirt has ruined your chance at purity, why not get even dirtier?

Truth is, pornography opens up the way to strangeness. But so what? What is life without some seasoning, you might ask. True, but it strikes me as a kind of modern moral relativism thing whereby if you like to do something it's therefore good. Never do you mind long-term stability and impulse control, never do you mind that if something has no adverse effects now it might could still have them at some point in the future... But I digress. The truth of the matter, at least as I now see it, is that pornography seems to slowly but surely numb us. We are perhaps reprogrammed into preferring to watch the pleasure of others rather than to actually pursue it, reprogrammed into preferring a warped sensory experience of something good rather than experiencing that actual real something... I don't see how this can be any good, and the reason I used to see it as good before was because I never wanted any something... It is likely to be a crossroads on the paths of depression, as alluded to previously with the vicious circle reference. It weakens men, even physically perhaps, it makes us either more insecure and therefore uninteresting to women, or in other cases, we just retreat into total isolation. On the other hand, though I lack knowledge of the female perspective, it doesn't seem to be all that good for women either, for how can it be good for women to be unable to find a good partner, a partner who isn't living in his own little fantasy world? And what does it say about meaningful relationships when both partners have had it, or seen it, all before each other and perhaps still continue to do so? This is the kind of issue that will always upset someone, even regardless of where I stand, though I'm not exactly sure where that stand is. It all just strikes me as disrespectful in a real relationship. I can't quite see myself being a good man to a good woman if I were to continue to watch pornography. Then again, in my pessimism, this supposedly real woman I envision as good is probably just as much of an abstraction as any pornstar.

At the end of it all, why do I even talk about this? I keep banging on and on about the viewer but hey, who am I kidding? The viewer is me... I guess I just think of this as my one vice. I never liked booze at all, I tried a few cigarettes, most of which I hated, I tried mellow drugs on two separate occasions and never cared to pursue them any further because they just didn't do much for me to be honest. Even caffeine was something I greatly enjoyed but now it categorically ended for me. So what fun is life without a few vices? Shouldn't each sinner be allowed at least one? And if this is my vice, have I indulged in it? Have I self-medicated with it? Have I felt good about it? Have I felt sick over it? Have I loved it, hated it, seen it over and over again and then never wanted to see it ever again? Yes, yes to all that and more. And though I talked about how no one should try to draw real meaning from a pornographic experience I admit I failed to live up to that, and quite spectacularly too. So here I am, rethinking all this... I don't know why though, so I just keep rambling on a bit more. I talk about unhealthy relationships without much of a dog in the fight, and healthy relationships in general? Hell, what do I care about those?... In all likelihood, happiness between two people isn't supposed to work except to make babies, and after the babies are all grown up who's to say it should keep working? And in any case, the long-term consequences of anything in this world ought not to be of great importance to me, it just won't be my world anymore... So I guess I write this because pornography is indeed my one vice. It's still an embarrassing thing to say but damn it, it's true... Then again, at this point, does it even really matter? I for one can't shake the feeling that it doesn't.

§

This has been a sample of two texts from Nostos. The book is a collection of four hundred texts, most of which are written in portuguese, while only twenty-one of which are written in english. As such they will be periodically published here, in full.

You can find out more about the book here.