You wouldn’t think that literature had much in common with pornography but indulge me, will you?
Recently, the California porn industry objected to a proposal for stiffer – probably not the best choice of words here – regulations.
“I see what I do as my art,” actress Lily Cade told the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. “And in the past, throughout history, art has been persecuted.”
Such self-deluded statements give me a chuckle. Art is about psychological truth no matter how realistic or unrealistic it is. Whereas the hyper-realistic pornography suggests that if you could be this super-sexed person – or have this super-sexed person – you’d be happy. And how true is that? ...
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Read MoreWhenever I was asked about my “walls of inspiration” – which have followed me to each new job, albeit with a changing cast of characters – I always responded that they were a feminist gesture, that I would remove them the day Playboy magazine folded.
Well, Hell has frozen over and I’ll have to remove my men. (Yeah, right. More on that in a bit.) ...
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Read MoreShould it surprise us that a man would think that an image of a naked/sexualized woman doesn’t objectify her?
In a piece for the “Gray Matter” column in the Dec. 1 edition of The New York Times, Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom states that images of a naked or sexualized woman don’t objectify her and that objectifying people isn’t necessarily a bad thing (as in sitting behind someone to block the sun). What makes pornography dangerous, he says, is the way it reduces people to their animal nature.
Fair enough, but I think the subject is even more complex than he realizes. First off, he confuses the words “naked” and “nude,” which the art historian Kenneth Clark brilliantly differentiates between in his book, “The Nude.” Naked is about reality and vulnerability. You’re naked in the shower. You’re naked in the doctor’s office. The people in a porno film are really naked, and they’re really having sex. Read more...
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