The Uses of Pornography .sx Pornography- if for the moment we stick to the etymological implication of writing- is an aspect of literacy .sx To the best of my knowledge , there is no record of a society which has used literacy for profane and imaginative purposes and which has not produced books dealing with sexual topics ; of these books some have been considered unsuitable for general reading , their circulation has been more or less clandestine , and where laws have been concerned with private morals , have been interdicted by the law .sx As far as I know , there is no surviving pornography from Mesopotamia , Pharaonic Egypt or Crete ; but there is so little written matter surviving from these civilizations which is not concerned with religion , law or business transactions that no argument can be based on these omissions .sx Further , we know nothing about the literatures of the high pre-Columbian civilizations of Central and South America ; Peru had a copious industry of pots decorated with realistic portrayals of perverse and complex sexual activities .sx But all the literate societies of Europe and Asia from the time of the ancient Greeks have had pornography as one aspect of their literature .sx In very many cases the texts have not survived ; but references to them occur in more seemly authors , usually in a context of reprobation .sx Since pornography is an aspect of literacy , it is confined to the higher civilizations ; it is not a human universal , found in societies of every stage of development , as is obscenity .sx All recorded societies , however simple their technology and unelaborated their social organization , have rules of seemliness ; certain actions must only be performed , certain words only be uttered , in defined contexts ; if the actions be performed , or the words uttered , in unsuitable contexts or before unsuitable audiences , then the rules of seemliness have been broken , and these infractions are obscenities .sx In the etymological meaning of the word actions have been performed , or words spoken , on the stage which should only have been performed or spoken off the stage ( that is in a suitable context ) ; and this metaphor is valid for all definitions of obscenity in all societies , if any situation where two or three are gathered together in one place is considered to have some of the components of a theatrical scene .sx Obscenity is a human universal , and I do not think that one can imagine a society without rules of seemliness and obscenity .sx Furthermore the responses to obscenity witnessed or recounted seem to vary very little from society to society .sx When witnessed , there is shocked silence and embarrassment on the part of the audience , confusion and shame on the part of the perpetrator , either openly manifested by such physical responses as blushing or giggling , or masked by bluster and defiance .sx When however obscenities are recounted in a suitable group , typically a one-sex group more or less of an age , the topic is enthralling and the climax of an anecdote is greeted with a peculiar , and easily recognizable , type of laughter .sx In different societies , laughter has a varying number of forms and functions ; and until one knows quite a lot about a society one cannot interpret the significance that laughter has within it .sx But laughter at obscene jokes has ( it would appear ) the same sound the world over .sx You may know nothing at all about a society ; but you cannot fail to recognize this specific type of hilarity .sx Obscenity impinges on pornography because in many societies ( including of course our own ) some aspects or actions of sexuality are regarded as obscene .sx This is however not universal ; societies with phallic or fertility cults may place sexuality very literally on the stage , as part of a sacred mime .sx Nor do I know of any society in which obscenity is exclusively sexual .sx Defecation , by one or both sexes , is frequently treated as obscene ; at least in the Trobriands ( according to Malinowski ) the public eating of solid food is an obscenity .sx Other societies surround death , either natural or violent or both , with the aura and circumspection of obscenity ; and in many societies the use of personal names , either in public or before specified kinfolk , has all the horror of an obscene utterance .sx In societies with elevated ideas of the sacred , obscenity and blasphemy shade off into one another .sx The misuse of sacred words , the abuse of sacred figures , have all the overtones and responses customary to obscenity , except that blasphemy is much more rarely a subject for hilarity .sx In swearing and abuse both the obscene and the blasphemous vocabularies are frequently combined as forms of aggression against God and man ; this is typically horrifying to the believer , amusing to the sceptic .sx These digressions have seemed necessary because , despite the title of the Obscene Publications Bill , the connections between obscenity and pornography are both tenuous and intermittent .sx In Latin literature such writers as Juvenal and Martial used the complete obscene vocabulary without apparently being considered pornographic ; we do not know what vocabulary Elephantis and her colleagues employed , but for her contemporaries it was the subject matter , not the language , which made her books reprehensible .sx Conversely , to the best of my recollection , The Memoirs of Fanny Hill ( one of the few masterpieces of English pornography ) does not use a single obscene term .sx When obscene words are used in pornography , it is customarily due to the poverty of the writer's vocabulary ; occasionally , as in some of the Victorian works , it is to enhance the law-breaking , blasphemous aspects of the actions or conversations described .sx But pornography is in no way dependent on obscene language ; and , as it is customarily defined , it does not deal with more than a small portion of the subjects and situations considered obscene by the society at the time it was written .sx =2 .sx Pornography is defined by its subject matter and its attitude thereto .sx The subject matter is sexual activity of any overt kind , which is depicted as inherently desirable and exciting .sx In its original meaning- writings of or about prostitutes- pornography consisted either in manuals of sexual technique ( The Ananga-Ranga , I Ragionamenti of Aretino ) or in the extolling of the charms and skills of identified prostitutes ( The Ladies' Directory and its very numerous predecessors ) ; but in its most usual form it is a fiction , in prose or verse , narrative or dialogue , mainly or entirely concerned with the sexual activities of the imagined characters .sx As far as my knowledge goes , Asian pornography , from Arabia to China and Japan , has sexual interludes embedded in narratives of which they only form a small section .sx The Chinese , and those who were influenced by Chinese culture and ideas , apparently considered all fiction reprehensible , frivolous , and subject to censorship .sx A writer engaging in a work of fiction was already going beyond the bounds of seemliness ; once this step was taken , there were , it would seem , no conventions limiting the situations which could be depicted ; and as a consequence you have a masterpiece like Chin P'ing Mei ( The Golden Lotus ) with numerous sections which , in 1939 , Colonel Egerton had to veil in the decent obscurity of dog-latin , and which , by themselves , would certainly be considered pornographic in any literate society .sx They however become valid as literature because they serve to illumine the characters who are also described in a great number of other situations .sx With very few exceptions European pornography does not have any characters .sx The drama and novel are respected literary forms in which characters can be portrayed in nearly all situations except the overtly sexual ; all that was left for pornography was genital activity .sx And even that has become more and more circumscribed .sx The manuals of sexual technique , as far as heterosexual coitus is concerned , have been taken away from the pornographers by high-minded writers of books on marriage guidance ; the existence of sexual perversions , whose naming fifty years ago would have made a book suspect , is now common currency , thanks to the diffusion of various diluted versions of psycho-analysis ; pornography is left with little but the description of the activities of various sets of genitals .sx As such it apparently commands a steady sale .sx The graphic equivalent of pornographic writing- the depiction of single figures ready for sexual activity or of pairs or groups of figures engaged in sexual activity- has likewise been an aspect of the painting , drawing or sculpture of every society in which these arts have been developed for aesthetic pleasure ; in Hinduism they have on occasion been incorporated into sacred architecture .sx When mechanical means of reproducing works of art have been developed- woodcuts , engravings , etchings , pottery moulds- they have reproduced these works as well as the more conventional .sx Such pornographic art ranges all the way from masterpieces produced by the greatest artists of the period ( for example , many Japanese woodcuts ) to the most summary and feeble daubs .sx Except for the medium , they do not seem to be different in intention or effect to the literature ; and I shall not further refer to them separately in this essay .sx During the last century mechanical means of reproducing pictures and sounds- photographs , films , gramophone records and the like- have also been put to pornographic ends , 'feelthy' pictures , 'blue' films and so on .sx Some of those few I have had occasion to see have struck me as unintentionally fairly comic ; but their intention is serious enough .sx They are not able to achieve the idealization- perfect beauty , health , vigour- which is so general a feature of pornographic art and literature .sx Otherwise , they do not seem to me different in intention or effect from pornography in other media ; and I have not heard of any which have non-pornographic merits .sx These too , it would appear , command a ready sale , probably today from a bigger public than the literature .sx The greatest amount of pornography in all media is produced by hacks with no pretension to aesthetic skill or competence .sx Some however has been produced by writers and painters of repute ; and it is likely that , in such cases , the greater amount has been destroyed either immediately or after very limited circulation among friends .sx Some however has survived .sx There have also been a few European artists and painters whose main talent or output has been pornographic :sx Giulio Romano , Fuseli , Rowlandson among painters , Andre@2a de Nerciat , John Cleland , Pierre Louys among writers .sx When pornography is produced by writers or artists of talent it is usually dubbed 'erotica' ; but I see no value in maintaining that distinction when the aesthetic qualities are not the major consideration .sx I know of no study of the reasons which impel writers or artists to produce pornographic works ; it is obviously an extremely difficult genre , and the technical problems of maintaining interest or variety with such an extremely limited subject matter may have been an attraction for some .sx In the mid-nineteenth and earlier twentieth century realistic and lyrical writers almost certainly felt thwarted by the strict conventions ( to a great extent imposed by Mudie's lending library in Britain ) limiting the subjects and situations with which they were allowed to treat ; and the production of pornography may have been a sign of private revolt .sx Some of the nineteenth century English works are ascribed to the most austere Victorian characters , though with what justice I would not be prepared to say .sx It is possible also that willing creators of pornography get much the same satisfaction out of their activity as do willing consumers of it .sx =3 .sx The object of pornography is hallucination .sx The reader is meant to identify either with the narrator ( the 'I' character ) or with the general situation to a sufficient extent to produce at least the physical concomitants of sexual excitement ; if the work is successful , it should produce orgasm .sx The reader should have the emotional and physical sensations , at least in a diminished form , that he would have were he taking part in the activities described .sx The literature of hallucination is a vast one , perhaps particularly in English , and deals with a considerable number of emotions and situations besides the sexual .sx Perhaps the nearest analogy is the literature of fear , the ghost story , the horror story , the thriller .sx [END]