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The Artistic Side of Porn & the Pornographic Side Of The Artistic Side of Porn & the Pornographic Side of Art A case study on creators and consumers of art porn/ porn art on Tumblr (My own creation, when using the deep dream generator on Google, thanks to my interviewee Androscoped I learned about this tool, the actual visual is from: http://gaymannews.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/Donato-Reyes-and-DO-gay-porn-Men-of-UK-0-1024x585- 600x342.jpg) Emmy Bruinzeel Student number: 10180907 MSc Sociology Track: Gender, Sexuality and Society First supervisor: Gert Hekma Second supervisor: Margriet van Heesch August 15, 2016 Word count: 25.682 1 Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank my interviewees for their openness and trust. Without you I could not have written this thesis about porn and art. Your input was essential to my research. Through the visuals you shared/produced I was able to, not only understand the topic I chose to study better, but I was also able to develop new thoughts about how porn can be beautiful, how porn and art combined can create new meanings and can be used politically. I now understand the importance of porn art/ art porn for some people in their daily life, how they try to express themselves through sharing. It opened my eyes. I would also like to thank my supervisors Gert Hekma and Margriet van Heesch for their helpful feedback. Especially Gert who helped me during the full process. Whenever I had questions or doubts I knew I could ask Gert for help and he would give me new ideas, different books to read, etcetera. Last but not least I would like to thank my dad, Dick Bruinzeel, for always correcting my English and full support. I am really grateful that I have these two parents who believe the study I am doing is important, so also a thank you to my mom Inge Ververs. I hope I did made proud. 2 Content Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Art and porn as an expression of time ..................................................................................................... 7 History of Pornography ..................................................................................................................... 18 Combining Art and Porn ................................................................................................................... 26 Methods ................................................................................................................................................ 28 Tumblr ................................................................................................................................................... 32 Motives for opening a Tumblr account ............................................................................................. 33 Tumblr accounts and community....................................................................................................... 34 Tumblr compared to other social media ........................................................................................... 37 Benefits of Tumblr compared to “real life” ...................................................................................... 39 What is art porn/ porn art? ..................................................................................................................... 40 What are we looking at? ........................................................................................................................ 50 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 62 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 64 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 67 Personal information interviewees .................................................................................................... 67 Interview Questions Porn Art/ Art Porn ............................................................................................ 73 Visuals ............................................................................................................................................... 77 Consent Form MA Thesis ................................................................................................................. 89 3 Introduction In October 2015, the UN urged Japan to ban sexual representations in manga. They were viewed as child pornography1. This specific type of Manga that is spoken of, as indecent child pornography, is called Lolicon and depicts under age characters that have sex with each other or with older characters. These stories are invented, so not based on real life. Normally manga is received as art, yet in this case the UN was able to shift the border from art to obscenity. What needs to be asked here is, if there are no actual children presented, is it possible to classify Manga stories as child pornography? This example shows that the border between art and porn is not easily drawn. Yet when the UN draws this line punishment could become a reality for some people. What they like to read, formerly legal, becomes illegal and their interest in this becomes stigmatized. This example is interesting because it shows how social phenomenon are interpreted not in a dynamic way, but at the same time the meanings they convey change. With this thesis I will show that art and porn have shifting social meanings. Especially when art and porn come together boundaries are crossed and discussions arise. The purpose here is to gain a deeper understanding on the combination of art and porn. By applying the method of a case study, on producers and consumers of art porn/ porn art on Tumblr (a blog internet site), I hope to find answers to my questions. Some scholars have argued that art and porn are different social phenomena, which are not supposed/able to come together. Nead (1990) notes that through time art and porn was defined as opposing each other (324). If we take a closer look to the phenomenon of art porn/ porn art, this border is crossed and it helps us understand how the social meanings of art and porn are in fact constructed. People on Tumblr who produce/consume art porn/ porn art share sexual explicit content, which they cannot share on any other social medium. Outside of Tumblr there is also a lack of freedom to visit or consume porn art/ art porn2. Through interviewing these people I will try to understand why there is a need on Tumblr for this type of space, i.e. where people can share art porn/ porn art visuals. Also I am interested in how they define content that is on the border of art and porn or of which we could say it is a combination of both. The question I would like 1 http://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/10/28/un-urges-japan-to-ban-sexual-images-of-children-in-manga- japanese-netizens-tell-un-to-shut-up/ 2 In the Netherlands there are some possibilities for this, but in other contexts like for example BDSM art in Great Britain is not possible. 4 to answer in this thesis is: How do consumers and creators of porn art on Tumblr, define porn art? To discover this I did semi-structured in-depth interviews and as a part of the interview I showed these people sexual content found on Tumblr and other sites that contain sexual content. The relevance for this type of study is the fact that for some reason there has been this obsession through time to define art and porn as something different. Art is seen as socially acceptable and porn as socially unacceptable. I do not agree with this. I think both art and porn have positive and negative sides. As I will argue, both terms are socially constructed through time. In chapter one this will be fully explained. I will look for the invisible line, which porn and art are crossing through time. This invisible line is the line between what is obscene and what is not. Where art has been on the positive side of this line, porn has been on the negative side of the line. When boundaries are crossed we can finally see how unstable these terms are and how we are in fact using terms of which we are not always that certain of what it means. In the second chapter I will speak about what Tumblr is, how it works and what it does for the people that are using this medium. On other social media, for example Facebook and Instagram, it is not allowed to post “sexually explicit” content. Some of my interviewees complain about how their accounts were blocked or deleted. Tumblr did gave them the opportunity to express themselves only with more daring visuals. Chapter three is about the producers and consumers on Tumblr, their own thoughts on what they see as art, porn and the two combined. Here the two most used ideas are intentions and context. Porn and art are seen as different in intentions, yet when the two came together also the intentions come together. Instead of only arousal in porn, suddenly also expression from art is an important intention. Which means that the porn art/art porn work is now nicely composed and arousing. With context some of my interviewees acknowledged that not everyone is looking through the same lens, and therefore it depends on one’s background or standpoint if one would have the same definition of a work as art porn/ porn art or as something else. Chapter four, also the last
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