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
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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.
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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
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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 chapter, will be about the labeling of visuals by my interviewees. I looked online for visuals that were labeled as porn art, art porn, sex art, horny art and I use those visuals during the interview. With this I aim to see what my interviewee think of the visuals. To see what they see in the visuals and if they would use different words to describe their definitions of art, porn and the two combined when they would look at these images. What is important to acknowledge is that I am not looking for a fixed term of what art,
5 porn and the two combined is. Instead I would like to show how in fact art and porn are vague concepts, which are being used by many people. Yet our ideas on these terms differ from each other and we are able to use these terms in different contexts. How is it possible that we can use these vague terms in society when we are not sure that we have a same shared understanding of them? I am not trying to say that some definitions are wrong and that I have a better definition. What I do mean is that if people on Tumblr define certain sexual content as art porn/ porn art it does not mean they are wrong when they so. It means they have a different perception on the fact if porn and art can overlap. I believe that in understanding the contradicting terms and the way people on Tumblr are dealing with this, can add to our understanding of pornography. Is it possible to create more socially acceptable porn when you combine this porn with an artistic side to it? This thesis could add to a more nuanced discussion on pornography and art. The idea that there are no right definitions does come with some problems. Why do we use these terms in certain ways if the meanings are changing? Still there are also some overlapping ideas, for example that porn is for arousal and art is for expression. This brings us to the first chapter and the history of art and porn. Who was in charge of discussing these social phenomena and defining them?
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(Image 1: Tumblr, Herr von Wallenstein)3
Art and porn as an expression of time
On June second 2016 I went to “Artfest – de ophefeditie” (edition of scandals). This event was organized by de Correspondent (a Dutch news site) and different artists and art scholars were invited to this event to discuss scandals in the world of arts. One of the artists invited was a Dutchman, Ronald Ophuis, who came to explain a few of his art pieces. His work had been involved in different scandals and now he had the opportunity to explain what he meant with his work. One of his works is called “Sweet Violence”, a piece that portrays a sexual scene where – as Ophuis states himself – two children are abused by three men4. The painting – as
3 http://herrvonwallenstein.tumblr.com/image/129789489767 4 Complete interview with Ronald Ophuis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMheIctT1s0 7 he explained to the audience– was inspired by viewing a child porn film at an intellectual night where the figure Pasolini was discussed. Ophuis argued that he was traumatized by this film. To cope with this film he painted it on an enormous tableau and painted the visual as painful as possible. In a way the painting functions as a “wake up call” and is not meant to be seen as a work of art to enjoy. What is remarkable about this painting is that initially it was not received as a scandal. According to him there were some critical comments, but not as many as you would expect with regard to the content shown. It could be displayed without objections and there were people making the effort to go and see it. But then, after a while, due to a shifting social context, it was regarded as a scandalous work. Ophuis claims there is a link between the news about Marc Dutroux (a case that had national attention in the Netherlands) and the upheaval about his painting. Suddenly people were offended by looking at it. So much so, that eventually the church where it was displayed had to remove it or else they would be sued.
(Image 2: “Sweet violence” – Ronald Ophuis5) Scandals have been part of the world of art for a long time. The interesting thing about them is that they give us an opportunity to explore what we define as art and what as obscene. Defining art and porn is very difficult and we need to go back in time to fully understand how meanings have changed. One of my interviewees pointed out how the fluidity of concepts like
5 http://ophuis.aeroplastics.net/artwork.php?id=70 8 art and porn makes it hard to define the terms. “(..) it reminds me of Derrida his.. in deconstruction there is this concept of aporia and aporia is like a state of no meaning. I almost feel like art and porn exist in aporia, they are in a state of no meaning. Except what we individually project to it” (Androscoped). Another quote from a different interviewee shows a different idea on porn and art. He states that art and porn is an “expression of time” (Ton of Holland, 59 years old, artist). Both quotes can explain how the painting of Ophuis changed from painful art to obscene child pornography. As art and porn are in a state of no meaning and the terms are an expression of time, it is possible to have a totally different reality when certain events take place. This is why I use the following question for this chapter: How are porn and art constructed through time and what is the significance for the construction of porn art/ art porn? This chapter is separated into three parts. In history of arts I will discuss art works that through time have been looked upon as being on the edge of art and obscenity. Looking at the boundaries can explain to us how fragile the idea of art and obscenity is and how easily ideas can change over time when considering works of art. After this I will treat the history of porn and how porn has always been at the fringes of society. I will give multiple examples to point out why porn can be seen a very broad term and why it is hard to define. I will conclude the chapter with the debate that is held around pornographic art, circling around the question whether pornographic art or artistic porn is possible. Through history art and porn have been defined as opposite to one another. Philosophers nowadays are having a hard time trying to explain why porn and art is (not) possible. History of Arts ‘Indeed, it is not actually possible to define art in abstract terms, because “what is art” – even broadly stated – is socially defined, and therefore subject to many inconsistencies (Alexander 2003:2). This quote of Alexander (sociologist specialized in arts) makes clear why it is difficult to define art. The inconsistencies Alexander is referring to, will become visible in this paragraph when we put light on the history of defining art itself. I will focus on art that is on the border of art and obscenity. Especially border-crossing-arts show us how difficult it is to draw a precise line between the two. When is it to be called art and when does it become obscene? And, who are our gatekeepers? Who is recognized to be an authority to tell us what is art and what is obscene? The answer to the last question will tell us more about the power structure we are
9 dealing with. In the chapter “What is art?” I point out how Alexander explains that different trends in sociology use a different set of tools in researching arts. In this instance the concept of power-knowledge of Michel Foucault gives an adequate explanation of the influence postmodern sociology has had on the sociology of arts (ibid.:13). ‘This power-knowledge is so deeply embedded in the stories we tell that it is not readily evident to us’ (ibid.:13). Instead of knowledge creating power, power creates knowledge. This idea one can also apply to the phenomenon of art. Those who are in power, in recent history men, are able to define art. This is why women were so prominently the object of art. Although the way women have been portrayed over time has been changing, the female nude has been a big part of the history of art. At the same time there was always lurking the danger of crossing the border, the female nude no longer being considered as art because it was felt to be obscene. Through history nudity in art has been gendered. Both Nead (1990) and Dennis (2009) describe how female nudes were supposed to be on the fringe of what was morally good and wrong. Dennis shows us how the first depiction of the female nude, the Knidian Aphrodite, was making classical Greek and Roman audiences feel uncomfortable (Dennis 2009:20). The sculpture was exposing her bottom and breasts, while the hand was hanging in front of the vulva. This particular pose (hand in front of the vulva) is called the pudica pose and was interpreted by many as hiding the female genitals in paintings and sculptures. The Knidian Aphrodite also provoked physical reactions in the group of spectators. Dennis writes of men masturbating near the sculpture (ibid.:20). Due to this physical reaction the distance between the sculpture and the beholder was destabilized, which also happens with other “erotic subjects” (ibid.:19). The uneasiness and physical responses to this sculpture showed that a border was crossed, that is of art and obscenity. As Dennis explains although some would see the pudica pose as proof of modesty, it still had this other effect of arousal, because attention was drawn to the part that she tried to conceal (ibid.:20). ‘Conclusion that Aphrodite’s gaze belied her modest gesture and that she invited the transgressions that took place thus justified what already had been determined: the nudity of the female body is always already obscene in contrast to the heroism of the male nude’ (ibid.:20). Jeffrey Hurwit – who works at the department of the history of art and architecture, at the university of Oregon – points out that in classical Greek art there was attention for male nudity. This nudity, unlike the female variant, was however not supposed to be at the fringe of art and obscene. The masculine nude represents for example the heroic male, although Hurwit, with the example of Dexileos, also shows that not all heroes were presented naked (Hurwit 2007: 44,49). Male nudity could be used for heroic reasons, but it could apply to a
10 submissive victim, to athletics, displaying youth, showing class difference, or could even be used on non-human beasts, like centaurs (ibid.:57). ‘(..) heroic nudity cannot be universally applied, and more often than we are used to thinking, nudity signifies the opposite of the heroic: helplessness, vulnerability, and defeat’ (ibid.:55). This means that depending on the context the male nude would be heroic, submissive, etcetera. At the same time one should not think Greek classical art was giving an image of everyday life. ‘But even though the Greek gaze regularly beheld naked youths and men engaged in exercise and competition, Greek males (it is generally agreed) did not walk around town naked, they did not ride horses naked, and they certainly did not go into battle naked’ (ibid.:45-46). Still it did not seem to be causing the uncomfortable feelings the way the exposure of the female nude did. Needles to point out the female heroic nude was absent in Greek classical art.
(Image 3: Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro during the Champions League Finals after he scored the winning penalty6) On May 28, a Saturday evening, I watched the champions league’s final match (football) between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. Because the match ended in a draw (1- 1), the decision had to be made with a series of penalties. According to the Dutch TV reporter in these situations there is always one loser and one hero7. If we assume his theory is correct, this time Cristiano dos Santos Aveiro was the hero. And to show this, right after he scored the
6 http://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/nieuwsfoto's/cristiano-ronaldo-of-real-madrid-celebrates-after-scoring- nieuwsfotos/534985638 7 broadcasted on SBS6, Dutch television channel 11 winning penalty, he removed his shirt and showed his muscles to the whole stadium. As Hurwit states that Athletics during Classical times could be portrayed as heroic via male nudity (Hurwit 2007:51), this example shows us the equivalent in male sports nowadays. Ronaldo taking of the shirt can be seen as the representation of a male hero. If he had been taking of his pants it would have been regarded as obscene. But, if a female would have copied Ronaldo, after being decisive, by taking of her shirt and showing her naked upper body, this would be regarded as equally obscene. This means that for a woman being heroic and naked at the same time is not possible (in the context of sports). For Larissa Bonfante (1989) it is important to recognize the differences between nudity in Greek classical art when it comes to male and female representations. Bonfante points out Kenneth Clark uses two different words for the naked body, nakedness and nudity (ibid.:544). Nudity stands for the aesthetic body, while nakedness has a more negative meaning, and is linked to powerlessness and weakness (ibid.:544). In Classical Greece the concept of being naked changed over time and new meanings evolved. Where at first being naked was seen as something shameful (ibid.:546), it changed to showing ideal male youth bodies (Ibid.:549). For men being nude could be a costume during rituals of initiation (ibid.:551), but also there was nudity among athletics, which showed that if a man had a dark skin color he could be judged on his ‘physical fitness’ (ibid.:555). Bonfante states that a darker skin color means that men had been training outside in the sun, while a white skin color would mean that the man is probably lazy (ibid.:555). Yet as I stated before the female nude was never seen as heroic. Most of the time nakedness was linked to prostitution (ibid.:559). The only way female nudity (in classical art) could be presented in a respectable way, was by using Aphrodite as a model (ibid.:561-562). Dennis also shows only a goddess could be projected in a respectable way naked in art, while doing the pudica pose. We take a big leap in time to see how the inconsistencies, Alexander writes about in relation to male and female nudity in art, evolved. In the 19th century Mark Twain (a novel writer) saw the pudica pose not as an expression of hiding the female genital parts. According to him it could be seen as masturbation (Dennis 2009:15). Later this interpretation of the pudica pose was acknowledged by others (20th century). But now, as Dennis states, female nudity needed to be justified in order to be art (ibid.:21). The female nude masturbating was accepted, because in those days the idea was accepted that a man and a woman needed to climax at the same time for conception (ibid.:26). Another way of justifying nudity was done by using landscapes in the background of the art work. Now the nude was accepted as a metaphor for fertility (ibid.:27).
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Lynda Nead (1992) describes how “the nude” changed into “the female nude” (43-44). Through history, as we already saw in Classical Greece, most nudes in art were of male bodies. In the 18th and the 19th century the female nude became more dominant (ibid.:47). Classes in arts were treating the autonomy of the human body in the same way medical students were learning. The body, male and female, were described in terms of health and beauty (ibid.:48). Nead describes how art critics like Kenneth Clark (art historian) saw the change from male nudity to female nudity as inevitable, the female body being much more attractive to the artist (ibid.:49). This creates the idea of a heterosexual relationship between the artist and the female object represented in the art piece. Yet during that time heterosexuality became more important. In a short review Mary Kay DeGenova discusses the book of Jonathan Katz and the invention of heterosexuality (DeGenova 1995:1041). Here she describes how Katz argued that heterosexuality is an invention and it was created in the 19th century (ibid.:1041). This means that the artists during that time would probably have been influenced by the invention. Nead states that this idea of the female nude as more attractive says something about the definition of masculinity and the artistic identity (Nead 1992:49). What is even more remarkable here is how the idea of the female nude from Classical Greece totally changed through time to become the dominant depiction of nudity in the 19th century. During the history of art men were in the position of defining art. This changed with the introduction of feminist critique on the history of art. From the late 1960s in the US feminist interference became eminent (Gouma-Peterson & Mathews 1987:329) , while British, German and other North European feminists started redefining art history in the early 1970s (ibid.:331). Gouma-Peterson (art professor) and Mathews (professor in art history) describe the development of feminism starting to investigate art history and deconstructing the norms behind art. These feminists were able to expose art as a men defined practice. A practice also in which there was no recognition for female artists (ibid.:326,327). Through deconstruction feminist scholars were able to lay bare the dominant power-knowledge structure that was responsible for the definition of art. We should be aware that the dominance that was exposed was not just male. It were white males who dominated the art journals (ibid.:331). What also should be acknowledged here is the fact that the feminists dealing with the subject of art history were not part of a homogenous group. As Gouma-Peterson and Mathews show there were a lot of discussions on how to introduce more female artists into art history. For example some books written emphasized the importance of placing female artists in the ‘traditional historical framework’ (ibid.:327). This raised the discussion about how this would contribute to female art, because it did not question the power structures that were
13 already in arts itself (ibid.:327). Also different protest groups were launched to liberate female art. For example one group that is mentioned in the article by Gouma-Peterson and Mathews is ‘Where We At’ (ibid.:329), which was a group to liberate female art for black women. Within feminism different groups and opinions were causing different topics to deal with and different ways of liberating female arts. I will not be dealing all trends in art history. But, if we look at the examples so far being presented, it is clear as quoted form Alexander, art is socially defined, and therefore subject to many inconsistencies (Alexander 2003:2). My focus has been on the European and North American history of arts, being aware of the fact that art is being produced in other parts of the world. So far it has already become clear there is a grey area of what art and obscenity is. And also that during time the obscene can become respectable. Now I will be focusing on provocative arts from the last century and some that are from a few years ago. Dennis (2009), as mentioned before, claims that the distance a viewer has to an art work (like the example of Aphrodite and masturbating men) is important to see whether or not something is defined as art or not (21). Also if an art work is seen in public it can be accepted as art, while the same, if consumed in private surroundings, could be seen as porn (ibid.:21). ‘Such disparities in the public and private experience of images invoke a dialectic between distance and proximity, sight and touch, that informs the reception and definition of art but that also define the position of the viewer’ (ibid.:21). This shows in another way that the way we view representations of certain “sexual” depictions are bounded to the social context. The Dutch philosopher Maarten Doorman explains that during the 19th century a variety of artists were experimenting in their work to see how they could play with the borders of decency (2016:89). To Doorman these provocations should not be regarded as a way of getting attention. These were part and parcel of the avant-garde flourishing in those days (ibid.:). Doorman gives different examples of art provocation, partly religious, some sexual and others of a violent nature. A Dutch example he deals with is an art piece that was located in Rotterdam. This piece of art was bought from Paul McCarthy, who made a huge Santa Claus with a giant dildo next to him (ibid.:92). People passing by started calling it names like kabouter butt plug (butt plug gnome). By many it was seen as being obscene (ibid.:92). “The” public of Rotterdam defined this piece as sexual and provocative, something they did not want to be bothered with. Eventually the piece (Image 4) was removed, but McCarthy eventually made another art piece (which he called abstract art) for Paris, which was also seen as sexually provocative (ibid.:92-3). Also that piece was eventually destroyed, because again that art piece seemed to look like a butt plug (Image 5).
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(Image 4: Paul McCarthy’s “Butt Plug Gnome” in Rotterdam, 2012 - photo by Hrag Vartanian for Hyperallergic8)
(Image 5: Paul McCarthy, Tree (2014). Via: @HauserWirth on Twitter9)
Sarah Thornton states that there are no objective standards for quality in art, but creators of art should formulate their own standards and needs to convince people like critics, collectors,
8 http://hyperallergic.com/157371/how-to-talk-about-paul-mccarthy/ 9 https://news.artnet.com/market/paul-mccarthy-beaten-up-over-butt-plug-sculpture-136129 15 curators and co-worker artists that theirs should be regarded as genuine art (2015:11). We can see in the example of the Gnome the public of viewers – the people of Rotterdam – were not convinced and saw the object as morally deviant. They felt offended being confronted with the sight of it. That is why eventually it had to be removed. There have been more incidents in which so called “art works” were questioned, this time by policy makers. ‘Recently two events have riveted the attention of arts watchers nationwide and embodied the tensions that exist between the art world and other segments of society’ (Lankford 1990:15). Lankford, a professor in art education, presents some examples that were seen as provocative and triggered a discussion whether or not public funds should subsidize art that had obscene content (ibid.:16). The title of the article is Artistic Freedom: An Art World Paradox, in which Lankford shows how the art world is defending its right for artistic freedom, while at the same time the US government is trying to prohibit federal support for obscene materials. The latter was the case with regard to the exhibition by Mapplethorpe. The article treats different depictions in arts that were defined as obscene (in 1989), which are: s/m, homoerotism, exploitation of children, individuals engaged in sex, etcetera (ibid.:16). Mapplethorpe was supposed to show his work in the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, but the police cleared the gallery before the work was showed (ibid.:17,18). The CAC and its director were risking a fine and/or even imprisonment for showing work made by Mapplethorpe (ibid.:18). The exhibition – called “The perfect moment” showed masochistic and homosexual behavior, and was also depicting two children nude/seminude (ibid.:18). These were seen as obscene. To label them as such was not without problem. One needed a clear definition of obscenity. Lankford quotes the American Law Institute (ALI) and their definition of obscenity: ‘(..) a thing is obscene if, considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to prurient interest, i.e. a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion, and if it goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matter’ (ibid.:20). What is interesting here is that one, as one should expect, obviously fails to give objective criteria by which it is possible to know when nudity is shameful or morbid. The Supreme Court (Miller v. California) added three tests in 1973 (ibid.:21). Lankford quotes The Supreme Court: ‘(..) insisting that materials, to be judged obscene, must meet three tests: the dominant theme appeals to prurient interest; the material is an affront to community standards, as judged by a reasonable person; and the material lacks serious artistic, literary, scientific, or political value (ibid.:21). This quote trying to define what obscenity is generating more questions than answers. For example what is the definition of a prurient interest? And how does one qualify to become acknowledged as
16 a reasonable person? Let us look at this closer by confronting the criteria of the Supreme Court with the concept of Aporia derived from Derrida (as suggested by my interviewee Androscoped). Derrida, a philosopher who focuses on language, was interested in language that crossed borders (Calarco 2002: 19). If language crosses borders it becomes problematic, because crossing these borders is “illegal” (ibid.:19). So when language becomes problematic, one can achieve a deeper understanding of the border itself and see why these are problematic in itself (ibid.:19). Calarco – a philosopher- tries to clarify the theory of Derrida. He uses a statement of Heidegger, who claims mortals (people) are able to experience death, animals are not. Because to experience death, language is needed to express it. Furthermore only people can speak of “my death”. But, for everyone this means something different (ibid.:19). So we speak the same language, use the same words, but we are never completely sure ‘what one is talking about when speaking about death’ (ibid.:19). Calarco states that being in a state of Aporia the problem of border crossing is no longer a problem (ibid.:19). Then what is solved? ‘(..) there is no longer any problem because no amount of projection or protection will overcome the experience of the Aporia and render possible an impossible passage’ (ibid.:19). So the border has been crossed and shown to be problematic itself. Therefore there is not one projection that can explain the experience of death for example. Just as my interviewee stated, we individually project our own ideas on what art and porn is. The Supreme Court and ALI tried to define obscenity, but what they give us is just one way to look at obscenity. They cannot replace our own ideas of what is artistic valuable or he is supposed to be a reasonable person that is able to judge what is obscene or not. Another approach to what can be seen as artistic value is proposed by Amy Adler (Professor of Law). ‘This new art – Post-Modern art – rebels against the demand that a work of art be serious, or that it have any traditional “value” at all’ (Adler 1990:1359). Adler problematizes the way Miller tried to introduce these tests to clarify the distinction between obscenity and art. She tries to give standards that are able to protect art from obscenity. But at the same time she acknowledges that these standards will fail to do so, because of ‘the nature of contemporary art’ (ibid.:1360). Adler discusses the intentions of artists and whether or not these intentions will convince when expressed court. Obviously when an artist makes a plea in which he or she states this is art because I say so, this will not convince the judge.
First, if a court were to accept that “this is a portrait if I say so”, then there would be nothing to prevent a hard-core pornographer from raising the defense that he intended his pornography to be art. Secondly, Post-Modern art would render a deeper inquiry into the purported artist’s
17 sincerity futile, because, as discussed earlier, Post-Modernism ridicules the notion of sincerity and rejects the possibility that a viewer can ever discover an artist’s true intentions (ibid.:1376).
This quote then raises the question why is it a problem if a hard-core pornographer would depict his work as art? Adler gives a value judgment proclaiming hardcore porn cannot be artistic. She claims that it is hard to protect art from obscenity, because Post-Modern art itself is trying to cross boundaries. But do we need this protection? In this paragraph we have seen how the meanings of art have changed through time. We saw a change in displaying nudity. From the male nude as the most dominant nude, to the female nude as the norm. Also we have seen how official authorities like the Supreme Court and ALI have tried to define obscenity and art as separate. Likewise we have seen how feminist critiques have been able to lay bare the power structure of men as artists and women as objects. Even nowadays artists have to protect the line between art and obscenity. Like in my first example of “Sweet Violence” where this piece at first was seen as artistic, yet when the context changed, the meaning of the painting went from art to obscene child pornography. Which also gave the artist the label of child pornographer. In other words, the meaning of art is historically dependent and fluid. What is apparent is the fact that there is a constant struggle to keep art away from obscenity, yet in the next paragraph I will discuss the subject of porn. Which is already on the side of the obscene.
History of Pornography I’ve proposed that pornography is both a legitimate form of culture and a fictional, fantastical, even allegorical realm, it neither simply reflects the real world nor is it some hypnotizing call to action. The world of pornography is mythological and hyperbolic, peopled by characters. It doesn’t and never will exist, but it does – and this is part of its politics – insist on a sanctioned space for fantasy. This is its most serious demand and the basis of much of the controversy it engenders, because pornography has a talent for making its particular fantasies look like dangerous and socially destabilizing incendiary devices. (Kipnis 1999:119)
What is interesting in this quote, is that Kipnis states that porn is something that does and does not exist at the same time. Just like with art, defining porn is incredibly difficult if not impossible. In the next chapter I will show I agree with Kipnis that porn is something that exists and also does not exists at the same time. If we move our attention back to the idea of
18 aporia, which Derrida uses, there are many possible projections on what can be described as porn. Giving different examples from the past and more recent times I will show how difficult it is to give a definition of porn, and why porn exists and at the same time does not exist. To illustrate how hard it is defining porn, but also how much porn is policed and associated with the immoral, let me introduce a minor discussion about food porn. Food Porn can be found on different social media. For example on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram when you search for #foodporn one can find different pages that show you delicious looking food. Also on Tumblr you can find blogs that use the label food porn. Most accounts or pages online depict food porn with photographs or video’s that give the end result of a certain dish that has being made (see for example image 6).
(Image 6: Twitter page: FoodPorn, shared on June 2 201610)
10 https://twitter.com/FoodPorn 19
Looking at this example in image 6 it might be hard to see what is pornographic here. There are no sexual actions between people or things shown. Then why would this visual be labeled as food porn? Another visual, on Tumblr, presents the viewer a naked woman with a strawberry hanging out of her vagina (Image 7). This was one of the very few visuals I found on Tumblr that portrayed a naked body with food. The majority focused on food itself. So, to be called food porn, it is not necessary to include sexual representations in the visuals.
(Image 7: Found with the terms #foodsex11)
‘(..) food porn generally evokes the unattainable: cooks will never achieve the results shown in certain cookbooks, magazines, or television shows, nor will they ever master the techniques’ (McBride 2010:38). In other words food porn is about desire, desire for something we cannot achieve. McBride introduces a forum that includes perspectives of academics and practitioners who have knowledge on cooking. Here she was interested in reexamining the meaning of food porn (ibid.:38). What is problematic is that McBride speaks of only one meaning. I have emphasized earlier that just like with art, porn is also subject to different projections of meaning. I think there is no reason why this should not be applicable to food porn. In the article the author extensively focuses on the question whether the term pornography is used properly in this context. McBride, and others of whom she claims they agree with her, do think it is wrong to use the word pornography for these kind of visuals (like image 5). ‘The use of food porn to describe professionally photographed food in magazines and on TV demonstrates a lack of understanding what pornography is, how it is produced, and for what purpose; it dilutes the meaning and seriousness of the word pornography’
11 https://www.tumblr.com/search/%23foodsex 20
(ibid.:40). So pornography is something we should take seriously, and by using it in the combination with food it moves away from seriousness. Now remember the definition of Kipnis, which says porn does not exist and exists at the same time. How are we to take something serious if it is not there, and at the same time it is? According to McBride it is also important to remember the historical meaning of pornography while using the term. ‘Since food porn has become a cultural term taken for granted by bloggers and mainstream media alike, its origins have rarely been revisited’ (ibid.:41). Derivative from these quotes there is a certain history to porn that needs to be looked at before using it in combination with other words, because apparently there is something serious about porn that could be covered when used within another context, like the context of food. ‘The lines drawn between porn and other forms of sexual representation also seem much less clear than they did in the past; mainstream representation has become more explicit and ‘perverse’ and imagery and language, which would have been classed as pornographic not very long ago, have become part and parcel of popular culture. The landscape is clearly different now’ (Attwood 2002:94). According to Attwood pornography is a cultural phenomenon that has changed meanings over time. And gradually it has become more difficult to draw a line between porn and other sexual representations. What is clear is the fact that in art there is a constant discussion whether it is obscene or not, while with porn this discussion lacks being on the wrong and not respectable side anyway. Porn is seen as bad most of the time. Where art starts from the position of respectability which needs to be protected from the obscene, porn already starts as obscenity. But what if we start looking at porn in a different way? Just like art, pornography has a long history with shifting trends. As Attwood states pornography is in some way representing sexuality. Earlier I wrote about the Knidian Aphrodite. Nowadays we would not perceive this statue as being shocking or sexually provoking, as spectators in those days. In retrospect it seems unbelievable people actually got aroused by looking and the statue and would even masturbate because of it. Steve Garlick (2012), a sociologist, writes on the history of masturbation and its link to pornography. Masturbation was something to be frightened of at one point in history. ‘The panic over masturbation can be seen as an element in the formation of modern, secular societies’ (Garlick 2012:308). One fear for example was that masturbation would, because it was likely to come instead of sexual intercourse, disrupt marriage. In that way it would be disruptive for the social order in which heterosexuality was the norm (ibid.:309). That is why masturbation
21 eventually had to be regulated via medical regimes (ibid.:310), in the same way we saw in the writings of Nead female nudity was controlled by medical discourse. Like art, masturbation can be looked upon as being gendered. While female masturbation was stigmatized, for men this was different. Men who fell for the practice of masturbating were considered (in the 18th and 19th century) not in control of their sexual urges and therefore not masculine (ibid.:310). Garlick notes that one ideal of masculinity is self-control (ibid.:310), so who is not capable of this is seen as lacking masculinity. Texts problematizing Onanism started to be written from 1760 onwards (ibid.:311). Men were allowed to have pleasure in those days, but there were rules for what types of pleasure were allowed (ibid.:309). So what is the link with pornography, one might ask? Garlick notes that concerns about masturbation were growing around the same time pornographic stories were produced and circulated (ibid.:318). Nowadays women’s masturbation is more or less part of heterosexual porn, but male masturbation still needs to be researched more extensively (ibid.:318). This seems strange, especially because, as Garlick states, contemporary porn is most of the time about masturbation. There is hardly any porn film to be seen without the money shot at the end of it, in which the men ejaculates onto the woman’s body while jerking off his own penis (ibid.:307). Sadly Garlick does not explain why masturbation became a big part of heterosexual porn nowadays. Garlick also seems to have a limited look on contemporary pornography (ibid:307). Contemporary porn is obviously more than only heterosexual porn. And even the term heterosexual porn can be perceived as much wider than only films which are ending with a money shot. Even though not much attention was given to the combination of masturbation and pornography, by feminists a lot has been written on gender relations and pornography. For example Andrea Dworkin sums up different anecdotes of women being raped. ‘That meaning is: pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women’s bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny’ (Dworkin 1989). So for Dworkin pornography is a moral crime against (the bodies of) women. Pornography is indirectly triggering men to do awful things to women. ‘Constitutional lawyer Catharine A. MacKinnon and I were hired by the City of Minneapolis to draft an amendment to the city's civil rights law: an amendment that would recognize pornography as a violation of the civil rights of women, as a form of sex discrimination, an abuse of human rights’ (ibid.). The projection of Dworkin on pornography, if we speak in Derrida terms, is purely negative. Porn is supposed to repress women, it is an expression that we should not want to see and we
22 should get rid of. ‘I was heartbroken as women I knew came forward to testify: though I listened with an outer detachment to the stories of rape, incest, prostitution, battery, and torture, each in the service of pornography, inside I wanted to die’ (ibid.). Trying to recognize porn as violating women’s rights, Dworkin notes that she started interviewing other women on their negative experiences with porn. What Dworkin tried to do was twofold. On the hand she was giving these women a voice. At the same she tried to push forward a law that would tell the truth about pornography (ibid.). Although I will not ignore the fact that it is possible to get wrong ideas from pornography, I think Dworkin is creating a rather biased picture of pornography. In her eyes all pornography is abusive. She does not give solid arguments for her claim that pornography automatically moves people into wrong behaviors. She just appears to be assuming it is even wrong to look at porn presenting sex or bondage. I will not ignore the fact some people might be affected by watching porn and could get wrong ideas, but I do not see why this should apply to all viewers. Needless to say the exploitation she describes should be fought against. Later feminist followed the same lines of arguments. They have been arguing against the idea of Dworkin that pornography should be seen as a moral danger, that pornography should only have negative effects. Wilkinson criticizes the idea that porn, especially extreme pornography, is seen as leading to an increase in sexual violence (2011:495). Special laws in Great Britain made this type of pornography illegal. ‘It is unclear how the government can be sure that its legislation will not affect political or artistic expression, as it makes no attempts to differentiate between pornography that is produced for artistic reasons, or pornography that could be seen as a political tool for a minoritized sexual community’ (Wilkinson 2011:497). Wilkinson discusses throughout her article that some people could find these types of “extreme porn” liberating. She claims it can have this therapeutic effect, to show people you are not the only one with having this fetish (ibid.:500). Extreme porn was being banned in Great Britain also because of the idea that children might be exposed to it and get the wrong impression from it (ibid.:502). Wilkinson criticizes the idea that women are always just the victim of extreme porn (ibid.:504) and that there is a misconception that women could never consent to objectification (ibid.:505). Wilkinson is also critical on the idea that porn would lead to sexual violence. It does not mean that if someone would fantasize, this person will act on this fantasy (ibid.:495). In other words we should stop seeing every person as lacking self-control. It is interesting to see similarities on the issue of self-control in reference to porn and masturbation. In both cases, masturbation and pornography, some authors claim there is a lack of it. One who gives in to his or hers sexual urges and starts masturbating, in the 18th and 19th century, was a deviant. Someone
23 who is out of control and not very masculine. Porn on the other hand makes men objectify women. It forces people into motion of using violence against women (in the eyes of anti- pornography feminists). Dennis (2009) gives an interesting statement against these claims of anti-pornography feminists: ‘It is in fact difficult for anti-pornography feminists not to be complicit with these same institutions [hypocritical bourgeois institutions]: not, for example, to defend “norms” of female sexuality that pornography violates; not to join these institutions in maintaining bourgeois sexual mores against the “grossness” of the undisciplined body historically associated with the laboring classes’(112). ‘(..) the view that pornographic representations of women are inherently exploitative sometimes forces feminists into the position of condemning any pleasure derived from these acts or from their representation in pornography’ (ibid.:112). I agree with Dworkin that exploitation is not something we should promote and should try to get rid of. Unless one is consenting to exploitation (which is done with s/m), because that means there is consent. Still saying that all types of porn is exploitation is indeed, as Dennis claims, wiping away the pleasure some might have from porn. Using the same vocabulary as the bourgeois did on female sexuality will not liberate women. That porn also might have other functions apart from exploitation and pleasure is what Kakoudaki tries to argue. Kakoudaki investigates the history of pinup and how this pornographic representation changed into propaganda for the US army during WOII (Kakoudaki 2004:336). ‘Compared to our contemporary visually explicit and hard-core genres, the illustrated mid-twentieth-century pinup is tame and, I would claim, not easily readable’ (ibid.:336). Pinup is less sexually explicit than recent depictions of hard-core porn, but it did have an important role in promoting patriotism in the army in those days. According to Kakoudaki pinup from the 1940s was posted in many different media, for example men/women magazines, cartoons, movies, etc. ‘As a matter of fact, the pinup works as a patriotic image not because it is clean-cut and mainstream, but because it channels the excitement of an explicitly sexual scenario into non-pornographic media’ (ibid.:339). Because of the context where pinup was showed, the meanings of pinup also changed. This is what Kakoudaki finds so interesting. ‘The multiple definitions of the pinup, from pornographic to non-pornographic, or from marginalized to mainstream, give us a special insight on how sexually explicit visual genres work and how they negotiate the boundaries between public and private pleasure, as well as public and private viewing’ (ibid.:337). When we look at these boundaries we are able to see how porn is a very dynamic term. This also becomes clear when looking at the development of porn from pinup and other drawn porn to porn films.
24
‘And yet despite the new interest in the form, the classic art of the illustrated female pinup from the war years still poses important questions on how we understand the intersections of pornography, technology, politics, and culture’ (Kakoudaki 2004:336). Technology is important in the development of porn. Eric Schaefer shows what changes were possible by technological development. ‘(..) during the 1960s, feature-length soft-core sexploitation films gained a foothold in the marketplace’ (Schaefer 2004:370). Just like in the case of pinup visuals context was very important for changing meanings of the visuals. ‘What I want to suggest is that a set of historically specific material conditions of production and reception – notably the introduction of 16mm as a theatrical mode in the adult market – contributed to the rise of the pornographic feature’ (ibid.:372). This shows the importance of the social context in the present and in the past when looking at the meaning of it. While porn changed over time along with other cultural developments, it remained stigmatized. ‘By displaying sexual diversity – different positions, different partners, different gender combinations – pornography depicts sexual activity and enjoyment outside the boundaries of institutionally sanctioned monogamous relations’ (Dennis 2009:112). Dennis uses Eleanor Heartney’s argument that porn in this way challenges the notion of the nuclear family, monogamy and heterosexuality, but also the idea of sex for reproduction (ibid.:112). Yet there is one example that does not contain different positons or partners. In his book Fat Don Kulick describes how there are magazines and sites online that depict obese white women eating. Your first reaction might be, what is the sexual link with overweight women eating pizza? Kulick mentions that there are some fat porn films include fisting or s/m practices, yet the main focus seems to be on big bellies and putting food in one’s mouth (Kulick & Meneley 2005:79,83). ‘Aside from the sheer size of these models, the single most striking thing about this genre of pornography is that the women who are pictured do not engage in sex’ (ibid.:79). The idea of fat porn crosses the boundary of what we see as sexuality. Kulick uses Foucault to explain how it is possible that people find obese women eating attractive. ‘He [Foucault] had shown that what we consider to be “sexuality” is not a natural or God-given phenomenon but is, instead, a culturally and historically specific way of linking together particular body parts, specific activities, sensations, and knowledges’ (ibid.:90). What is different in contrast with fat porn is that there is not a focus on stimulating the so-called erogenous zones, like the genitals, or nipples (ibid.:90). Here we can see a link between fat porn and S/M sex. Where S/M sex eroticizes dog collars for example, or other subject, that are normally not seen as sexual, in fat porn the pleasure is brought to other body parts (ibid.:90-91). ‘Sex should occur in private, away from public view, and for limited periods of time (twenty minutes, two hours, a whole
25 afternoon… but not all the time)’ (ibid.:91). If you eroticize eating, and one can eat all the time whenever and wherever they want, it does in fact deconstruct dominant ideas of what sexuality is and what porn should depict. So when we consider the definition of Kipnis, in which porn does not and will never exist, while it exists at the same time, once again, while taking in account these examples of pornography, we might argue that it is very difficult to give a definition of pornography. The concept is fluid. What was seen as porn in the past, is not seen as porn today and vice versa. Also porn is not part of the material world, it cannot be touched. It is an idea constructed by human beings. Eventually as we have seen porn can also be used for acts that do not seem sexual at first. Fat porn is of interest to some people. For others looking at delicious food and having the desire of eating could be called food porn. Does it really need to contain sexual acts for something to be porn? Maybe because of the negative side of porn, it also makes it more attractive and therefore combining porn with other words makes those topics more appealing. So one person can argue that something needs to be called pornographic, while another person can claim it is not. Or, in the words of Derrida, that it is there, but also it is not. Which brings us to the discussion, when is something both porn and art?
Combining Art and Porn ‘One of the most significant ways in which pornography is historically defined is in relation to other forms of cultural production; we know the pornographic terms of its difference, in terms of what it is not’ (Nead 1990.:324). Nead notes that through time art and porn have been defined in opposition of one another (ibid.:324). In the case of the combination of the words art and porn the border of definitions is crossed. That is why art had many scandals through history when it came too close to the fringes of its definition. Art was supposed to be different from porn, opposed to the obscene. Yet cultures are dynamic, new meanings are created. That is also why we can now discuss the subject of porn and art combined in different works. This certainly does not mean that there are no discussions around this subject in the academic world. Most debates on this subject focus on the intention with which the product is made. By knowing the intentions we are able to identify if something is pornographic or artistic. And when we have decided by knowing the intentions whether we are dealing with pornography, it cannot be art at the same time (Uidhir 2009: 193). Uidhir, an assistent professor in philosophy in Houston, is aiming in his article to present us a “value-neutral” option to discuss whether or not something is art or porn. He believes that it is impossible for art to be porn at the same
26 time, even though they share the same contents (ibid.:193). I think it is quite remarkable and open to debate a trained philosopher promises to give a value-neutral perspective to look at this issue. As I stated before extensively, definitions of art and porn changed over time and will do so in the future. Art and porn are no objects out there to be studied as “natural phenomena”, they need to be studied in the context of human beings who relate to them. Another philosopher who participated in the discussion of art porn/ porn art is Levinson. ‘What’s true of Vox is that it mimics pornography, and in particular, phone sex, appropriating its gestures, tropes, and outer appearance, but does so in order to produce a work of literature, and thus, art’ (Levinson 2005:233). Jerrold Levinson discusses here a literature piece that was looked at by Matthew Kieran, also a philosopher, and who claimed it to be pornographic art. Again like Uidhir Levinson argues that porn and art are two different phenomena and cannot be combined into one art/porn piece. Here again it is about the intention of the work that makes it art or porn, and again it cannot be both. What is interesting is that Levinson uses the word mimicking. Art can be mimicking porn. How do we know an art piece is mimicking porn? And, can porn also be mimicking art? Hans Maes, a philosopher from the Netherlands, takes another position on this matter. ‘Whether we consider works of art, works of pornography, or cases in the disputed middle ground, what Levinson seems to have overlooked is that most of the representations involved are intended for multiple occasions of reception’ (Maes 2011:52). That works of porn and art can be received and viewed upon in different ways is elaborately shown before. For example I showed the pinup visuals were not only pornographic, but were also used as propaganda. Still Levinson thinks it is problematic if art and porn would overlap. ‘(..) allowing that something can be pornography—and not just resemble pornography, or mimic pornography, or have a pornographic flavour, or be quasi-pornographic—and art at the same time, leaves no place for the category of erotic art as distinct from pornography’ (Levinson 2005:234). Which brings me to my final question. What is erotic art? ‘‘Erotic art’ is the term that defines the degree of sexuality that is permissible within the category of the aesthetic’ (Nead 1992:103). Where art needs to be defended from the category of porn, the erotic is important. ‘The erotic plays a critical role within this system; it is the borderline of respectability and non-respectability, between pure and impure desire’ (ibid.:104). If we would link this to the idea of Levinson that there needs to be a place for erotic art which is distinct from pornography, it seems that there only needs to be a place for the erotic so that it can justify certain types of sexual representations. To me this makes no sense. In this chapter we had an overview of the history of both art and porn. Recent
27 examples, in which art and porn were conflicting, were covered. While Greek men would masturbate because of the Knidian Aphrodite, a butt plug gnome in Rotterdam caused discomfort among its public. Answering the question I have posed in the beginning of this chapter: How are porn and art constructed through time and what does this say about the construction of porn art/ art porn? Through time art was supposed to be protected from the obscene. Even though nudity was part of art, it was defined as nude instead of naked, to keep it separate from the naked bodies in porn. It seems that there is a struggle going on between the worlds of porn and art and they must not overlap. If they do, the respectability of art will be questioned. That is why I believe porn art/ art porn is still believed to be non-existing. Yet, I find the idea of Kipnis relevant. Porn art/ art porn exists and does not exist at the same time. For some porn and art can be two sides of the same coin. For others the presence of the obscene is irreconcilable with art. My focus will be on the former. The attempts to reconcile porn and art has caused some heated debates. But we can see a lot of attempts have been made. As I will explain with the case study of producers and consumers of art porn or porn art on Tumblr, it is impossible to create a clear distinction between art and porn. Also I believe that art porn could shed a new light on pornography itself. Instead of focusing on the negative sides of porn, the discussion around art porn could give us new insights on what it could do for us.
Methods
With all this background knowledge in mind, we now turn to the actual subject of this study. To understand how different social meanings are constructed by people on Tumblr producing or consuming porn art/ art porn it was essential to use in-depth interviews. Through these interviews I was able to point out different views on the definition of these concepts. This was not the only benefit. Interviewing helped me to gain knowledge on why people share these images and what it does for them. The interviews were semi-structured. This was the case, because I wanted to ask my interviewees similar questions, but leave space for them to go into directions I did not thought of before. This turned out well, because I was pulled into different social worlds, for example the world of hentai manga, or the world of scat art. It was never about just one type of porn art/ art porn. It showed that art porn/ porn art is able to be visible in different fields, but at the same time it is not visible for others. Which reminds of the idea of Kipnis where porn never exists, but it exists at the same time. Another method I used here, of which I assimilated examples during my interviews, was showing my interviewees visuals. The reason for this was because my interviewees
28 shared visuals themselves which they defined as porn art/ art porn. These visuals are somehow on the border of art and porn. This made me interested to see if they would stick to their own ideas of art porn/ porn art if they would be confronted with visuals I collected (visuals that have sexual content, but could also be seen as artistic). Do their definitions change because of this or/and are extra criteria mentioned when they come in contact with these types of visuals? In other words what kinds of discourse do they use when discussing this topic? For the analysis of my research I used discourse analysis. The visuals I collected were a mix of visuals I found on Tumblr, feminist porn sites, news articles and on the site Pornceptual.com. All photos that I used were labeled as porn art, art porn, porn, art, sex art, or horny arts on the pages that shared them. Also the porn sites, the Pornceptual site and the news articles were describing an artistic dimension in the visuals or were discussing porn art/art porn. I let my interviewees analyze and classify the images, but I also analyzed the visuals to see what my interviewees did not discuss, while it is visible in the images. So the actual visual analysis was done by my interviewees, and at the same time I analyzed their answers on the visuals. To collect qualitative data on what people on Tumblr saw as art porn/ porn art I had to make my own Tumblr account through which I was able to communicate. At first finding interviewees was difficult, because I did not fully understand how Tumblr’s search function works. Also most people did not answer my messages. Eventually I tried to contact over 200 profiles and a few contacted me, because I made a blog where I asked people to discuss porn art/art porn with me for my thesis. In the end I was able to speak to forty people, of whom I interviewed 18 in-depth. Most of them preferred to be interviewed by email on the Tumblr chat function and only a few of them (3 in total) agreed with interviewing via Skype. Still most of them seemed to be enjoying the fact that they could talk about this subject. Some tried to keep in touch after I interviewed them and were interested in the outcomes of this research. The interviews were conducted between March and June of 2016. Sixteen in-depth interviews were done with people on Tumblr who produce or consume (normally when they consume, they also re-blog visuals) different sexual representations they identify as artistic porn or erotic art. Two other interviews were done with a Dutch artist from The Hague and a PHD student who writes about alternative pornography. The in-depth interviews were done with 14 males and 4 females. Other conversations I had were with 11 males and 11 females. The cultural backgrounds of the interviewees varies from the U.S. to France, to Brazil, etc. The Skype and in person interviews had an average of 1,5 hours. Some interviews done via
29
Tumblr chat were done over a time lapse of some weeks, others were finished within a few days with short intervals. One interview via Tumblr chat took me five hours in one day. The email interviews were send via Gmail to the interviewees, which took some a day to answer and others a couple of weeks or even months. The people I questioned in-depth were between 17 and 59 years old. In one case (with the 17 year old) I could not send this girl the visuals, because it would be illegal to show an under aged woman sexual content. Also most of my interviewees described themselves as Christians (Protestants or Catholics), others regarded themselves as being not religious. Still most people who defined as having a religion claimed they did not consider themselves as being active as such. When it comes to sexual orientation I found some sexual diversity. I talked to heterosexuals (25), homosexuals (6), lesbians (4), bisexuals (4), pansexual (1) and people who added they also had different fetishes, for example Lolita types of images (1)12, exhibitionists (6), or people who were into BDSM(6). I spoke to people from different educational backgrounds. For example there were quite a few people with a degree in arts, or who were studying art. It was interesting to see that people with an arts background were interested in art porn/ porn art. Others had a degree or were studying sociology, communication studies or engineering. All interviews, except for one, were done individually. One couple accepted an interview via skype. It was interesting to see how they each used different ways to define porn art. During the visual part of the interview, I showed 10 of my interviewees 19 visuals. I did send all 18 of my interviewees whom I interviewed in-depth the visuals. Yet when they eventually had to define the visuals it seemed that they had no more time left, or they did not respond anymore. Probably it were too many visuals. Those who did respond did not all fully explain why they defined pictures in a certain way. Luckily there were also interviewees who put in a lot of effort in explaining how they would define the visuals and why. For this part of the interview I tried to add visuals that showed different sexual representations like Transsexuality, homosexuality, group sex, lesbianism, heterosexuality, s/m like visuals, religious visuals, etc. With this I tried to find out if sexual preferences were important in classifying these visuals. As the whole discussion around porn art and art porn already showed that defining these terms is depending on social context, it could also be a
12 For example Lolicon Manga, or like the book written by Vladimir Nobokov on Lolita. 30 matter of different sexual preferences that causes people to have different associations. Just as gender, race, class and cultural differences. Yet what could be problematic here is that the visuals I selected for my interviewees to see are visuals I saw in a specific way and I tried to see if my interviewees would look the same at these images. These pictures do not represent every sexual fetish that is out there and it could be I missed some visuals that could also have been interesting to see people their reactions to. What could also be problematic is the fact I used 18 images and 1 film. On Tumblr there are images, videos and GIFs that are shared/made. This means that not all forms that could be found on Tumblr are part of my interview. In my final analysis I only used six pictures to analyze the definitions my interviewees gave. These six visuals were the visuals that had the most interesting responses, while the others did not really add a new perspective. Next to interviewing my interviewees I also went to several museums, expositions and conferences where art porn/porn art was displayed and/or discussed. I did this to see what is out there (outside the world of Tumblr). I do have to add here that in the Netherlands it is easier to have these kind of discussions and to portray pornographic imagery. Of course not all sexual images were accepted, as we have seen in the case of McCarthy, but the Netherlands is a lot more tolerant to sexual artworks. Compared to other countries, there is a lot more possible in the Netherlands when it comes to displaying certain art works. During my interviews it will be become clear why people from different countries have the need to share these images. Interviewing also had the result that not everyone was only interested in just talking about this topic, but some would try to flirt with me. A few told me they wanted to have sex with me and even one interviewee proposed to fly to Amsterdam and wanted to “make love to me”. Another interviewee send a picture of his face and told me that he thought he was ugly, while another male send me full nudes of himself. It felt like these men were looking for positive feedback on their bodies or thought it was “hot” (as one called it) to send me these images. I did not felt threatened by these visuals, as most asked me if they could send the visuals to me. For example the male that wanted to send me some nudes, said he made porn art of himself and asked if I was okay with looking at those. Still I think it would be different if someone would strip on Skype. I might have felt awkward. Fortunately that did not happen and I felt pretty safe behind my computer. The rest of the interviews I had did not contain these kinds of interactions. These were more about people their own experiences with pornography and art and how they discovered
31 porn art/art porn. This brings me to why people share these visuals on Tumblr itself and what kind of place Tumblr is.
Tumblr
To understand the phenomenon of sharing porn art/ art porn/ horny art/ sex art/ etcetera on Tumblr, we need to explore the context of Tumblr itself. What is Tumblr and why do most of my interviewees prefer to share and consume these visuals on Tumblr instead of other sites? Tumblr is a blog site, it originates from the US and therefore is complying with US laws. This also means there is a focus on freedom of expression (express creativity, to show who you are, what you think and what your stance is13). One can access the Tumblr site from different countries. It is easy to register and open an account to create your own theme in the layout offered. It is possible to personalize one’s own page (Fink & Miller 2014:612). ‘Blogs (which can be created via templates offered for free or paid ones) where users can post photos, texts, quotes, links, videos and many more formats of digital content are presented and followed or friended in much the same way you follow a Twitter profile or friends a Facebook user’(Reis 2015). Reis is calling the way in which the blogs are created with different visuals, text and quotes a way of creating a ‘chained narrative’ (ibid.). What is interesting about Tumblr is that it gives an opportunity for people with different sexual preferences to explore their sexuality and share sexual content. Emma Gray, for example, shows that for women it is more attractive to watch porn on Tumblr in comparison with visiting regular porn sites14 (Gray 2016). According to Gray anything can be found on Tumblr as long as someone uses a # in front of the search word. One only needs to know which words to use when searching for certain genres of porn. On one blog you can find a variety of subjects. For example: ‘A GIF of a man enthusiastically going down on a woman might come right after an artistic vintage photo of two people going at it in black and white, or be followed by an S&M-themed video15’(ibid.). Some of my interviewees told me that they were not exclusively looking for porn or art on tumblr. Some were also visiting
13 https://www.tumblr.com/policy/nl/community 14 ‘Although it's hard to determine exact numbers, a 2013 report showed that of Tumblr's 200,000 most-visited blogs, 11.4 percent of them (around 22,775) host adult content. That same analysis found that 16.6 percent of Tumblr's traffic comes from those X-rated blogs. Keep in mind: of Tumblr's users, just over half are women, disproportionately young women between 18 and 29. Given these numbers, it's not surprising that anecdotal evidence points to a growing number of women in their late teens, 20s and 30s who are using Tumblr to find images that will get them off.’ (http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/tumblr-porn/greatforwomen/) 15 Elle Chase, founder of Lady Cheeky in Tumblr, describes how Tumblr works. http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/tumblr-porn/whatsontumblr/ 32 blogs on flowers or food. Others had other pages, apart from their porn art or art porn blog, containing anything but porn or art. Another advantage of Tumblr Gray points out is that women are not ‘assaulted by lots and lots of things they don’t want to see’ (ibid.). It is not only women that make use of Tumblr searching for pornography. ‘For transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, and gender nonconforming people, emergent media technologies offer new outlets for self-representation, outlets that often last for only a brief moment’ (Fink & Miller 2014:611). Fink and Miller emphasize how Tumblr helps people who are for example transsexual to explore their sexuality. What Fink and Miller think is an advantage of Tumblr is the fact that you are not restricted to different genres. ‘This format blends together sexual images that otherwise lack commonalities because they range from modest to hardcore, schoolgirls to bears, professional to camera phone, vampire to vanilla, sentimental to humorous, long shots to close ups, male to female, and beyond. Such a format also resists categorizing postings by only one rubric, such as gender or transgender per se’ (ibid.:622). This shows how Tumblr offers people the opportunity to explore their sexuality, which they might not have been able to do in another setting. In my research I also try to explore what my interviewees think of Tumbler themselves. Why did they choose Tumblr to share art porn, porn art, horny art or sex art? And why not on other social media? Also what kind of community is the Tumblr community and why don’t they just hang porn art/ art porn in their homes? This all will be discussed in the next paragraphs. Motives for opening a Tumblr account Why opening a Tumblr page? There were different explanations given to this question. For some anonymity was very important: “It is private and discrete, with the ability to secure anonymity all the while exploring your deepest desires. It’s like having you own personal “dirty little secret”” (Lesley). Also Pierre defined anonymity as an important motive to create a Tumblr page: “I decided to open a Tumblr account because I could share porn art icons and stay anonymous”. Many people I spoke refrained from using personal pictures (not showing their faces) and used a username by which their identity was concealed. Also many of my interviewees did not admit to family and friends they were on Tumblr sharing this kind of content, yet did not name anonymity explicitly as one of the important reasons to open a Tumblr account. For example Jason told me that no one knew he was on Tumblr sharing/consuming this kind of content. “If you saw my Facebook you would have no idea I had this page lol16. Tumblr is where I can be deviant safely”. He argued that where he is
16 Lol means laughing out loud. 33 living (the Bible belt in the USA) BDSM is not accepted. Jason who tells he is into BDSM, believes it is something he can explore anonymously online, but not something he can share and discuss with friends. “Only one of my roommates kinda knew what I liked and he told one of my other roommates and he said “hey don’t you like getting tied up and chocked”? “I said no I like to tie her up and choke her”. He was kind of religious so the conversation ended there”. Another reason mentioned to open a Tumblr account was self-expression. “I started a Tumblr blog as a means to store images that I appreciated for various reasons... and to share my fantasies, thoughts, desires, .. sort of a means of self-expression” (Barry). Yet other motives were also possible, for example: “I create my Tumblr page in order to show to my future photo models what I try to do” (Peter17) or “to show off my body” (Matt18). Either way, all of my interviewees were sharing what they thought to be sensitive content. Together, one could say, they form a community on Tumblr. A community that is sharing each-others visuals and re-blogs them. In the next paragraph I will focus on this community and I will discuss the way in which they communicate with one another and what the motives are for sharing visuals.
Tumblr accounts and community Sharing sexual explicit content online in a blog does not suggest that one tries to keep sexual content to oneself. Sharing seemed to excite a lot of my interviewees. It did not make any difference whether the visuals were self-made or re-blogged form others. The excitement is the same. “The first art I really wanted to share was the result of a chat session, ended up doing some collaborative stuff, and then I made some art based on that, and wanted to share it. Going beyond that, I enjoyed using Tumblr to share other porn art that I had made - because it was fun to get reactions from people, and also exciting to share "naughty" work!” (Aaron). Aaron who shares a lot of drawn images and creates visuals himself thinks it is exciting to
17Peter is one of the 22 interviews where I did not got every detail of their background information. Also when I asked some background questions he did respond anymore. What is apparent on his page is that he describes himself as addicted to porn art. When looking on his page you can find a lot of photographs and GIFs that show women into the act of oral sex. Specifically oral sex on men. What was contradicting here is the fact that while scanning his blog you see many visuals the are re-blogged from other blogs, but not own work. Therefore it is not really clear to me what he really is trying to show his future models. It could be he is referring to another tumblr blog he has, but he does not mention this. 18 Also Matt is one of the 22 interviews where I did not got every detail of their background information. Matt shares only pictures of himself where he covers his penis, but still the suggestion he has an erect penis, or explicit visuals of his erect penis. Beneath the pictures he writes lines like: “Now I am getting hard” or “a hand for you”. 34 share his own porn art with others. As we already have seen previously, answering the question why people open Tumblr accounts, Barry told me he used it to express himself to others visiting the site. Barry confided to me his wife was aware of his interest in porn art, but she did not know he had a Tumblr page. Since being a father of a son, he thought it was not appropriate to expose porn art visuals in the house. So Tumblr gave him a shelter for sharing his appreciation of porn art. “Mostly for my own personal entertainment and to show my taste in aesthetics to others, and show pretty pictures. It's quite pleasing” Christina says. She shares black and white pictures containing sexual acts only. Most are heterosexual and the visuals vary from oral to coital sex. Some are close-ups others are less some zoomed-in. Christina labels the visuals as artistic porn and is pleased to share them. When I asked her about the responses she had, she replied: “I don't have feedback. They reblog that shit”. Barry also told me he did not get a lot of explicit feedback, but the fact he had accumulated 10,400 followers was prove enough to him that his blog was being appreciated. Some couples I spoke shared visuals of themselves having sexual intercourse (the three couples I was able to talk to were all heterosexual couples. I don’t mean they are per se heterosexual, but they were in a heterosexual relationship). The couples were excited to exhibit themselves and felt “hot” to be able to share these visuals of themselves. Jennifer said: “I think they have a really good like community already, so many other people post that [porn] and obviously they allow it”. Jennifer and her partner Fernando share a lot of visuals of sexual acts of themselves on their Tumblr blog. Fernando said the following about sharing their visuals on Tumblr: “I think it is hot that people like seeing us fuck. I think it is hot when people get turned on when they see us fuck like that too”. For Fernando and Jennifer it was exciting that people could be aroused by them in this manner. During our conversation Fernando asked me whether I regard the visuals they shared as being were porn. And wanted to know if I was aroused like the others. More people asked me this question. I was asked to give feedback and pictures were send because they assumed I would appreciate them. Another advantage of being part of this community my interviewees experienced was the fact that they had hardly any negative responses to the visuals they shared. As I already showed with the examples of Barry and Christina, they did not receive much explicit feedback, but they did receive implicit feedback because the visuals were re-blogged. This was seen by them as proof as such. Pierre responded: “Porn is significant in my daily life, but it's an hidden activity, because it's impossible to talk about this hobby (except with you !) in my personal or more professional life”. His Tumblr account enables him to communicate to
35 others about his interest. “I like to have messages in my Tumblr account so I always respond”. For Pierre these responses on what he shares are important: “If the reactions are good, It means that what I' m posting (I’m not an artist only a sort of retailer...) is pleasant to their eyes. So it encourages me to continue ...” For him, as to others, Tumblr is a place to express themselves, which in their daily lives is not possible. The positive responses motivate them to continue sharing porn art. Most responses are positive, but this I not always the case. “Generally the people here are very accepting and stick within their own circles, though sometimes you do have to deal with angry SJW [Social Justice Warriors] who are against the content” (Aaron). Fernando and Jennifer, as some others, gave me some examples of negative responses. “Most of them respond really positively” says Jennifer. “I mean people like our shit” adds Fernando to the discussion. Fernando: “Every now and then, it is very rare, we get messages where people say like, oh you are a whore or something like that. We’ll just delete those, but overall people are just more positive”. At one point during the interview we were also discussing some requests they got from viewers, some of which they thought were weird. Fernando: “Some guys say I want to suck his cock, and stuff like that. I have never even talked to you”. Still both Fernando and Jennifer overall describe the people communicate with through Tumblr as being “cool and relaxed”. Fernando also explained to me: “we have noticed and talked to others there that, girls mostly have it.. way worse than us as a couple.. like if you are a single girl posting pictures of yourself you will just get bombarded with like dick pictures, sexual messages, anything like that, people don’t do that to us thankfully. When people do send stuff like that we will just delete it”. So, while they are sharing their visuals, they do not appreciate others to send them similar visuals in return. This is understandable. Response like this force them to look at content they might not appreciate, which is in contrast with one of the main reasons for the success of Tumblr.
“I believe that pornography is a good thing, that it should be enjoyed, but that it can also be improved. (..) sharing the images on Tumblr is personally enjoyable but also I hope highlights the ‘good stuff’ for others and encourages them to broaden their interest and encounter different kinds of pornographic images” (Rorry).
For Rorry by sharing pornography, porn itself can be improved. It can broaden the interest of people visiting Tumblr. In a way the message he wants to give people should broaden their horizon. Which implicitly means he wants this community on Tumblr to learn something
36 from the visuals he shares. As we have seen not all of my interviewees are using Tumblr to have conversations. They show appreciation by following, re-blogging or liking visuals. But at the same others are verbally communicating. They respond to requests, some “weird”, some negative and mostly positive reactions. Tumblr overall proofs to be a stimulating environment to share sexual content without too much worries about negative consequences. That being said, there are also other social media on which one could express oneself. Then why do people choose for Tumblr?
Tumblr compared to other social media Not all of my interviewees preferred using Tumblr over other social media, but most of them did so. I found there are several reasons why Tumblr is appreciated more. Censorship is one of them. ‘The claims for removal of certain posts are exclusively made by other users and are rarely answered by the staff/administrators of Tumblr’ (Reis 2015). Reis claims that Tumblr is a censorship-free space, where only rarely content is deleted. You can share almost anything on Tumblr. Some of my interviewees named censorship as one of the most important reasons to share visuals on Tumblr instead of doing so on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or other pages like DeviantArt. Androscoped argued that the terms of service on Facebook and Instagram made it very hard for someone to share erotic or porn art. “Facebook is a nightmare for anybody doing erotic art for sure. Let alone porn art. Instagram is not much better.” He explained to me that Facebook and Instagram have other terms of service on what is sexually suggestive than on Tumblr. These caused him to lose his Instagram page. “I got kicked off Instagram earlier this week, cause I had sexually suggestive images”. Yet what he points out rightfully is “who gets to decide if an image is sexually suggestive?”. Here is a link with what I mentioned before. Who is able to define art as art and obscenity as obscenity? Who is in authority and where does ones ideas on this come from? Ideas on sexually suggestiveness depend on people’s cultural backgrounds and are depending on the era you are living in. “It is one of the few social network where you can post pictures of blowjob without be censored in minutes :)” (Jean). “No censorship, that’s really why. I was really down with the fact that other people could not see my artwork and MANY art callings forbidden explicit art. That was a way for me to share and spare my seed of evil.” (Vittorio). All these examples show that Tumblr the place where you can share sexually explicit visuals and not being censored. Even visuals that provoke many times strong reactions are tolerated on Tumblr. For
37 example in the case of Aaron. “We [me and my friends] sometimes use Tumblr as a vehicle to share art that we can’t post to DA [DeviantArt], as DA does have a specific definition of porn and does not allow it.” (Aaron). When I asked Aaron why he posted on his blog that he would not be accepted on the site Hentai-Foundry, he answered by saying that he tried to share his own art on the Hentai-Foundry19, but they claimed he had not enough talent. “(..) even if my art had now improved, the rules on Hentai-Foundry now forbid art with the female body- shape that I prefer, and that most of my characters have- often called “loli” or “Lolita””20. So even if Aaron improved his art, the female body-shape he prefers would not be accepted on the Hentai-Foundry. The same applies for DeviantArt. It will not accept Lolita. “DeviantArt ofcourse also forbids anything like Lolicon”, which seems to contradict with the word “deviant” in the label. This is why Aaron chose to share on Tumblr. I asked him whether Lolicon Manga was less stigmatized on Tumblr.
“It is also stigmatized on Tumblr, though it seems that there are a lot more people who are active with it. It seems that work is only deleted when specific complaints are made. Overall, Tumblr is more open about that type of artistic content, though the rules are technically still against it”.
So, Aaron uses Tumblr out of necessity, he cannot share Lolicon elsewhere. And although stigmatization is less on Tumblr, it is not absent. Still, this example and others show Tumblr defines porn differently to for instance Facebook or Instagram21 and therefore is more accessible as a medium to explore ones sexuality and share sexual content. Another reason for starting a Tumblr account is of a different more pragmatic character. People told me someone introduced them to the medium. One interviewee opened a Tumblr page, because he saw what a girl he was hooking up with used Tumblr. Through her he became interested. Fernando said he chose to use Tumblr instead of another social media, because he did
19 ‘Hentai Foundry is an online adult art community launched in July 2006 which allows artists to exhibit their works, as well as discuss the works of other artists through comments and forums. The site was originally designed primarily to accommodate fanart; however, original art by its members is also welcome’ (http://www.hentai-foundry.com/). 20 Lolita comes from the book written by Vladimir Nabokov (1955). The story of Lolita is about a man Humbert Humbert who falls in love with a twelve-year old girl. Lolita or also Lolicon called is used in Manga as a certain genre that portrays young characters that behave in sexual acts. 21 And though Tumblr's community guidelines specifically prohibit uploading sexually explicit video content, they don't ban adult content in general. Instead the company asks curators to "respect the choices of people in our community who would rather not see such content" by marking their blogs as Not Suitable for Work (NSFW). Tumblr is far more liberal when it comes to explicit imagery than a platform like Instagram, where a nipple can get your account suspended. (http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/tumblr-porn/greatforwomen/ ) 38 not know that many people on Tumblr. If he and his partner Jennifer would post their visuals on for example Instagram eventually people might find about them posting this. So here we see again that anonymity is an important reason to use Tumblr over other social media. Another motive to use Tumblr instead of other social media was discussed by Christina: “Tumblr is more pleasing because you have themes, art, drawings, photos and texts. (..) Tumblr have the same system of "like" [as Facebook] of course, but it can be more clever or creative... usually. (like art, photos, drawings, jokes etc. is far better than "oh god Iook at my selfie" or "going on vacation tomorrow wooooh!!”. So Christina prefers Tumblr because it is more organized, and because there is less focus on one’s own ego. Still why would someone bother to share anyway? Why not stick to exposing porn art or art porn within the privacy of one’s own house? The next paragraph will discuss why Tumblr is better to use as a platform for porn art/ art porn than for example between one’s own walls.
Benefits of Tumblr compared to “real life” Only a few of my interviewees felt comfortable with exposing porn art/art porn at home. While interviewing Androscoped via skype I was able to see some tiles hanging behind him showing naked men. Others admitted they had porn art/art porn at home, but it was restricted to their bedrooms. Others explained they had chosen not to expose art porn/porn art in the living room, because their guests might be shocked by it. When I asked Pierre whether he would like pornographic art to be displayed in his home he said the following: “Why not, but it's quite difficult because some visitors could be shocked by that”. I asked Rorry the same question and his response was: “I wouldn’t in a public area of a house, for fear of offending visitors (especially if any came with children), but perhaps in a bedroom.” So offending visitors was the main fear that led people from displaying this type of artistic sexual content on their walls. Barry more specifically mentioned he would not display this type of content in his house, because of his son. So, another advantage of sharing on Tumblr in comparison to exposing the same content at home is, one avoids shocking or offending others. Which means porn art/ art porn are seen by the producers and consumers as already deviant. They can only share there “deviant interests” online with others. Summarizing this chapter, the reasons why my interviewees chose to use Tumblr had to do with censorship, anonymity, fear of shocking visitors and having the excitement of sharing hot content with others. For some it was also a way of expressing oneself. Because of the more accepting sphere of Tumblr people were able to share what they liked there. Other
39 social media were not as accepting and hanging this type of visuals in one’s house might be uncomfortable for visitors. Still it seemed that my interviewees would label their type of interest (explicitly or implicitly) as deviant. Words like “sharing seed of evil” and sentences that say they don’t anyone to recognize them point to the idea that there people out there who think this is not normal. So far this does not explain why there is a need for art porn/ porn art in the first place. Why do they feel the need to express themselves via porn and art combined, and not in another way? It also does not shed light on what according to my interviewees is the definition of art porn and porn art. In the next chapter I will discuss how my interviewees defined art, porn and the two combined.
What is art porn/ porn art?
Previously I have shown that according to philosophers the combination of art and porn is an impossible one. As will become apparent this view is not shared by my interviewees. Both producers and consumers of art porn/porn art think art and porn can be two sides of the same coin. The question I will answer is: How do consumers and producers of art porn or porn art on Tumblr define these terms? In course of my interviews it became apparent two themes, intentions and context, were pinpointed as being important for the possibility to combine art and porn. I will now elaborate on these themes to grasp the ideas of my interviewees on porn art/art porn. Intentions Just as some of the philosophers I already mentioned, my interviewees were talking about certain intentions, purposes, and goals of art and porn. They also think these determine the label art, porn or both. Thus far some philosophers made a distinction between art and porn through intentions. My interviewees in contrast use intentions as a way of combining the two concepts. For example Aaron believes that porn has certain intentions:
“I guess that I would define pornography as having a deliberate intention of invoking sexual arousal and excitement, that goes beyond sharing or invoking more mild titillation, or sharing the feeling of beauty that comes from viewing the nude human form.”.
So for Aaron the intention of porn is arousal. To him porn goes beyond viewing the nude human form. As we already have seen, art is linked to the nude body, porn is more often linked to nakedness. Aaron also gives a definition of art that contains the idea of intention. In the eyes of Aaron art shares a message, a feeling or an emotion. Porn as art should communicate with the audience, i.e. the feeling of arousal. What art is supposed to
40 communicate is non-specific and can therefore be a range of feelings/emotions. So both communicate intentions, porn in a more specific way. That emotions can be part of art, I agree on. On the other hand, why should emotions not be part and parcel of porn? In fact porn triggers with its viewers various emotions. Some might feel anger when watching porn, and others might be surprised they feel attracted to it while they did not know they would. Other emotions than arousal can be present. Other interviewees had similar ideas on this subject of intentions. Jennifer thinks there are no limits to what can be addressed as art. She defines art as: “I would say, I am pretty open to anything being art. I think it is art if it’s, you know, just created to express something whether it is something positive or something negative. Just something creative, intention to express something. I think all of that can be art. [laughs]”. To Jennifer art is a term that can be used broadly if the intentions are (broadly). The idea that arts tend to have the intention of expression also returns in other interviews. For example in the interview with Androscoped, when he gives the example of art and entertainment. “As supposed to say entertainment. Which entertainment can.. is the driving force behind it.. is to entertain people. Whereas I think with art, the driver is the expression itself and whether or not it entertains people is not always relevant”. Also Lesley sees the intention to express as the driving force behind art. He sees art as “an expression of one’s imagination” and he also gives a few examples where art can be expressed, like “visual, tactile, dance or music”. Lesley re-blogs a lot of pictures that portray men together while having anal sex, men masturbating, or one man along putting his underpants down while showing an erect penis. Lesley does not share pictures that he created himself. What is interesting here is that Lesley sees art as important in his daily life.
“Art is an integral part of my life in every facet, i.e., how one dresses, homes, interior design vehicles, pets, floral arrangements, original paintings, sculpture, pottery, etc. Fortunately, as a middle aged, educated gay man, life has afforded us to purchase original art from all of the categories listed above”.
So for Lesley art is everywhere and in everything. Pornography is not very important to him. “Not a necessity for sure, however it could work for me”. Lesley defines porn as: “Visually stimulating nude and/or sexually explicit photography in print or video, which is inclusive of all sexually arousing fetishes”. The visuals Lesley shares are visuals that one could also find on a queer porn site as “visually stimulating”, as he calls it. While scrolling down his Tumblr page you can only find these types of visuals. So, on the one hand Lesley lets us know pornography is not very important for him, while at the same time he shares visuals that
41 suggest otherwise. And if one should make a guess about the intentions behind this sharing, it seems they are meant to arouse. So we see according to my interviewees, in contrast to the claims of the earlier mentioned philosophers, art and porn can be two sides of the same coin. The decisive factor being whether it is intended as such. Which means for them art porn or porn art does not only has the intention to arouse/titillate but can have other intentions as well, normally associated with art only. “Artistic porn is of course in relation with representation of sexual activity or the idea of sexual activity. Purpose of porn art is same as porn: exhilarate the public but with more subtle representation. There must be something more than classical pornography: nudity with beautiful body, or raw image with double meaning. In this case the comment of the "piece of art" is very important because without, some material looks like banal and regular porn”. For Pierre the combination of porn and art should add to classical pornography another dimension which otherwise is lacking. Only then something called art porn or porn art can be created. To him there is a difference between art porn on the one and porn art on the other hand. “For me, the main difference is: in the first case you introduce art in porn and in the second case you introduce porn in art. It means that the second one can be probably less explicit that the first”. Also Androscoped points out there is a coming together in one frame: “Hmm.. I think artistic porn combines the two drivers. So if there is a drive to creatively express and married with the drive to arouse and titillate. So it needs to.. in order for something to be porn art, then it has to combine those drivers”. It is clear my interviewees are in complete disagreement with philosophers like Uidhir and Levinson who think a marriage between porn and art is out of the question. For Aaron the creation of porn art is connected “sharing a feeling of sexual excitement”, but can also have different intentions at the same time. “When I'm making art that is porn art, then for all of those pieces I always want to share a feeling of sexual excitement, but depending on the situation or what I've done, I may also be trying to share a particular fetish, or a feeling of tension from drama or a sense of danger that should give a different flavor to the artwork”. Creating or consuming porn art/ art porn seems to be a matter of interwoven intentions. If a piece has multiple intentions that are normally defined as belonging to art and to porn, it means it can be both. Yet is it really this simple? Is it just a matter of intentions to decide whether a work can be judged as a work of porn art/ art porn? Androscoped raises an interesting question on the issue of art and porn. “So google
42 released this tool, online called their deep dream generator. They did this through a so called dream scope. The idea is that you can reinterpret an image by having it analyzed artistic elements in another image and projecting them onto it. So I started thinking about things like what happens if I take Picasso’s technique and apply it over what is to be considered a gay pornographic image. If I do that does that make it art? [laughs].” To put it another way, does a technique normally used in art, when used pornographically, change the character of what is represented? Or, more in general, how important is context? Can an expression of porn in a different context become art? Context During my interviews it became apparent to me that the context in which the visual is shown is decisive for a lot of my interviewees to label a piece of work art, porn, or both. Fernando uses context as a marker for what art means. “I think it would be some kind of expression, but it is also something that what some people consider art, might not be something what everybody else considers art. So for art to be art, the artist has to think it is art, and also the person viewing that has to think it is art.” For art is in the eyes of the beholder. The idea of context became more apparent in the answers of my interviewees when I asked them to give definitions of art porn and porn art. When I interviewed Sara Janssen, a Dutch scholar, she told me that she showed alternative porn movies during some of the classes she gave. When she moved to the United Kingdom she continued to so. But now, she find out, the context was different. Showing the videos in the Netherlands was no problem. In the UK, as was pointed out to her, it was not wise because some of the material now was illegal. For instance BDSM, which is not only illegal, but it certainly not tolerated to be shown in groups. In the Netherlands it is allowed, so Janssen assumed it was alright. Keeping this in mind, one can almost guess that BDSM as a form of art porn will not be warmly welcomed. As many of my interviewees where from many different countries, we should keep in mind that they have to deal with different contexts, like Janssen was to find out. Contexts in which what can be seen as art porn/porn art can be different. As we already saw in the example of “Sweet violence”, a work that aims to be child porn art, it does not always matter what the intentions are. Once people find it offensive, it will not be seen as art. The context is important. In the Netherlands there is a taboo on child pornography, which makes it harder for people who feel the need to show how the world “really” looks in a very painful way, to do so. There is a big risk of being thrown into the pile of pedophiles.
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We can look at local politics that differ in every country, but there are also other contexts to take notice of. The definition of what is art and what is porn can also vary when the context of the viewer is shifted. Vittorio sees the combination of art and porn as content that is dislocating from own field to another and mixes parts of both worlds together: “I define it as the amalgamation of the roughness of porn and the pure dislocation from the porn world (that is thought for a solo viewer) into the art world. I think in doing that we are still discussing the taboos about sexuality and the morality hypocrisy in the art world.” In other words if porn and art are being dislocated and are brought into another context, the outcome of this can challenge dominant power structures. This is also the point Vittorio wants to make when he discusses the difference between porn art and erotic art. “There’s none, erotic and pornographic art are the two sides of the same coin. (..) I vehemently don’t see much difference between erotic art and porn art, but that one is broadly accepted in art market.” So according to Vittorio there is no difference between porn art and erotic art. It is only because erotic art is an accepted term in the art world, in contrast to porn art, that the artificial distinction is made. This means that if one is labeling an art piece erotic art it will be approached differently to a piece with the same content but tagged porn art. I must say Vittorio’s opinion on this subject was the exception to the rule. Other interviewees think there is a difference between erotic art and porn art. Some people admitted they never gave it a thought. Yet there seems to be consensus that porn art is seen as more rough and explicit, while erotic art is more hinting, more suggestive and has softer displays. One person was the odd one out on this subject. For him it is erotic art that is more explicit and rough while porn art is not about showing explicit sexual behavior. This being said, it is interesting to see whether my interviewees would label the material they share as erotic art or porn art. It is striking they then see themselves positioned on the “deviant” side of the dichotomy. “It’s like having you own personal “dirty little secret”. “That was a way for me to share and spare my seed of evil”. They are aware of the fact that others would probably not approve of what they are doing. So in the words of Vittorio erotic art is on the accepted side of the coin, porn art is not. Obviously those who choose to label their content porn art or art porn will be confronted easier with claims that their work is just regular porn than others who are asserting their work is made in the context of erotic art. Another conversation I had with one of my interviewees clarifies the significance of defining a work as porn. “Again it goes to motivation. What is the purpose behind it? And I think for pornography the purpose is to arouse and titillate. [Silence] and.. if it fails is it no longer porn? Good question. If you are not aroused and titillated by what you call mainstream
44 porn then is it really porn? Or just a failed attempted porn?” (Androscoped). This quote criticizes that merely intention is decisive in labelling a work to art or porn. If one speaks only of intention, one leaves out the audience to the piece. If there is an intention to arouse, but the public is not aroused by the content, does that mean that the content is not pornographic? I have been talking about this dilemma to Sara Janssen, a Dutch female who writes her PHD on alternative pornography and has a background in cultural sciences and gender studies. “Does porn always has to be arousing and is that everything porn needs to be?” Janssen is of the opinion that a combination of art and porn is possible. To her however, there is difference in making art porn or producing porn art. To her art porn is porn that titillates its audience, but does so in an artistic way. Porn art on the other hand is art that uses porn, but there is no real need for arousal. She also points out that the distance between art and the public is bigger than between porn and the spectator. One could say porn is more personal. “If you are aroused by porn, or disgusted by porn or aroused by something you did not know you could be aroused by, you know, that are really primary reactions, and that is something that makes porn, porn. It does not always need to be arousing, but it has to touch upon something personal”. So to Janssen porn does not has to be arousing. To her porn touches people on a more personal level, while with art there is always a distance that remains. But what if a person visiting an art exposition gets aroused, although the visuals obviously were not intended to do so? Because it is in public, there is distance, but at the same time it causes a personal reaction, one of arousal. And what if a commercial has the same effect on individuals? Should a to most people ordinary advertisement than be called pornographic? And what if someone is not turned on by any type of porn? Then nothing is porn anymore? Sara Janssen told me she is not looking for a comprehensive definition. When I asked her how she would define porn and how she would define alternative porn, she explained that she believes it is impossible to give a definition that includes all utterances of porn. One of my interviewees challenged the idea that pornography is for arousal. Angela told me how others define porn. “Well porn is usually defined as something that is simply showing the sexual aspects of something, so it's completely up to perspective What I see of something as more of an art, like hentai22, someone else could just see it as nothing special”. Angela tries to give a general definition of porn, but argues at the same time that it is all about the perspective an individual has. “It highly depends on the person, like me, I find no real intimacy in pictures or videos or anything like that, and I have high respect for those in the
22 Hentai is a type of Japanese Manga where the characters display sexual acts. 45 sex working business. For me it’s more of art. But that's because I get no sexual release out of it.” For Angela a work to be labeled art or porn depends on the person who is looking at the visuals. The definition that is usually given for porn does not comply with hers. She finds she does not get sexual release out of it, so to her it is not pornographic. I asked her whether for her anything can be pornographic. She responded: “I just define it as a picture/video that shows something sexually explicit. But no, I see all porn as art. No exceptions really”. Yet although she claims she defines nothing as porn because she finds it not arousing, it does in fact mean she believes that pornography is about arousal. She is not aroused by porn, therefore to her it is art. So arousal, although she is not able to feel it, is in fact a dimension of porn also for her. Sara Janssen points out there is also another way in which the ideas of porn and art as separate worlds are challenged. Some alternative porn makers label their work as porn, while others are defining the content as being erotica. The reason for this according to Janssen is political. The former try to broaden the definition of porn. She gives the example of Gala Vanting23, someone that claims the term porn, although sexuality is expressed in a different way as in mainstream porn (what is defined as “mainstream porn” to me is also open to discussion and also changing over time), and gives “a different vision of what arousal can be”. “Just because you have decided what porn needs to look like, which is a very limited image, I will do it my own way”. Here Janssen explains the thinking of Vanting and her porn. Another interviewee takes more or less the same political stance as Janssen described. “I think it's really all part of the same thing. Art is like the cosmos and porn is a galaxy. I don't really agree with the segregation and boxing off of something as just porn. Nudity and sex has always been part of art.” (Alexander). For Alexander we should not try to distinguish between art and porn. “Who are we to decide what is right and wrong and what belongs to art or not. Religion or government do not own art”. Alexander criticizes the fact there are authorities claiming they are able to define art and what is not. By doing so, according to Alexander, they claim ownership of art itself. The earlier mentioned Gala Vanting has comparable ideas on this issue. If we accept them, the conclusion would be art or porn are not context dependable. They do not need to be distinguished. “If they can be an authority just like that then I will be one too”, Alexander states, to continue: “And say that porn is all art.” For Alexander art porn challenges oppressive norms. “(..) I would say that ArtPorn is an attempt to break the barriers which have been tactlessly dropped in by society and these institutions. It is an unboxing. In
23 http://msgalavanting.com/ 46 the way that Queer unboxes oppressive hetero-norms. ArtPorn burns the boxes put in place by oppressive aloof institutions who claim to own a concept that has existed pre-humanity anyways and will exist post humanity.” Here we see, as with Angela, how porn is making an entry in the world of art. The arguments are different, the result is the same. To Angela all porn is art, because she thinks porn is not arousing, while having aesthetic qualities at the same time. Alexander makes a political statement. He claims that by defining porn as art he is helping to change the discourse in which a work of art cannot be porn at the same time. Another interviewee, Ton of Holland (a Dutch artist) explains not only “time” but also “place” is important. “You can have like this really dirty image from Tumblr, and then you can inflate the image and print it in a nice way. After that you make a photo of two by three meters and hang it in a museum or gallery and it will work in a total different way”. Ton of Holland has published a book, the Brown Book, about an artist, Martin van der Lucht, who died some years ago. In it are drawings of scat24. Ton explained that the fetish of scat is one of the most stigmatized fetishes. Still it was his objective to publish a book that was regarded as being artistic by which it would have serious attention. Ton told me about a long process in which he designed the cover of the book in a very aesthetic way. He decided to reveal the drawings not immediately by first introducing them by text. “Artistically it is a very successful book. It shows that you can go from pornographic drawings, because these are officially porn drawings, to a kind of aesthetics.” Ton has an aim with publishing this book. He wants the subject to be liberated from the “veiled world”. Scat is a fetish that has been underground for a long time and this book gives people the opportunity to look at it in a different way and with more background knowledge. The book is not being sold in bookshops, but it can be found on Tumblr and Queerlog25. It is a good example of how someone is trying to change porn into what is regarded as being more artistic. Still the fact that is has to be sold via Tumblr and not in a “normal” bookshop shows that it is still going underground. He recognized so himself, despite the fact efforts were made to embellish the book and make it more artistic, so the public would not think it is just “filth”. One of the people Ton worked with did not want his name on the book itself. He feared that the content of the book would give him a bad name. This also gives a certain idea of how stigmatized this scene is.
24 The fetish of feces. 25 http://www.homowebmuseum.nl/martin/ 47
(Image 8: A page in the Brown Book26)
So when does porn become aesthetic? What must be added to these visuals to be seen by my interviewees as artistic? To Christina porn pictures are more aesthetic when they are done in black and white. For another interviewee the lightening is important: “For me, the difference come from the light part. I'm a photographer and I can't have a beautiful photo without a beautiful light. I think it's the same with porn. A photo, even if the subject if a blowjob, is an art piece if it's well constructed and the light is good.” (Bernard27, male from France, photographer and producer of porn art). It is interesting to discuss the idea of something turning from pornographic into having the extra element of art, via black and white visuals. Is it really that simple? When I make a picture of myself or my dog and use a black and white filter, does it change into art? Or when I use all my skills to create a beautiful photograph because the lighting is just right, does this mean it has artistic value? Is it really that simple to create a work of art? Another definition of porn art and art porn was given by Ferdinand. “Art has a kind of distance, where pornography has no distance. So porn in porn art is nearer to my second definition: depiction of explicit sex action. Porn art is art that is depicting explicit sexual acts.” Yet Ferdinand is not completely happy with the term porn art. “In a way porn art is not a very interesting word: do you speak about flower art, landscape art? I mean the subject of an art work should not be defining the art. Surely more the style than the subject.” For Ferdinand
26 http://www.homowebmuseum.nl/martin/ 27 One of the 22 interviewees I talked to, but was not able to receive all the information from I needed. Bernard shares a lot of visuals on his page which display close-ups of female genitals. 48 it is not the subject that defines how we should name and art piece, to him style is more important. In fact one might ask the question, who can be judged as the authority to define the criteria for what we should define as art pieces, when it is not be decided through the subject? If porn is used in a work of art, it will probably have different social meaning from when an art piece is made with the subject of food.
(Image 9: Sacred Circle III – Rosalie Maheux28)
Most of my interviewees did not make a difference between art porn and porn art. They were mixing the two when talking about their work. For most of them porn art and art porn both are depicting sexual acts. “Porn art, it can also be a means of conveying messages, in the same way as any other art finally. You can be provocative, soft animals, and whatever happens, spectators these images will interpret each scenes in their own way, depending on what it evokes them. It's really important that everyone can interpret the images.” (Jean). Even if art should be defined by its style, just as Jean thinks, spectators of this content will interpret it in their own ways. Eventually it does mean that people should be able to interpret the images as a combination of the two. Still as everyone is subject to a different background it means that
28 Rosalie Maheux used materials from porn films to make mandala’s from. Some people felt offended by this piece. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/conservatives-pornographic- mandalas_us_55b0287ae4b08f57d5d3a660 49 visuals will be consumed in different ways. So, where do I stand on this issue? Art, porn and the two combined need to be accepted by its audience as being the right label. Despite intentions of the artist to produce a work of art, the public can judge otherwise. This does not mean I am making a judgement of the intentions themselves. I think they are the motor for change. That is why what is porn and what is art in reality is fluid and changing over time. Some intentions are recognized by the public and the artist will then find his work is crossing the border of the obscene. Still it is also interesting to look at those cases in which the public does not recognize the intentions. What we have learned in this chapter is that it is hard to define the combination of art and porn. Is it really just a matter of intentions coming together that makes it possible to acquire the label of art porn/porn art? According to my interviewees intentions are decisive. If intentions of pornography and art are combined, only then you can have a work that can be judged as art porn/ porn art. For some though it is not only about intentions. They point out also context is involved and it matters who is looking at the visual. We also learned that what is called porn or art, and so eventually also art porn/porn art, can have a political dimension. The examples of Janssen and Alexander showed us. So to answer the question: How do consumers and producers of art porn or porn art on Tumblr define these terms? It is a mixture of intentions and context. This mixture exists on the side of the artist, but also the public watching the works is influenced by both. Some added to this mixture more technical elements like lighting and using a black and white filter. In the next chapter I will discuss the different definitions my interviewees gave to different visuals I asked them to look at. As we will see the definitions differ from one another and different arguments are given why something is porn, art, art porn, porn art, or something else. Looking at actual visuals also forces the viewers to give more specific reasons why something has a certain label in their eyes.
What are we looking at?
All of my interviewees shared some sexual content on Tumblr and labeled this as porn art, art porn, sex art, horny art. The visuals here are meant to give extra insight in how my interviewees define actual sexual content. Is sexual preference important, or looking at the visuals does it give extra information about how people look at porn and art, than stated before without visuals? Most of the visuals here were taken from Tumblr, some are more
50 explicit than others, some seem to depict sexuality in a more suggestive way (still you could ask, what is suggestive?) and the visuals vary from serious to humorous.
(Image 10: Nikos Stamatopoulos29)
Image 10 portrays an erect penis. On that penis stands a small matryoshka doll (Russian doll). The background of the picture is a light color, on which only the shadow of the penis can be seen. What is missing in this picture is the rest of the body behind the penis. We could assume this is the penis of a man, but this does not have to be the case. What also is missing is the context of this picture. Why do we only see this penis with a doll? The following labels were used by my interviewees:
Porn (1x) Porn art (2x) Art (1) Art porn (3x) Joke dick pic (1x) Fun erotic (1x)
An important marker here for Aaron is the fact there is humor in the visual. He sees a suggestion in the visual that there are multiple women on the penis in the form of a Russian nesting doll. This suggestion makes the visual funny for Aaron.
29 http://pornceptual.com/nikos-and-his-lovers/ 51
Others would name humor as being part of the visual, yet the visual was interpret differently. “Russian Humor... seriously it's for me regular porn and funny picture.” (Pierre). Also Rorry saw the humorous level, yet for him there was no further suggested meaning, which made the visual pointless as an artwork. Therefore he gave the label “A joke dick pic.”. “I guess I would call that art. Well it is certainly meant to express. I don’t think it is as much to titillate as much as to elicit smile or laughter, because of the humorous element of the figuring being place on the penis.” (Androscoped). Androscoped sees it as only art, because there are expressing intentions, but when a visual has a certain amount of humor it becomes not arousing. So humor is not arousing. All my interviewees would discuss the humor in the visual. They all agreed it was a funny visual, but still they gave different explanations of why humor would or would not add to its artistic or pornographic value. Still it is interesting to see how some would consider this visual as having pornographic value. I wonder if the penis would not be erect, would the visual still be seen as pornographic? No one here really explains why it is pornographic to them. What also is not mentioned is politics. If we look at this visual with the Russian doll and the erect penis, it could also try to say something about discussions around Russia and sexuality.
(Image 11: Paul Kurucz30)
30 http://pornceptual.com/the-zone-glam-trash-in-rio/ 52
There is a lot going on in image 11. I is a darker picture and there are five couples who seem to portray sexual acts in a surrounding that looks like a dumping ground. We look at different sexual positions, but we are not sure if they are posing for the photo or if this is an action shot. There is a lot of clutter on the ground and the picture is made from above, while the first picture was made from the side. The visual was labeled as:
Porn (1x) Porn art (5x) Erotic art (1x) Erotic chic (1x) Art (1x)
Fernando and Jennifer were in a discussion about this visual. Fernando: “I feel like that is porn because it seems too active”. Jennifer: “I don’t know this one is kind of confusing. It is aggressive, but I can see like how it could be art, because it does kind of look like thought of and staged a little bit, or maybe it is expressing something. But it is not the most pleasing porn art, so.. I don’t know.” I asked her: “does it always has to please?” Jennifer: “I guess not it just is..” Fernando: “that is it with art, you decide if you think it is art or not.” For Fernando and Jennifer a few markers are important here. For Fernando the visual is too active. So something being too active is more porn like for him. Jennifer talks about the visual being aggressive. Which means she links aggressive images to porn. Yet to her the visual is also artistic due to the thought of it being staged. Still you could ask yourself is porn not staged in a way? There are scripts in porn and people think about how to make a certain product of porn. “I would call that porn art. (..) You can tell that in the way it is composed. But it is also designed to arouse and stimulate.” Androscoped brings here the idea of composition of the visual. Which seems similar to the idea of Jennifer that the visual is staged. It gives the idea that art needs more thinking than porn. Composition and staging tends to give the impression that someone with knowledge did something in the visual here.
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(Image 12: made by Androscoped31)
This piece is made by one of my interviewees. He collects pornographic visuals from a porn site and uses the google deep dream generator to use specific artistic techniques by which he is able to adjust the visual as he likes. We are looking at a man who, while standing in a pool is licking, the asshole of another man. The latter, with his legs under water, has laydown the
31 http://androscoped.tumblr.com/image/142432997573 54 rest of his body on the floor next to the pool. Next to him there is another copying the posture of the other person who seems to be waiting for his asshole to be licked. The viewer of the visual has to gaze upon this scene from above. The technique being used gives, to me, the suggestion of modern art. It reminds me of some work of Picasso. The labels here are:
Art porn (1x) Porn art (6x) Erotic art (1x) Interesting (1x)
Most interviewees agree on this visual, that was shared by one of them, being porn art. At least all interviewees find it is artistic in some way and 8 out of 9 think it can also be labeled as sexual. Yet one interviewee, who thought it was interesting, thought the artistic frame made it less pornographic, so less arousing to him. Some of my interviewees thought the visual was beautiful. “I think it's art porn. The picture is really beautiful.” (Christina). “Yeah like it is beautiful, I think there is a lot of skill, and expression’ (Jennifer). Also of other visuals my interviewees would speak about beauty. This suggest that a visual that they classify as beautiful is easier to see as artistic. Moreover, to my interviewees the method used is important to decide whether it is artistic or not. “Porn art for me, the reason I say it is porn art is because it is obviously porn, drew out” (Fernando). For Fernando the fact that it seems to be drawn makes it artistic. Furthermore, the sexual acts remind him of porn. “This piece, while more directly showcasing a sexual act, is made more complex through the way that it has been painted - or a filter applied? That really breaks up the shapes in an interesting way. I would also consider this to be porn art” (Aaron). Breaking up shapes and complexity are the reasons for Aaron to see this visual as artistic. What is interesting in this particular case is that Androscoped told me before how he had been collecting pictures from porn sites and how he used a tool on google to chance them, while at the same time he was wondering himself has this become art now? Well apparently it did for these viewers.
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(Image 13: blog tumbr32)
Image 13 is a close up of the genitals and anus of a white female. In the background we can see a small part, not very clear, of a face and just above the genitals we can see some hair. It looks like the female lies on her back and the photograph is taken between her legs. The fact that only a part of the face is shown, also not very clear, suggests her face is not important here. The focus is on her genitals and anus. The following labels were linked to this visual:
Women objectification (1x) Porn art (4x) Erotica/ porn art (1x) Erotic (1x) Arousing image (1x)
This visual caused a political response from Vittorio. “Women objectification and the same angle used by porn industry.” Here the words objectification and angle are important for Vittorio to decide how to label this. It tells something about how Vittorio sees the link between objectification and porn. You could ask yourself the question whether there is only
32 http://dreamwoman-pussy.tumblr.com/post/142536786400 56 objectification in this visual or is it manifest in other visuals as well? During the interview Vittorio regularly criticized the way the porn industry operates. “(..) they continue to make woman as objects and not subjects.” In other words, the angle that is used has as a result that the focus is on parts of the body and not on the female as such as a subject. I can appreciate this criticism. On the other hand, with sex objectification is lurking anyway. And what if consent is at the core of it like in BDSM? Moreover, when we compare this visual to the first one, in which we only see a penis with a doll, we could conclude the penis is objectified. The owner is not visible. Androscoped also had a political answer here, but this one contradicts Vittorio’s perspective. “The fact that the female is looking at the viewer, indicates that she is in control of her own gaze. Rather than being gazed at per se. She is controlling the gaze. It is about issues of control and sexuality, but then the other thing is, because she shaved. There is this dichotomy between the natural and societal ideas about beauty around genitalia” . This opinion is also interesting, because he speaks of control and gaze. Instead of labeling objectification as being negative, Androscoped turns it into a dominant female. She is in control of how she should be looked at. When looking more closely one could argue you are not able to tell what the female is looking at. To me that part of the visual is too blurry. Androscoped also talks of natural versus societal ideas, when discussing the fact that a part of her pubic hair is removed. In his interpretation he is able to give a lot of the context this visual is hinting at according to him To Fernando this visual is “obviously porn”, because it is explicit. While his girlfriend thinks this visual is beautiful, and it might be a thought out shot, she feels it is an extreme visual. Eventually she labels it as porn art (at first she agrees with her boyfriend it is porn, but changes her mind), because it has these two levels. The visual being extreme and the visual being beautiful and thought out. Through showing this visual to my interviewees I learned that Jennifer was no exception, when she changed her mind. A lot of my interviewees did not stick to the firs label they gave me. Furthermore I found that a close up of female genitalia can evoke opposing views, from objectification of the female to women’s empowerment. Which suggests my interviewees are aware of recent discussion on the subject of female objectification and the male gaze. The close of a penis with a doll on it did not arouse the same discussion.
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(Image 14: Blog Tumblr33)
In image 14 we see a focus on male and female genitals. It seems that there is a dread of semen dripping of the penis into the anus. Also there seems to be some semen on the perineum and the vagina. The male has his hand on the back of the female and it looks like one of his feet is leaning on a bed. The picture seems the be taken from below. Also the picture is done in black and white. This visual had the next labels attached to it:
Porn (4x) Aesthetic photograph (1x) Between regular porn and porn art (1x) Porn art (1x) Erotic art, bordering on porn (1x) Art porn (1x)
Now we see a shift in the use of labels. Nobody thinks this is plain art. Five persons think this can be judged as a work on the fringes of porn and porn art. But most interviewees think this
33 http://bigbadrntwolf.tumblr.com/post/130161523311 58 is plain pornography. “I like this; obviously pornography (the viewpoint arranged for maximum sexual gratification) but presented in b&w for ‘aesthetic’ or artistic effect – which sort of works because it emphasizes the contrast between the white semen and the darker flesh and shadows, and the curves of the buttocks and penis and the straighter limbs “(Rorry). Again the word obviously is used, suggesting it is easy to see why this is pornography. Yet the black and white filter triggers Rorry to talk about artistic effects. He is not convinced though. “(..) I might pass it by as pornography. I do find it attractive/hot, but again I don’t think it is a superior image even in that context; I guess the ideal image for me jumps out as both aesthetically beautiful and powerfully erotic in a physical, sexual sense, if not also emotionally suggestive – this doesn’t really qualify!.” So an image needs to be beautiful and powerfully erotic. To me what Rorry really meant is still not very clear. Ton of Holland also links black and white to aesthetics. “(..) Like this one, here I think compositional and the division between black and white.. everything is done nicely. If people would look at this at first, they won’t see a thing, after two seconds they will think, gross.. then they will not want it hanging on their walls” (Ton of Holland). In this quote he also talks about composition and then he points at the emotions people feel when looking closely, namely gross. This seems to imply that art is about composition and coloring, while the pornographic causes repulsion. So even if the visual is beautiful, the act makes (some) people sick. For Vittorio this visual was confusing. “That one is hard, because it could be a photography from Mapplethorpe. So I’m really confused, but again the formula: male centered sex.” As with the visual of the close up female genitals, Vittorio discusses here the idea of male centered sex. Something that the dominant porn industry produces. Yet because he makes a link to Mapplethorpe, it becomes less clear. Apparently the context of Mapplethorpe, who is an accepted name in the world of art, makes it hard to define the visual. But despite the fact that Vittorio is reminded of Mapplethorpe, he is criticizing the image for its sexual content. To him it is only made for male sexual pleasure. “This piece feels the most like pornography from any I have seen thus far, but the intense contrast from being in black and white - with the sexual fluids being so stark and white against the black backdrop and the grey tones in the flesh of the subjects and thus really popping out to the viewer - really elevates this piece and presents something to be looked at in detail that is also incredibly exciting” (Aaron). Again the label porn is at the forefront. Yet some aesthetics from the use of the black and white is derived. Although most interviewees think this is porn, there is also appreciation for some aesthetic quality. The next picture cannot
59 count on such a response, a visual that by most interviewees was labeled as porn as well.
(Image 15: Blog on Tumblr34) In this visual we see a drawing of a woman who is receiving a lot of sperm in her face and mouth. She is not fully underdressed, yet we can see her breasts. Between her breasts there is
34 http://hentie-me-up.tumblr.com/post/140851377339/nozomi-hentai-source-follow 60 the penis of the person who ejaculates in the face of the woman. The lower part of the female is not shown and of the other person we can only see a penis. The picture suggests that the visual might be taken by the person who just ejaculated. It seems that the female is the main character in this visual and although we know there is someone else there, this person is not interesting enough to see in full profile. When labeling this visual, 6 of the 8 persons saw it as porn. Only two people saw it as porn art and no other categories were named. This type of visual that most recognized as hentai manga was not received as a nice piece of art by most. For example Jason had some ideas on how hentai is not really art. “Porn. More hentai. Massive load that she does not seem to enjoy. Hentai is porn that pretends to be art.” This is an interesting thought. Jason emphasizes here that hentai in fact tries to look like art, but does in fact not come across to him as art. It is more like pretentious art, yet it is certainly not art. Aaron did saw this piece as porn art, but this was due to the fact it was drawn and a lot of care and work was put into it. If this was not the case and it would be a photograph Aaron would in fact have seen this as porn. So the method that is used to produce an art piece is important whether or not it will be accepted as such. Also Androscoped saw it as porn art. “Again it is designed to shock, titillate, arouse, any other uses, a kind of creative expression, medium that also somewhat detaches from being realistic and kind of changes it into an artistic perspective.” The idea of something being less realistic makes the visual easier linger to art, than to porn in this view. Which reinforces the idea that porn is real and art more or less not real. Still porn, just like art, is for some part unrealistic. Yet it is realistic at the same time. The actors have to get aroused, so their bodily reactions needs to be real. Still their behavior is artificial, because there is some script. It is just hard to exactly see the line where the real ends and the unreal begins. All the others did not see this visual as artistic. Vittorio saw this visual as being problematic. “The pleasure here pictured is centered on the act of ejaculation, basically reinforces that sexual act is only for men’s delight.” Vittorio, just like Jason, interprets this sexual acts as not being liked by the female in the visual. When there is someone in the visual who seems to dislike the act, it seems to turn the visual away from art and changes into problematic porn. For Fernando this visual is also porn, but this is just because he has this on his computer and uses it as porn. “When I was looking at it.. it was as porn, not art”. When looking at all the visuals, this were some criteria to label a visual:
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Hentai is porn, but pretends to be art; If the visual is drawn and hard work has been put into it, it is artistic; When the visual is less realistic it is art, if it is realistic it is porn; Who is gaining pleasure out of this? If it is only for the male, it is problematic porn; Black and white filter makes an image more artistic, just as lighting; Art needs a good composition; Art is thought out; Porn is active; Porn is aggressive; If a visual is beautiful it is art; Humor is not arousing, therefore not pornographic; Objectification and explicitness belongs to porn; If you have used it as porn, it is porn.
There were different criteria used by different interviewees and the visuals were labeled differently. If we look at all these criteria it becomes clear that we can critique a lot of them. Not because they are not valid criteria, but the criteria could also be used for both terms. Where art is seen as thought out, porn is also written with scripts. While objectification was linked to porn, we have seen through time how art would also objectify female bodies. An art piece does not have to be beautiful. For example in the painting of Ophuis (image 2) he was trying to show an ugly truth. In other words, if we link porn and art together it is not per se because there are different criteria brought together. The same criteria can be in both of them.
Conclusion
Throughout this thesis I have shown how through time art and porn have changed meanings. With the examples of Knidian Aphrodite, “Sweet violence”, the butt plug gnome and Mapplethorpe I was able to show how art is constantly fighting against the label obscene. The line between art and obscenity has been transgressed many times in the course of history. At these moments it became very clear what was supposed to be the line of demarcation between the two. But, what was seen as obscene in Classical Greece, has become artistically acceptable in our time. We are not shocked by white naked statues anymore and what is more, we do not think they are obscene. Within the context of porn I have presented several examples. Where art has no trouble being accepted, porn is directly linked to obscenity. The variety of expressions of porn
62 has also increased over time. Porn can show naked bodies having intercourse, it can be BDSM, it can be showing fetishism, people growing fat, etcetera. On Tumblr we can even find a category called food porn. The term porn to a lot of people has negative connotations. As to Andrea Dworkin a fierce opponent of porn. She believed it was only causing harm to women. Porn as the hatchery for evil. Later other ideas on pornography, also more positive ones, developed. Some feminists even tried to defend porn. That does not mean that porn is fully accepted nowadays. If we regard philosophers as spokesmen of their contemporaries, it does not surprise that to them art and porn cannot be two sides of the same coin. That is why it was important for me to understand why people on Tumblr seem to contradict this paradigm. Why, to them, can an expression be art and porn at the same time? Why is it possible for them to use labels like art porn and porn art? This leads to my research question: How do consumers and creators of porn art/art porn on Tumblr, define porn art/ art porn? To answer this question I submerged into the world of Tumblr. I was eager to know how Tumblr works and what my interviewees think of it. I found Tumblr is like a sanctuary to them, a place of safety where they are able to express themselves, be anonymous, have no problems with censorship and where they can share their “dirty little secrets”. Some people experienced hostility online. One person, who called the persons responsible for these animosities “social justice warriors”, told me that Lolicon/Lolita images are still stigmatized on Tumblr, but the community is bigger than on any other social medium. Yet it seemed to most of my interviewees that overall it is a very tolerant environment. Tumblr is also helpful to people who have an interest in porn art/ art porn, because to them it is not possible to fill their homes with these works, afraid they might be offending their guests or children. Tumblr gives an opportunity to share these images, without disturbing other people. To find these pages on Tumblr you have to know which keywords to use. What are the criteria for a work to be framed as art porn/ porn art according to my interviewees? They gave me two types of explanations, articulated through the words intentions and context. But whereas to the philosophers contrasting intentions are the reason why porn and art can never be two sides of the same coin, to my interviewees those intentions can exist next to each other, so the result can be art porn or porn art. To them the combination of the two can result in a symbiosis. Instead of just aiming at (the intention of) arousal (which they link to porn), the artist can also try to express himself/herself artistically and by doing so is having other objectives at the same time. My interviewees use the word expression frequently when talking about what they define as art. Expressing yourself, express a
63 message, etcetera, these were recurring remarks they made. It was difficult for me to uncover what was the deeper meaning of these statements. Also the idea of context came up regularly. Art is in the eye of the beholder was what some tried to point out. Apart from that I had to understand that it is the combination of art and porn that is giving the opportunity to lift one element out of the context it belongs to and situate it in another. Later I found out about more criteria when we discussed different visuals. For some a black and white filter, usage of lighting and composition, were important elements that were able to make a porn picture into a piece of art. To change an artistic visual into a pornographic one, according to my interviewees, it needs to arouse. Sexual preference proved not to be important in defining a visual. More important was somebodies political stance. A few men discussed their different notions on the male gaze. One person talked of a negative gaze, the second talks about a female who was able to control that gaze. Female sexuality in visuals for some was more problematic and to them was not artistic. A visual linked to a certain artist or to a specific social medium for some is easier to accept as art. A work that reminds one of my interviewees of Mapplethorpe creates hesitance. Gradually, especially after showing them the visuals, it became apparent to me my interviewees were struggling with their definitions of art and porn, and with art porn and porn art. But I also came to realize that the combination of art and porn was what they are looking for, not just porn. To others the political dimension is of the greatest importance to label what they regard as porn or art. Some interviewees have altruistic reasons to share visuals, they think they can help other people to introduce them to other forms of sexuality. It is not possible to generalize all the outcomes of this study. The sample I could make consists of people only who gave a positive response to my request to participate. Nevertheless this study shows that to people sharing visuals on Tumblr art and porn can be two sides of the same coin. I do not know whether this group is growing, but if it is, than art and porn would be concepts that can be combined and would not be seen as deviant. What a boring world that would be.
Bibliography
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Appendix
Personal information interviewees
#1 Pseudonym: Aaron Gender: male Age: 36 Nationality: Canadian Sexuality: Heterosexual (Likes the Lolita/Lolicon type of the female body) Education: went to university, but did not complete his study. Then went to college and did computer programming/web development program. Profession: Call center/ tech support. Religion: “(..) raised Roman Catholic, not currently practicing, and what I currently believe is... unclear to me” Consumer/Producer: Producer.
#2 Pseudonym: Androscoped Gender: Male Age: 43 Nationality: American Sexuality: Homosexual
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Education: Bachelor psychology, Bachelor speech communication, Master performance studies. Profession: Program director Religion: Non Consumer/Producer: Producer
#3 Pseudonym: Alexander Gender: Does not describe a gender. “Just call me an Alexander [which is not Alexander’s real name of course]”. Age: 24 Nationality: English Sexuality: Homosexual Education: Studied at private professional musical theatre school. Alexander plans to study at university in the future. Still Alexander claims he has learned a lot from the queer community. Profession: Artist Religion: None Consumer/Producer: Producer.
#4 Pseudonym: Alphonse Gender: Male Age: 34 Nationality: French Sexuality: Heterosexual Education: - Profession: art director at a magazine Religion: none Consumer/Producer: Produces own work. “I do draw genitals, anal sex, throbbing cocks and vulvas... I guess that it actually IS porn”. Alphonse makes drawings especially focusses on the female body. Sometimes only some body parts are visible, while other times there are two bodies in a sexual act. As Alphonse already described it.
#5 Pseudonym: Angela Gender: Female 68
Age: 17 Nationality: American Sexuality: Not sure about this, she only said she did not get aroused by porn, but not what her sexuality is. Education: Psychology Profession: None Religion: None Consumer/Producer: Producer.
#6 Pseudonym: Barry Gender: Male Age: 52 Nationality: Canadian/ European, lives in Canada Sexuality: Bisexual Education: post-secondary trade school Profession: management Religion: Catholic Consumer/Producer: Consumer.
#7 Pseudonym: Bastian Gender: Male Age: 43 Nationality: French Sexuality: Heterosexual Education: - Profession: management Religion: None Consumer/Producer: Consumer
#8 Pseudonym: Christina Gender: Female Age: 22 Nationality: Canadian 69
Sexuality: pansexual Education: follows a study on nursing Profession: - Religion: none Consumer/Producer: Consumer
#9 Pseudonym: Ferdinand Gender: Male Age: 51 Nationality: French Sexuality: Heterosexual Education: Engineering Profession: Engineer/ photographer Religion: Born Catholic, now Protestant Consumer/Producer: Producer
#10 Pseudonym: Fernando Gender: Male Age: 32 Nationality: Guatemalan Sexuality: heterosexual (Exhibitionist) Education: Engineering Profession: Engineer Religion: Christian Consumer/Producer: Producer.
#11 Pseudonym: Jason Gender: Male Age: 30 Nationality: American Sexuality: Heterosexual, into BDSM. Education: MA Sociology Profession: - 70
Religion: - Consumer/Producer: Consumer
#12 Pseudonym: Jean Gender: Male Age: 24 Nationality: French Sexuality: Heterosexual (Exhibitionist). Education: - Profession: Photographer and Cook Religion: None Consumer/Producer: Producer.
#13 Pseudonym: Jennifer Gender: Female Age: 31 Nationality: American Sexuality: heterosexual (Exhibitionist) Education: Bachelor in arts and communication Profession: HR manager Religion: Christian Consumer/Producer: Producer.
#14 Pseudonym: Lesley Gender: Male Age: 54 Nationality: American Sexuality: homosexual Education: Bachelor in psychology Profession: engineer/ corporate architect Religion: Roman Catholic Consumer/Producer: Consumer.
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#15 Pseudonym: Pierre Gender: Male Age: 44 Nationality: French Sexuality: heterosexual Education: Engineering Profession: senior manager Religion: none Consumer/Producer: Consumer.
#16 Pseudonym: Rorry Gender: Male Age: 28 Nationality: Irish Sexuality: Bisexual Education: Bachelor and Master in History, LLM (Law Legum Magister) Human Rights. Profession: Researcher Religion: Protestant, but not practicing Consumer/Producer: Consumer
#17 Name: Sara Janssen Gender: Female Age: ? Nationality: Dutch Sexuality: Did not ask her Education: Cultural sciences and gender studies Profession: PHD Alternative Pornography (university of Kent) Religion: - Consumer/Producer: Does research on alternative porn. Yet she does not really know Tumblr that well.
#18 Name: Ton of Holland 72
Gender: Male Age: 59 Nationality: Dutch Sexuality: homosexual Education: technical education and art academia. Profession: artist Religion: catholic Consumer/Producer: Producer of art, but not per se on Tumblr. Created many different series of art works and displayed those in galleries and museums in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. He also created a book together with some other people that contained art works on the scat scene. These visuals contain sexual explicit drawing where poop is the main feature of the sexual act. Also it is about the homosexual scat scene. All visuals depict men who are doing sexual acts together. The book is sold via Tumblr and other sites.
#19 Pseudonym: Vittorio Gender: cisgender male Age: 26 Nationality: Brazilian Sexuality: Homosexual Education: Visual Arts on UNESP Profession: Artist/ drawing teacher/ bookbinder Religion: Raised Catholic, at this moment Agnostic Consumer/Producer: Producer
Interview Questions Porn Art/ Art Porn This is an interview on porn art/ art porn which is shared/produced/consumed on Tumblr. This is a voluntary interview, so when there are questions you would not like to answer, you don’t have to answer them. Also if questions are unclear, please say so! The interview has different sections. First there are some background questions (for privacy reasons there is the option of filling in a pseudonym, if this one is not filled in I myself will come up with a pseudonym). Second there will be a section about the interviewees own ideas on art, porn and porn art/art porn. Later on there will be some practical questions about the use of Tumblr and specifically about porn art pages. Finally, the interview will end with some sexual content and the
73 interviewee will be asked about personal ideas on what is displayed in these visuals (I am also doing a visual analysis, that is why this section is added). Keep in mind that there are no wrong answers! Also thanks for consenting to my research!
Background questions
Pseudonym: Age: Gender: he/she/they/or something else? Sexual preference: What is your cultural background? Where are you from? Occupation: Educational Background: Religion?:
Art
What is art? (How would you define it?)
What kind of criteria do you use to see if something is art/artistic?
Was art important in your childhood? (Were you brought up with art? If so: In what way?)
How important is art in your daily life?
Do you go out to look at art? If so where do you go? And how frequently? (art exhibitions, etc)
Do you look online for art? If so where do you go? And how frequently?
Do you read about art? (if so, what do you read)
Do you watch documentaries or other types of film about art? (if so, what are they about?)
What kind of art impresses you? (example: Modern art, etc. you can also name more than one art form!)
Explain why you are impressed by this type of art:
Do you have art displayed in your house? (if so where and what kind of art)
Porn
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How would you define pornography?
What kind of criteria do you have for something to be pornographic?
How was porn talked about in your family?
How was porn talked about in school?
Do you go out to see porn? If so where do you go? And how frequently? (example: conferences on porn, or other public events)
Do you look online for porn? If so what do you visit online? And how frequently?
What kind of porn are you into? (only if you are interested in porn of course)
How important is pornography in your daily life?
Do read about porn? (what do you read?)
Do you watch documentaries or other forms of film about porn? (if so, what is it about?)
Do you have porn displayed in your house? (if so where and what kind of porn, example: posters)
Artistic Porn/ Pornographic Art
How would you define artistic porn/pornographic art?
Is there a difference between artistic porn and pornographic art? (if so, what is this difference)
What is the difference between erotic art and porn art/ art porn?
How did you find out about porn art/ art porn?
When do art and porn come together in your eyes?
What kind of porn is more artistic in your eyes? (example: soft porn, hardcore)
How important is artistic porn/ porn art in your daily life?
Do you go out to porn art/art porn events? (if so, where do you go, example: museums, conferences, etc)
Do you look online for porn art/art porn? (what sites?)
Do you have pornographic art displayed in your house? (if so where and what kind of pornographic art)
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If you don’t have pornographic art displayed, would you like it to be displayed in your house? (Why would you, or why wouldn’t you?)
Do you follow discussions on porn art/ art porn?
Have you ever had a discussion about art porn/ porn art? If so what kind of discussion were you having and with whom (friends, anonymous people, family)?
What do you specifically like about porn art/art porn?
Tumblr
What made you open a blog on Tumblr?
How much time do you spend on Tumblr?
Could you describe a “normal” day on Tumblr for you?
What is it that you like about Tumblr, in comparison to other forms of social media (for example Facebook, Instagram, etc)?
Do you follow other pages that contain porn art/ art porn? (What kind of pages/blogs that contain porn art/ art porn?)
Is porn art/ art porn something you specifically look for on Tumblr? (why would/wouldn’t you)
Do you ever search for “regular” porn on tumblr?
Would you prefer tumblr over a porn site? (why)
Do you also look for other art than only porn art?
Why do you share this porn art on Tumblr? What is in it for you? What inspired you to do this?
How do people react on the visuals you share?
Are the reactions of people important for you? (why)
Can porn art create a more positive view on porn itself? (why yes/no)
Are there stigma’s on porn art/art porn? (if so, what kind of stigma’s?)
Have you ever felt stigmatized because of the content you share on Tumblr?
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As photographs, drawings, GIF’s and films are all shared on Tumblr, which of these do you prefer to look at porn art/ art porn? Are some better in portraying art porn/ porn art? (why)
Porn, Art, Porn-Art/ Art-Porn or something else? This section contains sexual content. The idea here is that the interviewee looks at all the visuals and decides for oneself if the visuals portrayed are porn art/ art porn or not. So for example one could say that certain images might not be porn art, but more erotic art, or it is regular porn. If there is a different association, that is not a problem (so if the interviewee sees the image more as comical, or something else, that is obviously not a problem). Please state your association for every image and what it is in the picture that makes you feel this way. Also note that if the images are too explicit for one’s taste, you do not have to answer everything if you don’t feel comfortable.
Visuals
(Nikos Stamatopoulos: http://pornceptual.com/nikos-and-his-lovers/)
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(Paul Kurucz: http://pornceptual.com/the-zone-glam-trash-in-rio/)
(Unknown https://www.tumblr.com/search/%23artporn)
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(Artist on Tumblr: http://androscoped.tumblr.com/image/142432997573 )
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(blog tumblr: http://dreamwoman-pussy.tumblr.com/post/142536786400)
(Blog Tumblr: http://zenmomma.tumblr.com/post/56434852470)
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(Blog Tumblr: http://transmenxxxporn.tumblr.com/image/140500911382)
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(Blog Tumblr: http://lesbianart.tumblr.com/post/1646620789/%C3%A9douard-henri-avril)
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(Blog Tumblr: http://artporn-boys.tumblr.com/post/105221374514/nakedcouples-20-18 )
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(Blog Tumblr: http://bloggaythingsuniverse.tumblr.com/image/142681006030 )
(Blog Tumblr: http://bigbadrntwolf.tumblr.com/post/130161523311)
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(Pornceptual, made by Alva Bernadine: http://pornceptual.com/pornography-as-art/)
(Blog on Tumblr: http://sexcitement.tumblr.com/post/139911050659)
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(Skin, movie by Elin Magnusson: http://www.elinmagnusson.com/skin/)
(Pornceptual, made by Andrea Galåd: http://pornceptual.com/new-classical-porn/
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(De Correspondent, made by Johannes Verwoerd, called ‘Forest’ :https://decorrespondent.nl/1388)
(Image from the book ‘Dreams of Spring’, written by Yimen, p.114)
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88 http://40.media.tumblr.com/f318fc542eb211f197611c559fc23711/tumblr_o33qd1Zzn81tc3d1 6o1_1280.jpg
http://hentie-me-up.tumblr.com/post/140851377339/nozomi-hentai-source-follow Consent Form MA Thesis Title of Project: Sociological research on Tumblr porn art/ art porn (The Artistic Side of Porn) Name Researcher: Emmy Bruinzeel
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Name institution: University of Amsterdam Contact: [email protected] or [email protected] Supervisor: Gert Hekma [email protected]
Description: This research is being done for a master thesis in sociology. The main goal of this study is gaining an understanding in personal ideas and experiences about porn art/ art porn. Also the specific focus is on people who share/consume/produce sexual explicit content on Tumblr. The idea is to gain more knowledge and to produce a more nuanced conversation on porn and art.
Participant’s rights:
Of course participating in this study is voluntary and is much appreciated. Privacy will be maintained in all stages of research and publication. The participant has the right to refuse answering questions during the interview. Also the participant has the right to see the written transcript of the interview.
Giving consent means:
- You accept to be interviewed;
Interview Email: Those who choose to do the interview via email only have to consent to the interview itself.
Interview Skype: Those who are interviewed via skype need to consent to the interview and also to being audio- taped. I prefer to use audio-tape because of the fact it is easier to write down what the interviewee exactly has said during the interview and it takes away the risk of me interpreting certain ideas of the participant into wrong sentences. The audio-tape will not be shared with others. Only the interviewee and I myself have the right to access this audio-tape. If the interviewee wants the recording after the interview, this is possible.
Name: I consent to:
Interview via email □ Interview via skype □ Audio-taped □
Autograph ______
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