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A helpful guide.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...
— Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Jacobellis v. Ohio
It's got lots of naked women (or men) in suggestive poses. But it's thoroughly artistic — I swear! Therefore it can't be considered pornography, and it doesn't matter that it's hidden under my bed.
Pornographic works carry a considerable stigma in the U.S. and (to a lesser extent) in other Western countries. However, a great deal of classic works of art contain nudity (and occasionally, sex acts). For this reason, legally a work of art is not considered pornographic under U.S. obscenity laws; what constitutes "artistic merit" is left somewhat vague.
One result is that fictional characters (and occasionally real people) will try to get away with reading, watching, or creating something that most people would consider pornographic by claiming that the item in question is really a "work of art". For teenage boys (the usual claimant) this never works. Occasionally it's the "artist" making the claim, in which case he or she may or may not get away with it. Bonus points if he insists that the fault is in the viewer, who has a dirty mind.
In either case, the item in question will be something very few people would consider "artistic", unless the trope is being played with. This trope is something of an inversion of Moral Guardians, who are typically presumed wrong — hence why Moral Guardians themselves often use this trope in their works. Compare I Read It For The Articles. Sometimes related to True Art Is Offensive.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Art
- Sadly somewhat Truth in Television: many famous antique statues during the late Renaissance / Victorian age in Italy were altered to have leaves covering their genitals. The cast of David at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), had a detachable plaster fig leaf, added for visits by Queen Victoria and other important ladies, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks; it is now displayed nearby.
- It gets a lot worse with classical depictions of fertility goddesses. Pretty much all of them are shown naked. Some were shown naked and masturbating. Some of the more noteworthy ones were depicted naked, masturbating, and staring directly at the viewer.
- God alone knows how many people have said this about the Venus of Urbino, AKA the painting Mark Twain called the dirtiest in Europe.
- Note, though, that it being made by Romans doesn't mean it can't be porn. Archaeologists have discovered obscene wall-paintings in the ruins of Pompeii. On the walls of brothels. It's Not Porn, It's Advertisement. And there exist Greek vases which were decorated with pictures of people having sex. Since Greek vases often had pictures which demonstrated their contents on them, it's maybe best not to think too closely about that one...
- The live shows of performance artist Ann Liv Young feature a lot of nudity and live sex. They are also very very strange. http://www.revelinnewyork.com/videos/ann-liv-young
- This is a common topic of discussion of deviantART. The webpage allows frontal nudity (since it is considered art) but nothing that seems porn/hentai (example: someone grabbing a naked woman's boob). This leads to some conflict, because some "artists" upload pictures or their model/girlfriend/themselves with their legs opened in a less-than-subtle way *
leading to phrases like "I am no gynecologist, so how come I am always looking at pussy here?" ; whereas more artistic drawings/photos are rejected because they show person-to-person contact.
- By simply being old, pornography can lapse into art. Ancient pornographic material such as illustrated Kama Sutras, and Japanese booklets are now on display in museums as historical artifacts.
- Around the start of the Impressionist movement Edouard Manet's two paintings "Luncheon In The Grass" and "Olympia" were met with outrage from critics for placing nude women in an everyday setting. Apparently nudity was okay as long as they were goddesses, nymphs, sprites etc but real women nude in paintings was a big no-no.
- Quite a few artists from around the 19th century ran into this problem, I think-at the very least Thomas Eakins got into trouble for this(and a variety of other indiscretions). Sort of what happens when you get the right combination of prudery, the dawn of public art exhibitions, and artist not being dead enough to get away with nudes.
Comics
- A really weird version happens in "Scarecrow: Year One." Jonathan Crane is about thirteen years old, and at dinner his very religious grandmother remarks that she looked under his bed, and the terrified and embarrassed look on little Crane's face makes the reader pretty certain Gran found a Playboy - but then she pulls out an anthology of James Joyce short stories. She proceeds to accuse him of masturbating to it and punishes him harshly, as though it really were porn, while little Crane protests, "It's literature, Gran!" May actually be something to that accusation, as Joyce's Letters to Nora were... impressive.
- When Kyle Rayner and Donna Troy broke up, it was for a variety of different reasons. But the thing that kicked it off was Donna Troy walking in on Kyle sketching a topless woman in his apartment and not appreciating his defense of, "But I'm an artist! It's what I do!"
- The issue is discussed in Guarding the Globe, where the Guardians of the Globe attend teammate (and professional photographer) Bulletproof's gallery opening. The pictures are all of a naked woman, and Bulletproof is having sex with her in some of them. Outrun, who is established in later issues to be a sex maniac, ends up buying one of them for her personal enjoyment at home
Films — Live Action
Literature
- C. S. Lewis' allegory "The Pilgrim's Regress". The singer in question is Mr. Phally, who is squeezed in between Victoriana and Glugly.
- Discussed in the Discworld novel Thud! — it's noted that the Stripperific clothing of exotic dancers is logically more obscene than "great art" showing completely naked women, on the account of (according to Sergeant Colon) the dancers having "No urns", or Plinths, or cupids in their presence.
- And again in Wintersmith, although when Nanny Ogg says the presence of cupids shows it's Art, and not just women with no clothes on, Granny Weatherwax sniffs, "Well, they're not foolin' me."
- Guy Blod, a sculptor in Left Behind, decides an appropriate memorial for the late Antichrist would be an enormous, highly-detailed metal nude. He reacts this way to "Tribulation Saints" who find the statue unsettling. (No one else cares — by this point in the series, all television is either porn or Gorn. Even the news.)
- Used as an excuse by the Anti-Hero in Eric Ambler's novel The Light of Day. At one point in his life, he published illegal pornography of no literary value in several European countries and got prosecuted for it. When questioned about this by the Turkish police, he engages in sophistry and references the previous banning of works like Lady Chatterley's Lover (which had just been allowed to be published in England at the time Ambler's novel was written).
- In Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, conservative Senator Rosewater is quite proud that he created a law that defines what is obscene and not art. If it has pubic hair, it's pornography. (Note that this was before the modern custom of porn stars shaving off their pubic hair).
- From one of Dave Barry's books:
"So, you claim this film expresses an environmentalist theme?"
"Yes. The woman feels very passionately about the zucchini."
- Henry Miller was irritated by both the people who hated his books as porn, and the people who loved them as porn. His own argument was that sex is an important part of life and he didn't want to leave it out any more than he'd leave out anything else important.
- William S. Burroughs makes a sly nod this trope in his book Naked Lunch (which was itself on trial for being pornographic, but later found to have redeeming merit) with the character of The Great Slashtubitch, an "impresario of blue movies and short-wave TV" who takes pornography very seriously as an art form. Disgusted by "counterfeit orgasm", he thinks it takes "sincerity and art, and devotion" for actors to work in his films in lieu of "shoddy trickery" like "dubbed gasps, rubber turds and vials of milk concealed in the ear and shots of yohimbine sneaked in the wings". Slashtubitch appears again in Burroughs' later book The Wild Boys, spelled Slastobitch and elaborates upon his position.
Slastobitch: The new look in blue movies stresses story and character. This is the space age and sex movies must express the longing to escape from flesh through sex. The way in is the way through . . . The scene where Johnny has crabs and mark makes him undress . . . Who are these boys? Where will they go? They will become astronauts playing the part of the American married idiots until the moment they take off on a Gemini expedition bound for Mars disconnect and lave the earth behind forever . . .
- Umberto Eco wrote an essay in the '70s about how to tell films with artistic value from porn. He argued that porn movies always contain a lot of padding before sex scenes to titillate the audience.
Live Action TV
- 30 Rock: in the episode "Cougars", Frank's poorly rendered painting of a mermaid had to have the breasts covered for Standards, yet the outside of 30 Rockefeller Center is covered with carvings of topless women which are shown every week in the title sequence.
- Boston Legal has a university professor accused of soliciting prostitution under the guise of "research". He had made a video of himself with the prostitute that the prosecution is going to use as evidence. But, taking advantage of the odd American legal rule, his own lawyers argue that he actually was creating pornography and was therefore protected under the First Amendment. If it's porn, it's not prostitution and therefore not a crime!
- Coupling: "Inferno". While the video in question was undoubtedly pornographic (its full name was Lesbian Spank Inferno), Steve tries to present it as a feminist art movie with underlying social critique. An inversion occurs immediately afterward. When he fails to convince the others of this angle, he starts to rant that it doesn't matter, since every invention and scientific progress (including fire, the printing press and the internet) had only one purpose: to enable men to see naked female bottoms.
- Played for laughs in Chappelle's Show, when Dave becomes Oprah Winfrey's "baby's daddy." Oprah doesn't bat an eye when she sees him painting a portrait with a gorgeous nude model, but after she leaves we see that he's just painting a big-boobed stick figure on the canvas.
- In a 3rd Rock From The Sun episode, Dick struggled to differentiate art and smut:
Dick: She's nakeder than they are; why is this for aesthetic appreciation and this for arousal?
Mrs. Dubcek: Well, this is Michelangelo, while this is... Michael and Angelo.
- In the final season three episode of Blackadder, Edmund mentions (among a few other things he's extorting out of the Prince) the "highly artistic but also highly illegal set of French lithographs". He describes them as a "sack of French porn" about thirty seconds later, so whether they're porn, artistic or they fall into that grey area in the middle is left up to the viewer.
- Also worth mentioning is that the compromising paintings of The Bishop of Bath & Wells could potentially form the basis of an exhibition of challenging young artists.
- In The Office, Ryan attempts to pass off his amateur black-and-white photos as "artistic"; one is a topless photo of his ex(?)-girlfriend Kelly, which Ryan says is about "exposure in the workplace".
- Inverted out-of-universe in the DVD commentary of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More With Feeling," an episode nominated for an Emmy. The Writer/Director's Commentary literally stated "This is basically... porn," when discussing the lyrics to a certain song. (Nothing graphic, but explicit as anything).
"You make me com...plete."
- And this happens while the singer is floating in the air on her back and her girlfriend has just disappeared out of frame.
- On Three's Company, Jack answers an ad for a modeling job, only to find out that the photographer wants him to pose naked for a Playboy-esque magazine. But he insists on calling it "nude."
Jack: What's the difference?
Photographer: "Naked" is dirty. "Nude" is art.
- From an episode of Bottom, as Eddie tries to defend his purchase of an old porn magazine as an 'investment':
Richie: It doesn't matter how you art it up, Eddie, it's still a... "jazz mag".
Eddie: That's what they said to Michelangelo about the Sistine Chapel!
Richie: No it's not! The Sistine Chapel is art. If they said anything they would have said "Blimey! Nice painting Mr. Angelo. Now that's what I call art, and it's not porny at all!"
Eddie: It bloody well is dirty you know. There's those three birds on the top of the third pillar from the left with the blue ribbon. Corr — some of the things they're doing would make your nose bleed!
- Happened a lot in Bravo's Reality Show Work of Art, about finding the next great artist. Taken to new heights when one contestant actually came on his artwork (the piece was about the time when he came to a Disney movie).
- This is basically the entire plot of the Parks and Recreation episode, "Jerry's Painting." The Justice Stewart quote is cited in this scene.
- In Party Down, actor Steve Guttenberg owns a painting of a erect nude man holding a porcupine. The profound artistic value of the artwork is summed up by the following statement: "He wants to have sex with the porcupine. But he can't."
Music
- The Dead Kennedys included a print of H.R. Giger's painting "Penis Landscape" (which depicted a wall of penises entering a wall of vaginas) with their landmark album Frankenchrist. Members of the band were charged with Distributing Harmful Matter to Minors base don this, and though the case did not result in a conviction (the painting was, finally, ruled "art" and not "porn"), the band's Alternative Tentacles record label was driven almost to bankruptcy because of trial costs.
Radio
- In the Goon Show, Major Bloodnok would regularly be involved in the illegal distribution of "photographs for Art Lovers" which would, at the very least be concealed within a brown paper bag.
Theatre
- This is how the nude revues at the Windmill Theatre in London came about. The Lord Chamberlain, at that time the national censor, was forced to rule that since naked statues were allowed on public display, naked women could appear on stage as long as they didn't move. If they moved, they were obviously not statues, and therefore, "rude".
Video Games
Web Comics
- The other trolls seem to consider the portraits to be fine art as well, possibly because trolls don't reproduce that way. To them, it's about as pornographic as a flower.
- Lampshaded in Brawl in the Family in a Waluigi strip. Daisy sees a picture of a butt on the wall and is disgusted, but Luigi tells her it's a painting of a butt, which makes all the difference, apparently. Doubles as a reference to the painting The Treachery Of Images.
- In a non-canon El Goonish Shive comic, Susan catches Sarah looking at nude photos, but Sarah assures her that it's only for art reference.
- Dave Kelly's webcomic from 2000, simply entitled Smut, was nothing but drawings of strange cartoon characters having sex while saying strange things. It's still unknown whether or not it was meant to parody this trope or is playing it very straight.
Western Animation
- Bender and the Ship's computer have an argument concerning this subject in an episode of Futurama.
- An episode of The Simpsons played with this; the "pornographic" work in question was Michelangelo's David◊. It goes something like this: Marge has successfully crusaded to get cartoon violence off the air. When her fellow Moral Guardians come to her to complain about David, she says she's okay with it because it's art. A bit later, Roger Meyers Jr. (the head of Itchy and Scratchy) confronts her on a news interview show and asks her how she can be for one form of expression and against another. She isn't able to give a satisfactory answer, so society declares her protest invalid and hypocritical and lets animated violence return (to the delight of Springfield's children).
- Family Guy gives us this joke in the first season:
Peter: What's the difference between pornography and art? ... A government grant!
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