Pornography

The relevance of a discipline is from the conclusions was can draw from said discipline. If art can tell us something meaningful about the human spirit and can otherwise contribute to the human condition, it's useful. Otherwise it's drivel.

Now, I believe the former, but I also believe that by the former, porn not being art just because "society says so" works against the definition of art that is meaningful in the sense described above.

It is only one definition of art, but it's the most important one if you're goal is to make the idea of "porn with plot" a commonly thought of one.

Or is that not the goal?

Symbolic-interactionism (sociology).

Well, "value" isn't the right word. Value judgement is more accurate. But yes, people do think that "art," in the sense of a value judgement, is important and has worth. That's basically the point.

No, what I'm trying to say is, if you believe pornography can be art, you must address the fact that insofar as society cares, as of this moment, pornography cannot be art.

What society thinks is important because they are the ones you must convince, lest your pronouncement of "pornography is art!" be meaningless.

Are they from sex-negative feminists? They seem to believe that both prostitution and the creation of pornographic films (which they postulate is simply prostitution being filmed, and I can't say that that isn't accurate, really) are very harmful to women (and to a lesser extent, men) due to how they interact with society, etc. It's a very compelling argument, albeit one that I'm neither particularly familiar with nor necessarily partial to, per se.

Well, now we've rounded back to what I pointed out: for society at large, pornography is mere entertainment. It doesn't have artistic value to them, nor is it supposed to. It exists purely for their sexual entertainment. If it had artistic value, it would no longer be pornography to them. Rather, it would be a work of artistic fiction—that happened to involve copious amounts of sex.

That's the problem, for you: how society defines pornography to be, in frank terms, lowest common denominator tripe that by definition has no worthwhile plot, setting, or characters and, therefore, no artistic value.

I love this game!

Define "meaningful," "human spirit," "contribute," and "human condition." Then explain in detail why your particular definition is objectively correct in a factual sense.

edited 17th Jun '12 10:53:26 PM by DerelictVessel

What's the difference between entertainment and art?

Well, let me re-frame that-what is the purpose of discussing art? What is it about art that makes it more important than, say, tree moss?

edited 17th Jun '12 10:54:11 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

It depends. Remember, this is how society views these things. It's all a very complex way of saying "it is a matter of mass opinion," really.

Objectively, nothing makes art more important than tree moss, in the absence of human interaction. Subjectively, art is more important because we think it is. Unless we've made tree moss into art. In which case, your analogy would fall apart.

And yes, I'm sure somewhere out there in the world right now, someone is making tree moss art.

Symbolic-interactionism is the beautiful science of subjectivity. My favorite explanation of it is the American flag. To us, it is a symbol of many, many different things.

But what is it in reality? A cloth with several colors in specific patterns. It has no objective meaning. It's just there. We give it meaning. And thus it becomes important.

edited 17th Jun '12 10:57:52 PM by DerelictVessel

Well, we think ENTERTAINMENT is more important than tree moss to. So I ask, what is more important about art than entertainment?

It depends on who you ask, really. Some people really do care more for art than simple cathartic entertainment (though they often derive entertainment from art). Others (commonly referred to in the collective as "the lowest common denominator") don't care so long as they are diverted for whatever period of time the work of fiction in question is intended to last. Subjectivity, Tomu. Subjectivity.

Ancient Greek pottery springs to mind: many people see "art" when they look at it, these days. However, that's not how they were viewed at the time: simple decoration, merely ephemera. And, deliberately quite a bit naughty, to boot, a lot of the time. They were cut-price frescos for the masses. In short, entertainment while you eat, drink and get merry.

And, they get pedestals in museums. Even the overtly pornographic ones. <shrugs> Doesn't stop them being beautiful, even if, at the time, they were not all that valued as "culture".

edited 18th Jun '12 12:07:08 AM by Euodiachloris

I love when I try to make an insightful, relevant post and it gets totally ignored.

Well, I find ephemera quite beautiful, a lot of the time. And, intense, even. For most kinds, they're hardly labour, time or income intensive. Even the high-end stuff is never as expensive as real "art" of their period. It's the very nature of the beast to be temporary. Although, some C16th and C17th hand-made Tarot cards will knock your socks off for beauty, they were never designed as "art". You can see a few for yourself here. Yet, I find them to be.

edited 18th Jun '12 12:41:14 AM by Euodiachloris

What are Eu even talking about anymore? What is anyone here even talking about anymore?

The issue at hand for me isn't that someone must convince me that pornography can be art. I don't give a crap that a piece of work contains sexually explicit content if you were asking me if it were art. That's not how I care about the subject. I can go to the Louvre see sexually explicit content but be able to appreciate the artistic value put into it.

But King Zeal, the issue is not that. The issue is this. You're trying to push items that were created without intent to put in artistic value, without artistic value and thus without artistic value I don't consider it art. There's a difference to me about something being of inferior quality (like a five year old making a technical work of a firetruck) versus something that is devoid of artistic value because the creators didn't put any into it.

Further, you can argue what you want about skills on a resume, but guess what, while you're trying to argue blue in the face that pornographic experience can be useful for jobs outside of pornography, that's really tangential. If you can show someone you got the skill for a job in an interview, that's great, but what's not relevant is that you did porn. In fact, by the way you're arguing, basically you're supposed to learn things not related to your job but to the job you want. Well, in fact you still don't really bother with putting stuff on your resume that isn't relevant. If you have that skill, you put that skill on your resume. But if you're going to put "I did Mc Job and learned cybersecurity", that's pretty demented.

You seem to think interviewers would love to sit there and review each resume down to the littlest detail. Most cases, they use a computer program to help them cut 90% of resumes and then briefly look over the remaining 10% with a twitchy "throw it in the garbage can" hand. Because the problem is, companies want to hire people but they don't want to blow a million dollars hiring people. So you only have x hours to fill each slot. You doing porn and you want in on a tv serial? That experience is going to be instantly overlooked. Someone doing acting school and filled his time doing thankless work on tv serials? That will catch the eye.

The person who raised the issue of stigmatism? That's a legitimate concern. Being concerned your pornographic experience is overlooked? Not a legitimate concern.

^ I don't know, the thread title was "pornography", I figure anything related to that is game!

edited 18th Jun '12 1:18:49 AM by breadloaf

Sorry: I remembered your post. Wasn't it about the intent of the work contributing to whether it is art or not, Odd? Hence I raised the ephemera: rarely meant as art, now often collected as such. (And, some of that is pornographic in content, as well.)

Yeah. To be fair, the title and point of this thread isn't "Should porn be considered art" , but it's just "Pornography"

Both sides of the debate proved some points, but I can say one thing to add : Plot With Porn is overlooked as a potential

I think that at this point, the vast majority of the free porn online doesn't even bother to insult our intelligence with excuse plots. They just get right to it.

But, porn with plot or plot with porn, either one, is actually something I would like a lot more. Plus the skill it'd take to make stuff like that is actually transferable to all sorts of other genres.

Enough with the art/not-art argument. All you're doing is having a definitional argument, which is one of the most boring kinds on earth. Your personal definitions of the words "art" and "pornography" disagree. Deal with it.

Me too.

I think porn movies will soon have to go back to at least excuse plots. This situation could only happen because first the professional industry started to give them up, and then the Internet started to disrupt them because even amateurs could do that.

But now that the free Internet porn is the new center of the industry, the different videos will need to differentiate from each other, or everyone will just keep looking at the ones on the front page of redtube, since they are all the same anyways. Many common sexual fantasies depend on writing, I'm prety sure that at least as many people have a fetish for archetypes like Girl Next Door, Damsel in Distress, or the Housewife, as for certain positions and sex acts.

They don't even have to be well-made, I'm pretty sure that for most people, planting the idea of a new, exotic fantasy, is good enough, they can later perfect it in their mind. For example written erotica that you can find online has roughly the same quality as typical fanfiction, but I still like to browse them, because sometimes I stumble upon the concept of a really hot scenario, and even if it's actually badly written, I can work with the idea itself in my mind.

edited 18th Jun '12 4:11:49 AM by Ever9

Or someone else can use the ideas and tropes created and perfect them in a new work.

Self-thumped.

edited 18th Jun '12 9:15:34 AM by KingZeal

Sniper no sniping! Sniper no sniping!

That whole argument is a great example of why I disagree with the concept of "high art".

Porn is, clearly, "low" art: that is, it's part of a medium that requires some kind of creativity. And that's all there is. There is no "high" art which is especially worthy of consideration, there is only art. This silly game where fans of the kinds of art that can be found in museums and theaters try to keep pop culture from being in the same club as they are has got to end.

Row row fight the powaa!