I've just got back from Adelaide, where I went for the Adelaide Festival - specifically to see Saul, although as I had an extra night there I also saw Richard III. Both utterly stunning performances, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.
I did notice something surprising, though. Both performances, inter alia, featured naked men with penises flying.
Now I'm not a prude, and this didn't especially bother me, but I did find it a little surprising from an artistic point of view. Neither the Old Testament nor Shakespeare typically calls to mind the idea of men's penises flying about. Casting my mind back, I recalled the Australian Opera's Ring Cycle, which I saw a few months ago. Siegfried also featured a naked man, with, I might say, a particularly impressive penis. This means that, of the last four stage shows I have seen, three have featured naked men, not one of which was essential, or even particularly relevant, to the plot.
There are fashions in theatre, as in everything else, and it seems that the trend of the moment is to spice up the play with a penis. This calls to mind another trend, in literature, one which has been coming on for quite a number of years now: the portrayal of extremely graphic sex scenes. Now I am not speaking here of graphic sex that is necessary to plot or character development, but rather of graphic sex that seems to have been added as an embellishment.
It's not porn! It's erotica! goes the cry of practically every writer of what is nowadays called 'romance'. But what does this mean, exactly? Is there a difference? Let's look at that.
Pornography, what
The OED gives the definition of pornography as 'printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement.'
Erotica, what
The OED defines erotica as 'erotic literature or art', and 'erotic' as 'relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement'.
Provided that we accept the OED as authority, and I cannot see why we should not, we may, then, conclude that the difference lies principally in the artist's intention.
The Artist's Intention
In a novel, the author's intention when writing sex scenes can be to develop the plot, to develop a character, or simply to arouse the reader. The latter intention fulfills the criterion for pornography. Here we may see the difference between, on the one hand, novels like Lolita and Portnoy's Complaint, and in more recent years McGiveron's Student Body and Halloff's Roadblocks to Nirvana, and on the other hand the typical offering of the modern 'romance' writer.
In all of the books named above, sex is used to advance the plot and to draw out one or more characters. It is never gratuitous, and the narrative moves smoothly in and out of the bedroom or other venue.
Much of the so-called 'romance' genre today, however, is very different. Graphic descriptions of sexual activity are inserted seemingly at random, and the less competent writers do not even segue smoothly into it; you're reading about a conversation and all at once you've got a dick staring you in the face. This is what I call 'a dick too far'.
Be that as it may, of course a writer's level of skill does not tell us anything about his intentions. What does tell us something about his intentions, though, is the blurb. The blurb lets you know what the author wants you to know; it is the author's 'mission statement', if you will.
I do not know what Nabokov and Roth had to say about their books, but they are both generally accepted as serious authors. Of the two recent works I've cited, Halloff describes Roadblocks to Nirvana as 'a novel about mysticism, mob psychology, love and lust, the miraculous and the mundane.' McGiveron says of his book 'Student Body is a frank and intimate character study of hubris, desire and yet also devotion... the novel explores life and death and guilt and redemption.' We can clearly see the authors' intentions here; they are both writing about big issues, and very successfully, I may add, not that the success of the work is any indication of the author's intention. Sex scenes in such work may be classified as erotica, if that.
Look, on the other hand, at a sampling of what today's 'romance' writers have to say about their books.
'A steamy standalone contemporary romance with a hot bad boy billionaire alpha'.
'...hot and hilarious...'
'...hot and sexy...'
'...hot steamy romance...'
'...steamy romance... billionaire romance... alpha male romance...'
I don't think I need to go on, do I? The constant repetition of the words 'hot' and 'steamy' says it all. None of these authors, to whom I'm certainly not going to give a free plug, had much to say about anything that could remotely be described as literary. No, it's all passion and shit. Just a look at the covers tells you a lot. Mostly they have shirtless men with ripped abs. Sometimes they don't even bother to show a face. Just the body.
What we have here, people, is your basic wank material. It's no different, in essentials, from a men's magazine with a centrefold. And that, Virginia, is pornography.
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