I've just found this short review of Porn, the Musical - currently on the London stage - in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/apr/11/porn-the-musical-review
I was struck by this:
... the basic problem is that the show's creators – Boris Cezek, Kris Spiteri, Malcolm Galea and Abigail Guan – don't have any definable attitude to their subject: they seem undecided whether porn movies fulfil a vital function or offer a degradation of sex.
I'm not surprised that they don't have "any definable attitude" to porn. I think that simply reflects the various 'Western' societies' ambivalence to pornography.
Things have certainly changed over recent years, however. Whereas twenty years or so ago porn was a dirty little secret, now it has a more-or-less public face and it's openly acknowledged in main-stream media, albeit obliquely. But (unless it's a straightforward condemnation) that acknowledgement is mostly jokey - in Britain, that is. I can't speak for other countries. British comedy shows in particular have frequent porn references: the humour is of the "You know you do it really!" type. Comedians seem to have an informal licence to make non-pejorative references to porn while other media formats still can't be as daring. And allowing comedians to draw us into sharing our dirty secrets is surely cathartic. By laughing with them we admit we understand what they're talking about. We let the public mask slip, even if it's only in the comfort of our own homes.
Where am I going with this? I'm not absolutely sure, and in that I'm probably typical of a large section of modern society. But the piece I quoted from the review at the beginning suggested a thought: There is no socially acceptable "definable attitude" to porn because, for all its limitations, porn is socially subversive.
I admit to flying a kite here - I'm not completely sure I can defend the idea - but in calling porn 'subversive' I don't intend to condemn it. What I mean is that pornography - despite its many limitations - taps into the 'unsocial real'. It straddles and muddles the normal social divide between the public and the private. It breaks down the barrier in a problematic way - and perhaps the only way to 'deal with' that problem is to enter the irrational and laugh at the situation.
While I was reading the review, I was reminded of Nietzsche's description of Ancient Greek religion at Delphi (in The Birth of Tragedy). He says that Delphi was dedicated to two gods, who 'inhabited' it for alternating six month periods. One was Apollo; the other was Dionysus. Apollo represented a range of arts and skills, but his central, unifying theme seems to be rationality. Dionysus, on the other hand, represents the demands of the irrational - including, and perhaps predominantly, the sex drive.
As far as I remember, Nietzsche argues that, by honouring both gods equally, the Ancient Greeks were symbolically recognizing the need to accept the demands of both the rational and the irrational - and that, in honouring Dionysus, they were acknowledging the need to give social space (both figuratively and actually) to wild, uncontrollable, irrational sexuality. And that, in short, means they were accepting the limits of the social, since civic society is necessarily rational while life most definitely isn't.
I don't actually know if Nietzsche was right about the Ancient Greeks, though I think he probably was. But I suspect that our modern ambivalence over pornography demonstrates the paradox that the widespread urge to 'use' porn demands its social acceptance while simultaneously precluding it. ("If it doesn't feel transgressive/dirty/sinful, it isn't proper porn", and so on.) And perhaps the current social transition, where pornography slowly edges towards the mainstream, indicates an attempt on the part of our societies to accommodate the demands of the irrational - to give Dionysus his rightful respect beside the Apollo of modern rationality.
- polynices
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/apr/11/porn-the-musical-review
I was struck by this:
... the basic problem is that the show's creators – Boris Cezek, Kris Spiteri, Malcolm Galea and Abigail Guan – don't have any definable attitude to their subject: they seem undecided whether porn movies fulfil a vital function or offer a degradation of sex.
I'm not surprised that they don't have "any definable attitude" to porn. I think that simply reflects the various 'Western' societies' ambivalence to pornography.
Things have certainly changed over recent years, however. Whereas twenty years or so ago porn was a dirty little secret, now it has a more-or-less public face and it's openly acknowledged in main-stream media, albeit obliquely. But (unless it's a straightforward condemnation) that acknowledgement is mostly jokey - in Britain, that is. I can't speak for other countries. British comedy shows in particular have frequent porn references: the humour is of the "You know you do it really!" type. Comedians seem to have an informal licence to make non-pejorative references to porn while other media formats still can't be as daring. And allowing comedians to draw us into sharing our dirty secrets is surely cathartic. By laughing with them we admit we understand what they're talking about. We let the public mask slip, even if it's only in the comfort of our own homes.
Where am I going with this? I'm not absolutely sure, and in that I'm probably typical of a large section of modern society. But the piece I quoted from the review at the beginning suggested a thought: There is no socially acceptable "definable attitude" to porn because, for all its limitations, porn is socially subversive.
I admit to flying a kite here - I'm not completely sure I can defend the idea - but in calling porn 'subversive' I don't intend to condemn it. What I mean is that pornography - despite its many limitations - taps into the 'unsocial real'. It straddles and muddles the normal social divide between the public and the private. It breaks down the barrier in a problematic way - and perhaps the only way to 'deal with' that problem is to enter the irrational and laugh at the situation.
While I was reading the review, I was reminded of Nietzsche's description of Ancient Greek religion at Delphi (in The Birth of Tragedy). He says that Delphi was dedicated to two gods, who 'inhabited' it for alternating six month periods. One was Apollo; the other was Dionysus. Apollo represented a range of arts and skills, but his central, unifying theme seems to be rationality. Dionysus, on the other hand, represents the demands of the irrational - including, and perhaps predominantly, the sex drive.
As far as I remember, Nietzsche argues that, by honouring both gods equally, the Ancient Greeks were symbolically recognizing the need to accept the demands of both the rational and the irrational - and that, in honouring Dionysus, they were acknowledging the need to give social space (both figuratively and actually) to wild, uncontrollable, irrational sexuality. And that, in short, means they were accepting the limits of the social, since civic society is necessarily rational while life most definitely isn't.
I don't actually know if Nietzsche was right about the Ancient Greeks, though I think he probably was. But I suspect that our modern ambivalence over pornography demonstrates the paradox that the widespread urge to 'use' porn demands its social acceptance while simultaneously precluding it. ("If it doesn't feel transgressive/dirty/sinful, it isn't proper porn", and so on.) And perhaps the current social transition, where pornography slowly edges towards the mainstream, indicates an attempt on the part of our societies to accommodate the demands of the irrational - to give Dionysus his rightful respect beside the Apollo of modern rationality.
- polynices
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