this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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"All sex is porn" is a symptom of porn brain. All sex is not porn. This is an extremely sex negative outlook fueled by shame and sex being bad. It's the exact same outlook that repressed sex freak victorians and puritans publicly espoused, that any type of sex in the public sphere is "pornographic" and obscene.
Sex isn't always obscene, it can be natural and beautiful and hot and weird and awkward and fun and emotionally rewarding. Porn is obscene because it's transphobic, violent, racist, sexist, exploitative and filled with addiction and abuse. The knee jerk tendency to feel that all sex is obscene is due to overconsumption of porn leading to believing all sex is poison. It's a dialectical spiral where the more they believe sex is bad and evil, the more they try to purge it from their respectable public-facing life, the more it bubbles up as violent and abusive when they do have sex/masturbate in the shadows, they then feel shame afterwards once the libidinal urges die down, thus re-affirming their view that all sex is tainted and evil. You are feeding into this cycle when you say shit like "Any depiction of sex in art in public is basically pornography and serves no purpose, better to remove all sex from the acceptable public sphere. We have porn for that anyways".
Part of this dialectical relationship is the more vigorously they are anti-sex and puritanical in public, the stronger the taboo and appeal of breaking those rules becomes. The freakiest and most abusive sex perverts are almost always uptight puritans in public, and it's not just projection or a cover-up strategy to blend in - although it has those functions too, they actually are coding their brain into getting off on violence and abuse by being so puritanical and creating the taboo they can later break. They are building up the tension to release during orgasm.
The only way out and back to a healthy non-abusive mindset around sex is a widespread public acceptance of non-obscene sex. A much more relaxed and non-chalant attitude where sex isn't viewed as evil but as a natural biological act and and an act of eros and connection between two (or more) people. Porn will also have to be tightly censored and monitored to ween people off the sugar-hit addiction to violent abuse. Porn could be healthy theoretically in a different world, but not in this current one where it's injected with all the bigotries of our world heightened to an exaggerated extreme.
I see. That's a good comment in general. But it does make a lot of assumptions and it misquotes me. Maybe I could've said it more subtly. I'm talking about the stuff that is essentially porn smuggled into shows for no clear narrative reason, which seems to be the bulk of it.
It's not porn brain to not want gratuitous sex in media it doesn't belong in, nor overly graphic depictions even where it has a narrative function, often involving characters who are supposed to be children.
I've not considered this in any depth but it seems necessary to also consider the dialectic between art and porn and between art and a society in which the porn that you describe is ubiquitous. I don't see how we would get the TV sex scenes that we get if the porn industry did not exist. TV sex isn't generally selling sex as a beautiful part of healthy relationships.
I think I completely agree with the need to change the way sex is dealt with/treated/spoken about in public. But that's what I'm saying: so much of sex on TV is doing the opposite. I can't see how we can resolve this without abolishing the commodity form. Until then, I'm going to complain about the symptom because the symptom is repackaging and normalising porn as art.
I can understand why gen z when polled, if it wants the healthy sex thing that you're talking about (to the extent that a generation can want anything), would utterly reject depictions of sex in film, TV, etc. Sex on screen is often obscene; the option for the 'healthy' version isn't offered under capitalism. Those depictions are so far from positively contributing to a public discussion that they are, in a way, simply porn or, Zizek voice, pure ideology.
I didn’t mean that as a quote of you, I should have used ‘paraphrase’ instead of “quote” as it’s a sentiment I’ve seen expressed on Hexbear quite often.
Don’t you see how attacking the existence of sex in public entertainment and art feeds into the puritanical sex freak spiral and doesn’t help us in any way? Sex scenes don’t all have to “forward the narrative” that’s plebeian Reddit tier art analysis I’m sorry, the narrative and plot aren’t even the most important part of a work. Sex scenes could be entirely gratuitous to the narrative and still add to the overall aesthetic and emotional impact of the piece, we use gratuitous slice-of-life and characterization footage all the time in our art and separating gratuitous sex out as “bad” is a double standard we don’t do with gratuitous eye candy scenes of other types like say, Wes Anderson’s gratuitous use of 2D dollhouse cutout type effects. That doesn’t “add to the narrative” either but is an essential part of what makes his work unique and his.
I see sex scenes like guitar solos in rock songs. You can have one or two, and some are a lot better than others, but if you spend the whole song doing a solo without a melody it’s just wankery and becomes obscene. Guitar solos are just gratuitous ear candy. The “melody” here is analogous to the “narrative” of a film or TV show.
Gratuitous sex is exactly the kind of thing that shouldn’t even make you blink, it’s the kind of thing we should be aiming to normalize. The fact you find it offensive and want it gone is proving my point, you find sexual gratification offputting inherently due to cultural conditioning. Sexual gratification and titillation is fine and healthy, there’s nothing wrong with being aroused. Tons of gratuitous sex in our media is perfectly fine and not a problem, and in my opinion American society is over correcting in the opposite way and needs to loosen up here not tighten the screws.
I don't want to be pedantic but 'narrative function' is not the same as 'forward the narrative'. Adding to a piece's emotional impact, developing a character's arc, 'worldbuilding', etc, count as having a narrative function.
The sex in Sky Rojo or the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (I'm thinking of the original movies) or in Sally Rooney's novel Normal People (I've not seen the adaptation)? Fine. Great, even. I don't even mind some of it in coming of age or slice of life if it's done right and doesn't sexualise children.
The sex in Elite or Seven Deadly Sins? There's so much of it that there wouldn't be a story to salvage if you took it out. The orgy scenes in White Lines? Purely gratuitous and lazy way of portraying the decadence of rich people.
I understand the quote thing. You're still making assumptions, about me and others, I think. I'm not sure if I had it in mind or whether I count it in the same category, but I also don't appreciate gratitous 'eye candy'. Sometimes it works. Often it's crass and feeds into problematic stereotypes, etc.
Possibly, but I'm not sure that I am making that attack.