Pornography debate on SBS
Patently Offensive: Porn under siege
SBS Television
October 4, 11.40 p.m. (11.10 Adelaide)
Reviewed by Ignatius Kim
The key focus of the debate on pornography is whether it contributes to sex crimes. Does pornography cause rape and child molestation?
This is one of the points of contention explored in this Fine Cut episode about the nature and role of pornography.
On one hand, we hear radical feminist Andrea Dworkin declare that pornography is an agent through which "men are socialised to rape". On the other, we hear clinical psychologist Nicholas Groth, who has been working with sex offenders for over 20 years, testify that out of the two components of sexual assault — sexuality and aggression — the latter is primary and expressed through the former. Thus he believes that pornography is not a cause of such crimes.
One of the observations made is that sexuality has been visually depicted for as long as people have objectified the world around them. As one erotologist comments, the difference between pornography and erotica comes down to time. While, say, a feudal Japanese painting portraying sex may have served the same purpose Playboy does today, in retrospect it becomes "erotica" or "erotic art".
Yet, there are specificities to the objectification of sexuality today. The central one is the use of sex to sell products. This entails defining "ideal" bodily images which themselves form an integral part of these products. This is the wider culture within which pornography is produced.
If objectification is the very basis of human communication, then pornography per se is nothing more than a form of expressing sexuality. Unfortunately, the social relations that underlie it mean that sexuality today is degraded by being turned into a commodity.
This entails a monopoly on the production of sexual images — the majority of people are alienated from it, not only by the porn industry, but by advertising and the fashion magazines. Sexual objectification becomes, at the same time, more an expression of sexual alienation.
In one part of Patently Offensive, a script writer for X-rated movies explains that porn sexually gratifies many males in ways they could not be gratified in real life.
Under these circumstances, sex for certain men becomes a medium for expressing aggression that stems from a deeper social source.
Unfortunately, the complexity of the pornography debate may have overwhelmed Patently Offensive. It tries too hard merely to explore the debate. So while it touches on the vast range of issues involved, from the implications for free speech to the participation of women in the industry, it lacks any analytical glue. The somewhat disjointed result is, nonetheless, very thought-provoking.