Screen - Dark Matter Archives

86 Pornography has as its aim the excitation of the viewer rathertban, as Lord Clark argues. one of provoking thought and can.ternplation:To my mind art exists in the realm of contemplation and is boundby some sort of imaginative transposition. Tile moment aT[becomes an incentive to action it (oses its true character. Th is ismy objection to painting with a commun ist programme, and itwould also apply to pornography (p 100) .Pornography. it is argued, 'stimulates in the audience the kind ofbehaviour that may lead to violence· (p 45). Many of its representmionscause 'extreme offence to the great majority of people'(p 193), It is a type of representation that is at once a symptom ofa general decline of societal values (the 'permissive society'), anda cause of particular undesirable activities: perversions, rape,masturbation, dissatisfaction within marriages and so on. Themetaphor of 'health' hovers over the report : healthy sexualiry isa sexuality which is fu nctional within a relationship ; a healthyattitude towards representations is one of contemplation and uplift;a healthy society is one that contains no disruption of irstranquillity. Health defines the presumably normal: the reporrappeals to this sense of the average in order to promote it as theonly acceptable form of behaviour. It then defines as pornographyany representation that is capable of producing or suggestingbehaviour outside this norm. Pornography for me Festival of Lightis a class of representations which are concerned with sex orviolence without their social or moral context. The representationsaim to excite the viewer and have a concentration uponviolence. They stimulate anti-social behaviour where it might nothave existed before, and are a symptom as well as a cause of awholesale decline in social value. Pornography should be bannedwherever possible, and should certainly be kept away fromchildren. Rigorously enforced legis.lation is seen to be rhe means toachieve this aim.O NE F E MIN 1ST A P PR O A C H The most dominant feministposition finds itself confused with the Festjval of Light's positionat certain pOints, despite its different constituency and forms ofcampaigning. It produces a very similar definition of the object'pornography', but traces its roots back to very different causes.Such a feminist definition of pornography points to violence, lackof socia l context of sexuality, and the symptomat.ic social role ofpornography in the same way as the Longford Report. Pornographyis seen asviolent and mysogynistic, and nothing to do with the free expressionof 'healtlly' sex, but rather the truly 'perverted' desire totrample on another human being.3pornography is also described as a depiction of sexual acnvitydeprived of its social significance and offered to excite the viewer:pornography's principal and most humanly significant function isfhat of arousing sexual excitement. . It usually describes thes~xual act not in explicit . . but in pu rely inviting terms. Thefunct ion of plot in a pornographic narrative is always the same.It exists to provide as many opportunities as possible fo r thesexual act to take place. . Characterisation is necessarily limitedto the formal necessity for the actors to fuck as frequently and asingeniously as possible."Pornography is even seen as the symptom of wider social trends,and as having a potential link with forms of violence perpetratedby men on women:There is no evidence that. porn causes rape directly, and there maybe no causal link. But they are linked in spirit. Both are manifestationsof the same attitude towards women and sex - of a desireto avoid interaction with a woman as another human being(WalIsgrove. op cit).However, a feminist position would not base its norion of pornographyon any notion of a ·healthy· society and its attitude ofsex. Instead, many fem inists perceive pornography as the productof a general antagonism between the sexes. Men are the subjectsof pornography. it is produced for their gratification and pleasure;women are rhe objects of pornography, reduced to being sexualobjects, degraded and humiliated. Sexuality and its representationin our society are both profoundly marked by the interpellation ofmen as aggressors, women as their victims. This argument isca pable of designating a whole series of representations as 'pornographic'.re presentations which do not feature in more conventionalor righ t-wing defiintions. A feminist definition based on tbenotion of an antagonism between the sexes defines a continuumof representations of women defined according [Q their sexua lity.This continuum stretches from many form s of public advertisementdisplays to hard·core pornography in the usual sense. Eachrepresentation is designated pornographic because it defi nes wornenas sexual objects offered for male pleasure. The terms of this argumentare not fo und entirely in written arguments: it appearsequally and publically in propagandist activities such as writing orputting stickers on posters, particularly in the Underground in3 Ruth Wallsgrovc,'Pornography:Bem..een [he Deviland the True BlueWhitehouse',Spare Rib no 65.December 1977.-I Angela Carter,nlt~ Sadeia nWoman , Virago.London 1979.pp 12·13.87