The word pornography derives from two Greek roots meaning “the writing of whores.” The term itself represents taboo and transgressive behavior depicting recreational rather than procreational sex.
It often provokes the same reaction that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had in 1964 in one of the most famous and oft-quoted phrases in the history of the High Court. After confessing that he could not define pornography, he stated, unequivocally, that “I know it when I see it.”
Civil libertarians have staunchly defended works like James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and the movie “Deep Throat” as erotic realism with redeeming social value, but drawing the line between what is only realistic vis-a-vis merely prurient presents a daunting, if not nearly impossible, challenge.
An Interlude in Scandanavia
I was in Denmark in the early 1960s shortly after their much-publicized legalization of pornography. I still vividly recall an experience that I had while browsing in one of the porn shops in Copenhagen.
Inside the front cover of a porn magazine, there were four pictures: (1) a still frame from the violent movie “Bonnie and Clyde”; (2) a man ready to die in kneeling position with a gun to his head —a ritual execution; (3) Vietnamese soldiers holding the severed heads of several Vietcong prisoners they had captured; (4) a man and woman making love.
In a caption written in English was this statement: “There is only one picture on this page showing normal human behavior. Yet it is the only picture which censoring authorities in most countries of the world would not allow in any of the media.”
A Resemblance to Animals
Why, then, does such graphic visual portrayal of sexual congress deeply disturb so many individuals in general and fundamentalist believers in particular?
Because two humans copulating do not look all that different from two canines going at it on the street. This “animal behavior,” then, is the principal stumbling block to the religious person since there exists no more forceful reminder than sex that we are, indeed, members of the animal kingdom — human animals, to be sure, but animals nonetheless. Or, to borrow Sigmund Freud’s infamous term, “polymorphous perverse.”
This view effectively demolishes the Biblical doctrine that we human beings have been specially created by God, just “a little lower than the angels.” (Psalm 8:5.)
Pornography also clearly conveys the advice that sex is not dangerous. In many quarters of a sexophobic society like ours, that is a dangerous message to send despite the evolutionary evidence that sex is the center and core of our existence, a potent force to reckon with.
Historically, the utter futility of all attempts to regulate, limit and censor pornography can best be summarized by an old Italian proverb: “A book whose sale is forbidden, everyone rushes to see, and prohibition turns one reader into three.”
Mr. Akerley is a Culver City resident.
