When it comes to dollars and cents, the label “porn” is extremely marginalizing. Witness John Cameron Mitchell’s recent comments RE: SHORTBUS. “No one got a hard-on watching this film” says Mitchell. That’s his code for “this isn’t porn”. And with $2.5M, more than any porn film ever made, Mitchell and his backers can’t afford to have SHORTBUS shoved off into the porn section, where returns are measure in tens of thousands, not millions.

What I have noticed recently in reading reviews of films like THE DREAMERS, 9 SONGS, etc is how venomously critics use the word “porn” - derision indeed. Whatever these movies’ failings, they look and feel nothing like any of the porn I’ve ever seen, and it makes me wonder just what sort of porn these critics have been watching that they feel a comparison is appropriate.

In fact it’s not, and in much the same way that “faggot” is used to dismiss a person’s sexuality as inappropriate and as the ultimate and overriding aspect of their humanity, these critics use the word “porn” to dismiss explicit sexuality as inappropriate subject matter and label the director’s interest in making such films questionable, and likely the product of a quirk or defect in the directors psycho-sexuality.

In that respect, I would say that DESTRICTED’s and similar definitions of porn and erotica are anything but fair. At best it’s a useless construct that doesn’t really tell us anything about the work labeled “porn” or the work labelled “erotica”, save the economic ambitions of the person doing the labeling. (For some reason the phrase “straight looking/straight acting” pops to mind.)

More often such definitions are devisive, poisonous even; perpetuating a sort of Kraft-Ebbing continuum for sexually explicit art, only instead of having silly discusions about where the line between healthy and unhealthy lies, we have no less illuminating debates about where the line lies between porn and art. While this might leed to a lovely acedemic wake fest, it’s the wrong question, or at least a question I find utterly banal.

I think the problem lies with the accompanying derision associated with porn. Because “erotica” has a “redeeming” artistic aspect, that makes it OK for good, civilised people to enjoy, regardless of the effect on their libidos. Whereas porn just exists to make you horny and want to masturbate. And masturbation is bad bad bad.

If society was OK with porn’s place as a masturbatory tool, we wouldn’t have to talk about art being “disguised” as porn or vice versa.

I guess that’s your point, Tony. LOL

I think if you can get turned on AND ponder the universe at the same time, then… bonus!