Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Erotica vs Porn

Sensual vs Porn

Right now there is a discussion taking place in a quiet corner of writing.com as to where sensual prose leaves off and porn begins. I find the discussion interesting because I always take away something from the views of others and the views I am reading are substantative and well thought out.

In my mind the way to answere the question is not to look at literature but rather at movies. Most of us I think have seen a "Blue Movie" and there is little question that these are porn. We have also seen movies that had sex in them which would not be considered Pornographic. So somewhere on the line between the two there comes a point where a viewer will draw the line and say this movie is and that movie isn't. I believe there is the same analogy in literature and to get a sense for where it is a good place to start is a porn movie.
wou

What a Porn movie is:

1. They are graphic….there is no attempt made to soften the graphic impact. They are a vivid rendering of methods and techniques used to express a category of sexual expression. (Heterosexual, Homosexual etc.)
2. The rendering of these methods follows a rather predictable format. In the heterosexual category a typical example would be kissing, foreplay, oral sex, normal intercourse, often with a dominant male and subservient female culminating in male ejactulation.
3. The structure of the movie is a series of scenes showing these forms of expression more or less in an orderly progression.
4. It is focused exclusively on the physiological pleasure of the category of expression.

What a Porn Movie isn’t.

1. It does not rely on a story line to move the action along, rather a series of graphic scenes.
2. It does not seek to examine the emotional aspects of human sensuality
3. It does not show much variation in structure from one presentation to the next.

In my view porn literature is analogous to Porm movies. They both focus on the graphic nature of a sexual act as the exclusive center of interest. They are both forms of literary expression.

On HBO the past couple of seasons there was a series called Deadwood. This serial was compelling and had a high level of artistic merit. It was also charged with sensual content which was used to take it from an interesting story line to an even higher level of intensity. There were scenes that showed frontal views of males with erections, females with breasts showing performing acts of oral sex and scenes showing sexual intercourse. The only thing not shown was the graphic depiction of the union of male and female body parts. This is where the producers and directors drew the line and there was little need to go beyond it in order to get the idea of the scene across. The sensual treatment elevated the drama and took mature viewers to the edge by not over it. The sensual component was blended with the emotional state of the characters, and resonated with the story line and provided the right amount of graphic treatment to optimize the stroy. Romance writers can certainly profit from the study of how this HBO series was put together, not just the sensual components but the distinct characterization of the players involved. If you want to know the difference between erotica and porn this is a good place to start. Watch a porn movie and then watch a few episodes of Deadwood.

Those who ask a writer the question,"... do you write porn?" my response is that I write Romance. Frankly unless you write for the porn movie industry, or scripts for telesex markerters I would't think there would be much of a market for porn literature. There is however, one heck of a market for Romance that takes the sensual component integrates it with emotion, story line and enough graphic detail to make it compelling while stopping short of getting in the readers face.