I shall not today
attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced
within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and
perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I
see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
-
Justice Potter Stuart
Printed or visual
material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or
activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
-
Online Dictionary
I will tread today where Supreme Court Justices have dared
not go in a delayed response to thinking about the movie “Y Tu Mama,Tambien?” This movie includes very frank
depictions of sexual interactions and one of the reasons that I didn’t see it
in theaters when it was released is that the titillating aspect of the movie
was played up in the trailers – and perhaps out of some sense of taking the
moral high road, I did not see it. Now,
having said that, my moral high road is an interesting one because porn is
something that I have seen and used in various forms since I was first
introduced to Playboy magazine by my peers when I was 10 or 11 years old. OK, maybe Playboy isn’t generally classified
as porn, though my definition (below) may allow it to be included, but throughout my
adolescence and adulthood I have seen hard-core porn in various forms and have
found it arousing and enthralling. The
sex in “Y Tu Mama, Tambien?” is neither – it is poignant at its best and
downright comic much of the time.
I think that the reason the frankly depicted sexual scenes
in “Y Tu Mama, Tambien?” is not porn is because the intent of pornography is to
provide the viewer with visually and/or auditory (and probably in the not too
distant future tactile) stimuli that fuel sexual fantasies. We watch it not to see the interactions
between the people depicted, but to imagine ourselves engaging in the actions
being depicted or to imagine ourselves engaging in actions with the individuals depicted. To this end, the
depiction of what is occurring should be seamless – it should not interrupt our
engagement with our own experience of pleasure.
The purpose of porn, then, is to stimulate us – to physically and
sexually arouse us when we are actually (generally) by ourselves (though porn
is also viewed in various group settings – from stag parties to its use by
couples to stimulate their desire).
A movie that contains frank depictions of sex within the
context of psychologically meaningful relationships will depict sex in a very
different way. Instead of being seamless
– meaning somewhat repetitive and long lived with relatively little to distract
the viewer (this does not mean that there aren’t changes that occur in porn – but
those changes occur in a prescribed and choreographed manner), organic sexual
interactions include bumps and disruptions – and what allows the interaction to
remain being a sexual interaction, one that requires a certain consistency of
focus, is that the participants, not the viewers, stay focused on their
experience of being pleasured by and pleasuring the other – and that the one
who is giving pleasure can sense when the other who is receiving it is no
longer needing whatever type of pleasure is being offered and can shift to
offering – or asking for – a different kind of interaction. Porn cannot sense the needs of the observer so to protect the fantasy space of the viewer, it is oddly static.
This means that porn becomes an object for the viewer. It is something that stimulates the viewer
and is manipulated and controlled by the viewer – especially in the age of
internet porn. The danger is that the
viewer will generalize from the level of control that they have over porn to
exerting that control in actual interactions and treating living beings as
pornographic objects; that they will experience others as being there simply to
pleasure them. That said, most run of
the mill porn depicts some sort of reciprocal relationship between the
participants – and pleasing another is a form of pleasure that is depicted to a
greater or lesser degree. Some of the
arousal comes from imagining providing pleasure. I don’t mean to reduce this too far, for even
here the providing of pleasure that is imagined is imagined towards an object –
one who is responding onscreen or in photographs or in writing, but not to the
viewer.
Ironically, then, porn can be used to preserve relationships
– for instance, out of a sense of connection and loyalty to a partner who is
unavailable for whatever reason. That
said, its lure can pull the user away from being connected to that partner,
even when the partner returns and is interested in engaging in a mutually
pleasurable interaction – the porn user may want to slip off to a place that
feels more gratifying. Using porn,
rather than being used by it, is a very slippery slope. Whether its power to overwhelm the desire for
human connection that is intimately tied up with human desire is realized
partially depends on the strength of the individual’s interest and ability to
connect with others. Worse, of course,
it can contribute to broader objectification that would support the imposition
of our sexuality on unwilling individuals.
Could some sort of virtual porn – a version of Woody Allen’s
Orgasmatron from his movie Sleeper – provide an interaction-like state that
would mimic sexual interactions in such a way that participation would not be
pornographic? This leads us into the
world of Artificial Intelligence and what it means to be in connection with
another person, whether through conversation, cuddling, or sexual
intercourse. In “normal” sex, are we
bridging a human gap that can be, at least partially, bridged by the sexual
interaction or is that something that is actually a fantasy – and we are only
given the illusion of being in contact with the other? Is imagined contact as good as (or even
better than) real contact with another person?
As I think about the arguments for why that isn’t the case (building a
shared history of trust and contact, carrying the sexual interaction into other
spheres such as parenting or discussing a good book) it becomes possible to
imagine that this might take place with an AI partner (see the movie Her, for
instance). I am also aware that I am
introducing false dichotomies – just because we can never view the world exactly
as another person does doesn’t mean that our efforts to understand another’s
perspective doesn’t bring us closer to that perspective than we otherwise would
have been.
Going back, for a moment, to watching the depiction of sex between people depicted in movies as people rather than as objects, in Y Tu Mama Tambien?, for instance, and seeing the disruptions in the relationship - this may mirror the process of realizing that, as much as we identify with the individuals being depicted in the film, they are also different from us. We make trial identifications - and get a sense of our overlap with those characters - but also of how we differ from them. And in doing this we re-own ourselves - just as in love, we expand by connecting with our lover, but then return to ourselves, richer for having been in connection.
Going back, for a moment, to watching the depiction of sex between people depicted in movies as people rather than as objects, in Y Tu Mama Tambien?, for instance, and seeing the disruptions in the relationship - this may mirror the process of realizing that, as much as we identify with the individuals being depicted in the film, they are also different from us. We make trial identifications - and get a sense of our overlap with those characters - but also of how we differ from them. And in doing this we re-own ourselves - just as in love, we expand by connecting with our lover, but then return to ourselves, richer for having been in connection.
But if we imagine AI, as was done in Her, we do that from
the perspective of a creature that is totally responsive to us and to our
needs. Isn’t this a form of porn? Isn’t part of the inconvenient truth of being
an adult and living with other adults that we don’t just want to meet the needs
of a lover, we are sometimes forced to do that by circumstances or by the
other’s needs even though we don’t want to?
Isn’t that part of the force of attachment that we (somewhat) willingly
do things for our children that we wouldn’t do for anyone else? And isn’t part of the mystery of the human
interaction that we never, actually, know the other person – that they are
always slightly beyond our reach – capable of surprising and, yes, frustrating
us?
From this perspective, perversions involve directing our
drives towards objects that don’t allow for reciprocal and mutually gratifying (and
frustrating) interactions – they are directed towards objects that we believe
we have control over. So, yes, using
pornography would be a perversion. But
on the scale of perversions – where incest and rape involve turning unwilling
humans into sexual objects in ways that harm the other – it is a minor one (and this is leaving aside questions about whether the porn industry, in the act of
delivering porn, harms people – a big set of issues - I know). One of the dangers in porn is that it can contribute to objectifying others in our actual interactions with them.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, porn operates to reduce
the anxiety that is present for all of us in interacting with others. For some of us, to interact with another
individual that is free to act in whatever way they do is not something that we
feel able to do. This can be the result
of trauma – our attempts to connect with others may have led to ridicule or
worse. For whatever reasons, we
sacrifice the real pleasure of connecting with other living breathing humans
for engaging with others in the context of controlling them – or seeming
to. This interaction, in which we are
one up on the other individual, seems safe to us. We are remote – untouched – but willing to
take this in exchange for the safety it affords. Providing a safe place to become vulnerable
again is the intent of treatment – psychoanalytic and otherwise. In the meantime, pornography and other means
of objectification can protect us.
This way of looking at pornography – and objectification in
general – that it is a function of fear and self-protection – may help us
change the way that we approach others who are objectifying in whatever
way. They do this not primarily out of
an intent to harm (though that is certainly the consequence), but out of a perceived
need to protect themselves. This can be
really hard to wrap one’s head around.
When I was in psychoanalytic training, I was the only male
trainee with a large group of women.
When one of the male patients we were discussing as part of the training
was describing some sort of stereotypically problematic masculine behavior, the others in the group
would look at me as if I were to blame.
It became my task, over and over, to work with the group to look at the
dynamics that lay behind that behavior – to think about why this person who we
also knew to be a good person – was behaving like a cad. The point here is that even psychoanalysts in
training don’t think about what is driving cad-like behavior all of the time - when a person of whatever interest becomes objectified we the observers - whether we are a horny male (or a female who is being hit on by that horny male) - get locked into a reciprocal position of thinking, this girl is just a piece of meat (or that guy is just a jerk). To break out of that mold is hard to do. But I think that, in so far as we able to do
that – as well as to work to confront those behaviors and make it clear that
they are unacceptable, the more likely we are to make headway on reducing the
objectification that takes place.
Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend who is a
devout Catholic and whose professional life has been devoted to the formation
of Catholic priests (this was before this week’s publicity regarding the
harboring of more pedophilic priests in Pennsylvania). We agreed that the shortage of priests could
be quickly addressed by dropping the vow of chastity – if married men could
serve, they likely gladly would. We
wondered together about a world in which sexuality was valued as a sacrament
rather than a sin: where the potentials of sexual interaction were protected
because they allow for our greatest expression of our humanity – but therefore
can also be the theater for all that is problematic in being human and so should be doubly protected. Of course, we would have to protect human
interactions more broadly and treat them all with sanctity. How would our world be differently ordered if
this were the case? What would it mean
to protect a sacrament rather than to prevent a sin? What would the place of porn be in that
world?
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