The Definition of Pornography

Pornography: Anatomy of a Term

According to Walter Kendrick’s The Secret Museum, the term pornography initially simply meant “writing about prostitutes” (Kendrick 1). The term has grown to reference increasingly taboo subjects over the centuries, though as late as 1857 was defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as writing about prostitutes for the purposes of “public hygiene” (Kendrick 1). But in the later Victorian era, pornography gradually began to have more and more of a morally pejorative term as something degenerate, the “leer of the sensualist” (Kendrick 187).

The greater frankness in the ancient world about prostitution, and tolerance of sexuality (at least of adult males) was reflected in the anxiety and shame which accompanied the resurgence of interest in ancient artifacts, resulting in curiosity about and condemnation of “lascivious frescos’ found in the ruins of ancient Pompeii (Kendrick 6). The sights of such ruins were not seen as fit for the consumption of women and children, and only permitted to adult men who were considered cultural and intellectually astute enough to appreciate it, without being corrupted by the sight.

Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization describes how a statue depicting the god Pan having sex with a goat—an artifact casually found in the ruins of a venerated civilization—was profoundly disturbing to a 19th century European society that saw the ancient world as pure, cerebral, and elevated, and had given birth to the greatness of modernity. The image of Pan could not be destroyed or displayed, so it was classified as what we would now call pornography. While the ancient world tended to see sexuality as integrated into the rest of everyday life (as testified by the sexually explicit frescos casually depicted on the walls of many of the homes also found in the ruins), society had begun to show more anxiety about creating division between appropriate and inappropriate. It was impossible to completely relegate artistic classical representations of sex to the garbage heap, especially because they had historical and archeological significance, so labeling the images as pornography was the only solution.

The ambiguity of the term is such that Kendrick often encloses the term in quotation marks, to suggest that pornography is not something absolute in and of itself, but rather a concept, or a place of hidden danger, a “monstrous bundle” (Kendrick viii). Pornography is not something with an absolute, concrete existence like an apple, but rather something that is dependent upon historical, contextual judgement and forces. Kendrick also notes the controversy which has more recently arisen over culturally valuable books such as Ulysses, which has references to explicit material but which has cultural value, has largely decided in favor of classifying them as non-pornographic (Kendrick viii). Pornography today has an association with the artistically worthless, again in contrast to the ancients.

The paradox of pornography was that by relegating certain texts and activities to an abhorrent, private space, versus the public space of the Roman world, these areas of life became viewed with more concern and horror. Classification also required public discussion of private, so-called obscene material, particularly in regards to the literature of the ancient world. This highlights the difference in easily differentiation between scholarship and obscenity.