Porn or Art

Art or Pornography People usually regard nude paintings or statues in museums as a form of art, while debasing nude figures in magazines or movies as pornography. Debate regarding this issue is on the rise and some people are baffled about the creation of discrimination between nudity in art and pornography. It is very important to realize that pornography too is a form of art. Both make their audience aware of what they do not know.

Both tend to provide sensation and usually fanaticize their respective audience and cause their emotions to flow. Despite the few similarities that pornography may have with art, there exist a lot of factors that separate the two from each other. Nudity that is displayed in museums can rightfully be called art and is different from pornography shown in films or magazines primarily on the basis of its appreciative sense. Nudity in museum does not provoke animal instincts in humans whereas pornography does.

Art challenges people's belief and compels them to wonder about where their values lie. Pornography, although a form of art does not have any aesthetic sense due to cheap commercialism. It displays humanity and its feelings towards natural phenomena as vulgar. Pornography is provocative and even though it temporarily stimulates the human senses, it does not penetrate the soul. Art on the other hand touches people's heart and cause them to explore the meaning behind that art.

Nude paintings and statues in museums do not display vulgar scenes like pornography does. According to De Clarke, "Pornography is that which entertains its consumer by making him or her complicit in violence, which converts violence into entertainment, which encourages us to participate vicariously in the visceral satisfactions of bullying, brutality and terrorism" (De Clarke, I Know It When I See It). Pornography unlike nudity displayed in museum is dangerous for the minds and works on oppressing the female gender.

According to Professor Catherine Mackinnon, Women are degraded, raped and even killed in the making of pornographic pictures and films. Then, the pictures and films further participate in the degradation, rape and murder of women by the users of pornography. To cite just one example from Mackinnon's Only Words, Linda Marchiano, then known as Linda Lovelace, was beaten and threatened at gunpoint by her husband during the filming of Deep Throat.

The movie then caused men to force women to try acts, which Marchiano had only been able to perform under hypnosis. According to Mackinnon, numerous women were hospitalized directly as a result of the film; some were raped by strangers, others were coerced or raped by boyfriends (Mackinnon: Pornography Is Oppression). Hence, pornography insults and debases human values. It demoralizes that which is so beautiful between a man and woman. Art tries to exhibit or provoke human emotions that pornography does not.

Usually when we think of nude art in museums, Greeks statues pervade our mind. According to Audrey Lek, Their naked athletics and initiation rituals inspired ancient Greeks to see the naked body as an object with which they could produce nude art. Ironically, nudes were human representations dressed in their nakedness. Nudity was used to highlight the strength of a warrior, the purity of a priest, the sexual power of a goddess or the vulnerability of a captive" (Audrey Lek, Nude Arts vs. Pornography).

Hence, art and pornography can never be judged.