In a press release (cited here in the New Statesman) from his School of Life, Alain de Botton claims he’s going to take on our cultural obsession with unethical porn and create some that accords with our moral sensibilities and the good life.
This is, of course, hilarious and there have been some requisitely wicked reactions like here (HuffPo has nothing on the Guardian‘s writers). In general, I appreciate that de Botton is trying to bring philosophy to the ‘real world’ and he is a genuinely engaging writer and speaker. You can’t argue with the fact that he is doing practical philosophy and changing people’s lives.
But this initiative seems to me to be misguided. It sounds like porn for women or feminist porn, which are subjects of tremendous debate. If there is a question of whether or not women can appropriate the medium, it seems to me there is a huge question of whether a male philosopher can. I have to wonder whether the question isn’t how to ethically sanitize adult material but rather it’s examining why people utilize it as a substitute for meaningful sexual and emotional interactions with others. People having sex on camera, whether done depicting mutual respect and consent or not, is still a representation of something you could be doing yourself with real, live, ethical agents.
I’m of course assuming here an individual consumer of this ‘entertainment’. If one counters that couples would use ethically approved porn from de Botton to stimulate their ethically above board sex lives, I’d still ask why the Pleasures and Sorrows of their mutual attraction don’t suffice. Or rather, how does de Botton’s desire to become a pornographer (not judging the profession, just the motivations) support Thinking about Sex.
–seth
There is a nonzero group of folks for whom meaningful sexual and emotional interactions with others are exceedingly unlikely, if we can’t say impossible. Severe social anxiety/autism, for one. If you ever watch a video of Temple Grandin, she has gotten to the point where she can speak publicly with nuance and inflection in a compelling way, but she admits in her books being able to jump the hoops for a real relationship is still beyond her. Imagine someone born with a somewhat stronger libido but the same disorder and you can find people who will never conduct sexual actions with real, live, ethical agents, but may still have an interest in understanding those states as best they can without contributing to patriarchy, etc.
Fair enough, but I don’t think that is the industry’s target demographic, particularly if they are profit or education driven. The audience must be wider.
As a feminist and an avid consumer of pornography, I applaud the project of creating an “ethically sanitized” food source in the cultural ecosystem that can meet my needs.
But de Botton’s proposal exemplifies a lot of what people find eye-rolling about Philosophy as a discipline: it’s a sketch of a proposal of an idea that the philosopher claims will bear fruit if only other people will actually do the hard work of filling in the details for him.
You can see this in philosophy of mind, aesthetics, phil-sci, you name it.
Here, the details are what an actual creator — in this case, a director, who is the true author of a pornographic film — is supposed to work out. But, unless there is a portion of de Botton’s sketch of a proposal that I didn’t read in those links above, he’s not actually rolling up his sleeves and trying to solve those technical, aesthetic, and commercial problems himself. Just make the movie already, and lead by example!
Yes. I wouldn’t trust him to succeed where so many more qualified and experienced others have already gone.
Whether people like to admit it or not, there is a craft (techne) to directing porn, and the structural constraints are as real and nonarbitrary as any other form of motion picture. You can’t have a Star Wars where Luke decides to stay on the farm and we watch him dive a tractor for 2 hours.
Which is not to say that great artists can’t exercise Genius and overcome these barriers. But I read his proposal as “if I were an artist, I would try to do X” which is unhelpful even if like me you really want to see X. Better than any philosophical argument is a practical demonstration. Nothing succeeds like success.
I think X-Art and Girlfriends Films are two studios that make what I would consider tasteful, respectful porn, on the opposite side of the spectrum from the odious Bangbros or the by-the-numbers Brazzers. I would be interested in AdB or his supporters giving a detailed examination or critique with specifics on which aspects of these videos count as “positive” so we can evaluate how plausible a new ethical movement would be
sidestepping the details of Botton’s actual proposal, I think there’s a lot of erroneous assumptions being made in describing pornography as “a substitute for meaningful sexual and emotional interactions with others.” I’ll break down the few that come to mind…
1) “substitute” doesn’t seem accurate to me. sure, it can be used that way. but people in healthy, fulfilling sexual relationships still watch porn (sometimes even together), and although I don’t have the statistics to back it up, I’m willing to bet that watching porn doesn’t make a person less likely to have actual sex (variables of access to sexual partners being accounted for).
2) “with others” is problematic as well, since you seem to be implying that sexual activity has to involve more than one person (can I assume the number you had in mind was 2?) in order to be “meaningful.” human sexuality (and this goes for other animals too) encompasses a wide range of activities, and some of those are done alone. going back to my first point, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a sexologist who would describe masturbation as merely a “substitute” for sex with others. rather, the general consensus seems to be that its a healthy practice, as it allows you to get to know your own body in a way that can only enhance your sexual interactions with others. likewise, I’d argue that viewing pornography is healthy (or at least has the potential to be healthy) because it allows the viewer to learn about the full spectrum of human sexuality, and to indulge in fantasizing about certain acts, either as a precursor to attempting them in real life with others, or exactly because those needs can’t be otherwise fulfilled.
3) lastly, I’m also bothered by the words “emotional” and “meaningful.” again, the words are used in a way which implies that these are two qualities that can potentially be applied to “real,” relational, presumably physical (?) sex but that cannot apply to porn. now, it goes without saying that the vast majority of porn doesn’t meet either of these criteria. but does that mean that it can’t? (see: Sturgeon’s law) the way I see it, pornography is a representational art like any other, and should have the same potential for meaningfulness and emotional resonance as any other genre of photography or cinema or illustration or literature or what have you. if “real” sex can be emotional and meaningful, and pornography depicts real sex, then shouldn’t it, if it’s done well enough, be able to capture those qualities?