Pornography vs. Art
Before I start here realize I am not trying to support the pornography industry by typing this post. In that business there is a lot of exploitation that takes place that I don't like to see going on.
One question I have is trying to define pornography.
I looked it up in Encarta and here is what they say:
Definition:
1. sexually explicit material: films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and intended to cause sexual arousal.
So I'm thinking of all the museums I've been to, yeah that's right I got some culture, and I have seen a lot of stuff on the wall painted by a master that could easily fit into that category. So how do you make a determining difference? If it actually shows the sex act? Maybe, but there is some Eastern art work that has been around for centuries that falls into that category as well and probably is also regarded as art.
I've thought, is it different because it's a photograph and not painted with brushes? It doesn't seem to me that this one makes since either, just because cameras didn't exist a thousand years ago doesn't mean the content, intent or the message are any different.
So why do I even want to bring up this subject? Am I trying to rationalize something? Maybe--- I would like to think however it's for a better purpose. This post has come to me because I have noticed that a lot of churches seem to be focusing on this area in their men's ministries. Maybe it was a memo that went out from Promise Keepers, I don't know. Maybe it's a huge problem, and getting bigger because of Internet distribution!
Growing up in churches and believing that a church is actually a good place for a person to hang out I just like to make sure that the message a church presents is making sense. Not turning people away. Of course the big task here for any church is that they stay true to the Bible. Beyond that they have to carry the accurate message of the Bible to the community in which they live and make the message relevant and meaningful. I guess that's a good place to start, does the Bible say anything about pornography? Maybe somebody can help out there, I don't recal any specific references. Of course there are a lot of things without specific references so that's not the best argument. Ok, so going out on a limb here...by the above definition the Bible could in some cases actually be considered pornographic itself. I become a little aroused reading Song of Solomon, and there are plenty of other places where sex is mentioned in the Bible(and some pretty twisted stuff at that). I suppose you could not say it was the intention of the writers to cause sexual arousal, but that could in fact be the result.
Being a guy I am aware that there are many things that can cause sexual arousal, a cool car could do it. A woman within 100 feet could also cause significant feeling, no matter what she is dressed in (actually the THOUGHT of a woman within 100 feet could do it also). A warm breeze I have heard can make some men stand at attention. My point is...Is it even possible to eliminate everything that causes sexual arousal, and if we did where would be be? My next question is what should be the churches message with this issue? What do you think? I think that the church could be a lot smarter about this stuff.
You see here's the thing even though this post is about pornography it's about a lot more than that...it's about being relevant. I have written before about the big mistake the church makes when it tries to condemn specific physical behavior rather than point to the real message of the Bible which is about Love. Go back and read those posts and you can probably tell what I think should be done.
So should the church just ignore this? No probably not, after all there are people that have a problem and that problem is getting in the way of their relationships. It gets in the way of their relationship with God, with Spouse with Family, etc. There are a lot of other things besides pornography that are a problem. So if you are 50 lbs. over weight and your preaching to sombody with a sexual adiction don't think that you have the higher moral ground. I think the better approach for the church is to do 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Annonymous. That way if you have a problem with Pornography the guy talking with you says, "I have a problem with pornography as well, let's talk about what we can do about that...buddy".
You see when the church keeps preaching against stuff they actually I believe make it happen more often. When a kid is told they better not take a cookie from the cookie jar then that's just about all they can think about. Cookies, cookies, cookies...sex, sex, sex. It's time for a new message I believe.
I don't know if this post became about Pornography or about something else but I think part of that has to do with the fact that I'm not sure pornography is easy to define. I thought I would write this post to sort things out in my head but I think I'm more confused than when I started to write. There may be artistic expression in some of it and there may also be a big dose of perversion. Maybe it depends on the medium or maybe not. The one who delivers pornography may be the one to blame or maybe it is the person who consumes it. Maybe it is there if you see it and not if you aren't paying attention?
1 Comments:
what? no comments on this one??? how funny, wonder why?
when i read the definition of pornography in your blog, i stopped at one of those words we usually gloss over because we arent quite sure what it means, yet seeing it in a context surrounded by other words, of which the meanings we do know, we just assume what it might mean and move on. but this time i stopped and wanted to know what exactly did the word "explicit" mean. google, google. i found out that explicit originally meant opened, unfolded, or revealed and used to be written at the end of a scroll or book in the same way we now put the word "finis" or "the end" at the end of a movie. it didnt mean opened as in "the flasher opened his trenchcoat to the unsuspecting woman", at least, not until around 1970, when the word was used to mean something sexual that openly exposed or revealed something that offended someone else. so what changed? when they pulled the cloth off of michelangelo's david, was that explicit? it was in the sense that his completed work had been unfolded, or revealed in all its glory, but at the time, NOT in the sense that someone had just exposed a statue of a naked man showing full genitalia in all its marble rock hardness. so who defines what is explicit?? enid strict? the church lady played by dana carvey on snl? that character was a creation of his based on women he knew (in his church growing up) who would keep track of parishoners attendance and sins. how sad is it when a word with a well-understood and definite meaning is taken and misused, only to have its misuse become its new definition.
in the same vein, who defines pornography, the artist or the audience? michelangelo didnt work from 1501 - 1504 carving it just to expose a man's bits to the public, yet when a cast of the statue was made for the south kensington museum in england, a detachable fig leaf was added specifically for queen victoria's visits! i dont think the artist would have even allowed them to have a cast of his work if he knew they would be defacing it with a plastered loincloth.
ok, so who defines pornography? im not avoiding the question, i just dont know. one man's treasure is another man's trash, or visa versa. like i said, i dont know, i just wanted to share what few thoughts i had after reading this.
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