It seems like we are confronted with porn on a daily bases, whether we like it or not. TV channels show us reality TV in all its forms, and magazines think they can only score with some (dis)functional nudes. Not to mention advertising of underwear, or even cheese. But still, it is not something recent. Pictures of sexual nature are as old as people can draw.
The rise of ‘porn’
Pornography literally means ‘writing of prostitues’. It is derived from the ancient Greek (‘porne’ = prostitute and ‘graphein’ = writing). The ancient Greeks used to make pictures of naked women on the brothels, like some sort of advertising sign of what was for sale in that building. Stil, the term ‘pornography’ or ‘porn’ is a word that was only conceived at about 1850 by an Englishman that was of a certain age to have sufficient experience with the matter. Soon after, the term got a negative undertone, that was associated with a cheap display of sexual acts with a sole objective to derive satisfaction or direct pleasure. If you compare ‘pornography ‘with ‘erotic’, that is more artful. For the sake of clarity, we make no distinction here, but the main difference is with erotica one uses a feather, while in porn one uses the entire chicken. That.
In the beginning
It is hard to tell when pornography originated. From the moment people started to draw or write, sexual pictures or texts can be found. Scientists found murals of copulating humans in ancient caves. They where simple stick figures, like you know them from little men running after animals with a spear. The Greek and Romans produced more explicit sexual art in frescos, on vases or as statues. Even sex toys exist for ages. One of the first dildos was used in the Greek empire. It was made of leather, wood and stone. Salesmen sold them to lonely wives.
Also well known, are the sexual pictures in ancient India. Well known are those from the Kama Sutra. But because Hindus were afraid paper is transient, they decorated their temples with images of people that where involved in complicated positions.
Christians prohibited pictures, other than those of sanctified, for centuries. But that didn’t change the quality, nor te quantity of pornography. Until then, the sexual moral was more liberal and sex was a sign of fertility. Men and women were often pictured with genitals of extreme and absurd formats. It’s obvious that Christians have squeamished things. During the Renaissance, Julio Romano – a student of Rafael -, argued with Pope met Paus Clemens VII. Nobody knows what it was about. But in revenge, he painted the entire hall of the Vatican with pornographic frescoes. There was a big scandal and shortly all of Europe knew about it. Before the frescoes could be removed, engravings were made from them. And as you know, engravings can be reproduced…
The Danish criminologist Berl Kutchinsky points at the 1650s as the source of what we now call pornography. At that time three books were published that we may call porn classics: La Puttana Errante (The Quirky Whore), L’Ecole des Filles (Girls School) and Satya. These books have been translated in many languages and have become the basis of many other books and films that followed even centuries later. Themes like lesbians, sodomy, temptation, multiple penetration, flagellation, sadism and, as Kutchinsky called it, “a disregard of artistic merits, monotone repetition and constant exaggeration of sexual interests”. In 1655 Samuel Pepys ‘L’Ecole des Filles’ was the most immoral and ambiguous book he had ever seen.
The breakthrough
In the 18th century, pornography really started to have a major breakthrough. Especially in France, where playing cards, posters and postcards were printed with porn. If we look at them now, they seem a little soft, but at the time they were up in arms about it. A famous book is ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ or ‘Fanny Hill’, from the author John Cleland (1749). This book was often reprinted but was never officially published in the USA until in the late 1960s. At the end of the 18th century, Marquis De Sade wrote his famous work about the combination of sex and power. After that, the genie was out of the bottle.
Technological developments have boosted pornography. For example photography and film. In 1855 the first pornographic movie was made, only a couple of years after the Lumiere brothers invented the camera. Porn became a business.
In 1968 porn was first legalized in Denmark. The Scandinavian filmmaker Alex de Renzy introduced ‘Swedish porn’ in the US, which was an immediate success. Pornography became mainstream since the 1960s, thanks to people like Hugh Hefner who published a nude photo shoot of Marilyn Monroe in his magazine Playboy. And in 1972 the movie ‘Deep Throat’ was another breakthrough. The film is about – as far as you didn’t know already – a woman who has a clitoris in her throat, which causes her to achieve orgasms by satisfying men orally. There are 15 blowjob scenes in the film, that was produced in only 6 days. The actors played for just small change back in those days. The costs/gain ratio for this movie was unparalleled. But this was the only the beginning of the golden ages of the porn industry.
The breakthrough of VHS video is, according to critics, to thank to the availability of porn for this medium. The better quality Betamax of Sony and VCC of Philips couldn’t cope with the success of VHS, because Sony and Philips refused to publish prerecorded porn. And history repeated with DVD (that won from Philips’ image disc) and even the success of the internet is for a big proportion due to the sheer amount of porn that can be found on the web.
In the 1980s and ’90s thousands of porn movies have been made. Some actrices played in hundreds of them and then produced hundreds again with different actrices. To our humble opinion, that was the point when boredom officially stroke the blow. Currently, porn is legal in almost all countries, except for some Muslim countries, India, China and hard line Christian countries in South America. Annually more than 500 porn movies are being produced in the USA. THe estimated turnover is 4 to 6 billion dollar per year.
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Amazing opprtunity to deep into the history! Wow!
Yes, it’s remarkable that porn existed in such ancient times. It’s stupid to deny it and even stupider to oppose modern porn.