Possibly the Oldest Profession

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A brief history of pornography and its impact on technology.
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Pornographer: a description we should use with pride

At school and in encyclopaedias we learn of the animal images and hunting scenes our ancestors portrayed on their cave walls.

There are other human images - the so called Venus's, females whose swollen torsos appear to suggest pregnancy, these are thought to be Fertility images. In Tannahill's "A History of Sex" she shows a cave painting by Neolithic man in a French cave complex that portrays an image of sexual activity.

This less well known painting is the image of one of these heavily pregnant Venus's lying, prone, face down. Her arms and legs are tattooed, in addition to the tattooed bands, on her thigh tattooed arrows point upwards towards her torso. A tattooed man is creeping up behind the woman, crawling on his belly. One hand leading, one might even see lust in his crudely portrayed features. The artist paid little attention to the details of the face, and great care on the bodies It is my contention that this is evidence, of the artist's intention to produce a pornographic image.

However this essay is not about the images, but the people who create the images, the Pornographers. If we accept that the cave painting I have described was created for sexually stimulating purposes, then this places the production of pornography, in a time preceding any known economic system. A time when people lived in small family groups, not the economic conditions that are a precondition for the practice of Prostitution. If we define Prostitution as being a commercial transaction, the exchange of sex for money or some other commodity of value.

In this essay I use the word Pornographer to describe anyone who produces material that is intentionally sexually stimulating, or is perceived by others as being overtly sexually stimulating. There are three reasons for this:

(a) to the best of my knowledge there is no generic term describing the people who would describe their work as being Erotic;

(b) the boundary between Pornography and Erotica is subjective, ill defined, fuzzy and being to some degree a merely legal term, liable to change as societies' attitudes change. (Now if that offends some producers who think their work is erotic, but they are not Pornographers get writing, lets get a debate going!) Therefore I say that those of us who write stories for Literotica are Pornographers;

(c) not only do I dislike the name "PORNOTICA", the idea of being a "PORNOTICAGRAPHER", (a person who produces pornotica), leaves me cold.

The intention of this essay is to show that Pornographers are, and always have been valued members of society; and that the innovation they have used in producing their work has benefited people from the outset. To be able to describe ourselves as Pornographers is something of which we should be proud not ashamed. Unfortunately the subject is so wide ranging that I have been forced to place some limits upon the examples I intend to use, and for this reason the essay is limited to the Pornographers of Europe and the USA.

From that unknown artist who put images on the walls of a cave, onward sexually explicit imagery has been present in both secular and religious contexts. The Greek myths abound with sexual adventures, which we tell and retell to this day.

Take a look in the Incest Stories and there we find the retelling of Oedipus and his mother, Electra and her father. Over in the Non-Human Stories we can find Leda and the Swan. Forced sex, sex where one person is asleep, drugged or drunk abound in the mythology of the Greeks, Vikings and Celts. Celt heroes had a peculiar penchant for sex with sleeping women. We read in the Non-Consential stories of men sneaking up behind women to take them by surprise - back to the cave artist!

In the major museums and antiquarian collections of Europe and the USA there are collections of Greek pottery that are decorated with graphic depiction's of both heterosexual and homosexual activity. In some museums of these collections are kept under lock and key with access restricted to bona fide academics. - The British Museum has recently opened its collection to the public, (part of my point about distinctions, what was pornographic is no longer regarded as "liable to corrupt and deprave." The definition of pornography in English law).

As one might expect, it is in the Greek texts, (some of the earliest texts relevant to this paper), that we come across the earliest written erotic works. Many of these works were integral to religious beliefs, but others were secular, e.g. Sappho 7thc BC.

*********************

"Just now I found a young boy
stuffing his girl,
I rose, naturally, and
(with a nod to Venus)
fell and transfixed him there
with a good stiff prick,
like his own."

********************

Now consider the images this poem conveys and the words used bearing in mind the words are a translation. Humorous? Crude? Does it read like toilet wall graffiti?

These words were written by Catallus (84-54BC) one of the most famous Roman Poets, the majority of his work centres sex with a bias towards his own sexuality - gay sex. Yet students of the Classics will study his work as a part of their courses. The pornographer becomes acceptable when time intervenes. Cattallus was not the only Roman to produce erotic literature, Ovid (43BC-17AD) "Amores", Lucretius (99-55BC), Martial 40-104AD), Juvenal (59-130AD) are the best known and translations of their work are readily available.

During the Roman Empire sex was celebrated to the point where it became integral part of mainstream culture. Priapus was the God of the penis. Venus a Greek goddess became incorporated into the Roman pantheon of gods. Orgies lay at the heart of celebrating Floriella. There were also temple prostitutes in addition to the regular commercial operations.

The only dampener was Emperor Augustus who tried to regulate divorce and diminish promiscuity. However his efforts were undermined by the activities of his Wife and daughter both of who were famous for their sexual excesses. It is said they sneaked out of the palace to work as common prostitutes. - In the end Augustus incarcerated his daughter on a remote prison island. (Politicians should take not of Augustus's problems before they launch their "moral crusades")

All this activity was documented not only by the historians, but also by those who wrote to entertain others especially the Roman poets!

The Roman's also produced copious amounts of visual pornography, as attested to by finds in Pompeii. These pornographic wall paintings, with as graphic detail as any hard-core video today, have been found not only in public places such as inns, bathhouses and brothels but also in the rooms of high status private dwellings. As there is no reason to think that the residents of Pompeii were especially venal, it would appear such ornamentation was widespread across the Roman Empire just prior to the Christian Era.

In the Christian Era - in the bosom of Christianity we find evidence of pornographic images being produced by monk scribes - one of the most highly decorated is "Les Voeux Paon" a Psalter produced in 1340. An earlier painting that features pornographic images is Giotto's "Last Judgement" produced for the Arena Chapel Padua.

This picture is important, because it was painted in the new pioneering "naturalistic style" which was being developed by artists, who had recently overcome the problems of perspective. The human figure was no longer being portrayed in two dimensions, nor did Giotto brush-out or diminish the genitalia of those he portrayed.

Sin and witchcraft were popular themes, with writers and artists, because they could justify the subject of their work by depicting rape, orgies and nudity within these contexts.

The martyrdom of saints was another popular subject. Andrea Mantegna's 1480 depiction of "Saint Sebastian", his hands tied behind his back, his body pierced with arrows. The folds of the loincloth appear to show the testicles and an erect penis.

Sebastiano del Piombo's "The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha" 1520. Shows a woman only draped from hips down, her torturers are tearing off her breasts with pincers. Another renaissance painter I must mention is Michael Angelo, his work in the Sistine Chapel, was so graphic, that it was contemporaneously overpainted in places - science is now revealing the original.

Although I save the final word on renaissance art for Mark Twain. "You enter and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that exists in the world - the Tribune - and there, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses - Titian's Venus."

The early printers soon realised that pornography would realise a good profit - one may speculate better than the profit on bibles and prayer books. Religious dissent was used as a justification for some images, such as the explicit imagery of Boccaccio's "Decameron", which portrayed nuns, monks, and priests in sexual acts. (Interestingly as late as 1922 the US Mail in Cincinnati was seizing copies - the bookseller was fined $1000.) The 15th and very early 16th century editions were produced using wood engravings. Print technology advanced - no doubt fuelled by demands for better pornographic images and later editions were produced by using engraved copper plates.

By 1524 Raimondi's Sedici Modi (Sixteen Positions) based upon the Aretino Postures appeared, printed from the outset using the new technique of etched copper plates. It is reputed Aretino based his drawings on frescoes painted by Rafael in a house belonging to the Pope as revenge for not having been paid.

During the lead-up to the French Revolution, pornographic handbills alleging perverted sex at court, and amongst the King's clerical advisors, abounded in Paris. Initially the revolutionaries freed De Sade, perceiving him as a revolutionary pornographer. Indeed from the late 18thC until the latter part of the 20thC Paris was the pornography capital of Europe and the USA.

In Paris at the turn of the 19th/20th century a young Spanish artist earned his living by illustrating Pornographic books. Banned Pornographic titles, later to be classed as literary classics, such as "Lady Chatterly's Lover" D. H. Lawrence, "Ulysses" James Joyce were saved from obscurity by the American owned Parisian publishing company of Shakespeare, who produced the English versions in the green cover "Traveller's Library" series.

In 1839, Daguerre demonstrated his camera and process to a special meeting of l'Academie Des Sciences. Paris the centre of art became the centre of photography. No sooner had the Daguerreotype camera become available than photographer's were using them to produce nude images. One of the earliest male female pornographic images still in existence dates back to 1855, there is no reason to believe this was the first such image produced.

The drive for perfection in the production of pornography, directly fuelled the development of the stereoscopic camera and viewer. By 1862 entrepreneurs were setting up viewing arcades, where for payment of a small fee the public could view these life-like images. However the private ownership of Daguerreotypes was limited to the wealthy, as this process only produced one image per photograph taken.

In the 1850's Fox Talbot's wet plate process allowed for the mass reproduction of prints from a single negative, pornography became available to the public for private consumption. No more peephole viewers, just paper prints in a "plain brown wrapper"! The production process had become quicker, cheaper and did not involve the skills etched plates required. In 1860 when French Police arrested the photographer Philip Dubourjal, (for a second time) he was in possession of 1,748 obscene prints. In London in 1874 Henry Hayler's Pimlico premises were raided, the police found 130,248 prints and 5,000 slides (glass negatives). - Hayler was never charged, he fled to France.

Soon after the Lumiere brothers started demonstrating their moving pictures, with the short demonstration clips including the head-on train, the first pornographers began to make films. Only years before 1890 Edison's inefficient motion picture machine had been quickly adapted to a peep-show machine a role it continued to full fill until the 1960's.

The Kiss an 1896 film prompted Chicago publisher Herbert S. Stone to demand the police did something! The censorship bodies and codes were created before WWI. After that war, when war had progressed technological development and trained thousands of cameramen, the Stag or blue film was born.

In the 1950s and 60s pornographic films for clubs were produced on lightweight 16mm camera's, of the type Newsreel cameramen used. The mainstream directors of the French and British new wave followed the pornographer's lead, to produce their mainstream films.

Films for private consumption were shot almost exclusively as silents on 8mm and later Super8mm Cameras. It would be naive to claim that the pornographer contributed to the development of 8mm home movie making.

It has been claimed that the VCR and video camera market, owes its success to the desire for pornography. For the first time with little skill or knowledge people could produce their own pornography - and they did. Everyone wanted to film themselves doing it with their partners.

The video camera manufacturers responded to the demand by putting on the viewing screen that rotates 180 degrees and with remote controls that can only be used from within the lens' view. Dare I say it - the main beneficiary of the digital camcorder is the pornographer ammeter and professional, for we are no longer plagued with orange skin tones from tungsten lighting.

I shall stop at this point as you are all conversant with the Internet and the consequent proliferation of unregulatable pornography.

The point that I have been trying to make is that we should be proud of the tag pornographer, because pornography has been the engine that has driven innovation and invention in the field of communication throughout mankind's history!

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