When it comes to all things old and dirty, I wonder if we often simply give ourselves permission to enjoy them without the same judgement we otherwise reserve for more contemporary pieces of explicit art.
A few months ago there was an article on the Huffington Post about the Victorian erotica artist Franz von Bayros. It was titled “19th-Century Lesbian Erotica Is A Truly Salacious Treat (NSFW),” which is a hell of a string of keywords. And while I wouldn’t consider the HuffPo to be an especially conservative news outlet (okay, not sure I would call it a news outlet at all) it was interesting to see them publishing fairly explicit illustrations.
No one will fault you for reading Anais Nin on the train, and a Helmut Newton print on your wall will get your a far different response than a screen shot from Brazzers. And yes, clearly there are different levels of erotic art, and I don’t mean to lump the old in with the old and the new in with the new simply for the sake of division. But I do suspect that age has a lot to do with how comfortable we are with dirty things. (Possibly in fifty years our contemporary porn will have the same vintage nostalgic feel that an old stag film does today.) Maybe it’s because it wasn’t made for us, and that lets us feel removed from it, or maybe it’s simply that it’s no longer culturally positioned as obscene.
Whatever the reasons, I’m always happy to see erotic art make an appearance in mainstream culture. I just hope that we might also be willing to accept the new along with the old. It may be easier to enjoy something we view as quaint (even if we still think it’s hot) but our willingness to talk about what turns us on and what type of explicit content we like to consume is hugely important in creating a safer and more fun world.