Erotica or Pornography? I'll take a dozen of both, thanks...
If I still enjoy it after I come, it's erotica.
Ask the question: does it make me admire, or desire?
Of course, erotica has to be arousing, or it's not erotica. I mean, if it's not arousing, it's...oh, I dunno. Needlepoint.
But if it's ONLY arousing, then it's porn.
Let's draw an analogy with food.
The finest chefs are true erotic artists. We look at their creations and are filled with desire--they're irresistable. Their works are so exquisite that our desire is sated with a tiny portion or a single bite, and the memory brings pleasure.
The short order cook, however, is the pornographer of food. She or he fills us with desire for her or his creation--two words prove this: french fry. But the first french fry does nothing but make us want more more more more more more. Creating desire is its only goal. The memory of it doesn't bring pleasure; it just makes us want it all over again.
I used to work on the so-called creative side of advertising. We would often shoot commercials for food products. The directors who helmed these productions were, literally, gastronopornographers.
The kings of gastro-porn were the ice cream guys. Incredibly challenging. There's a joke amongst advertising film directors: never work with babies or ice cream, since they both melt under the lights.
Of utmost importance in creating desire for ice cream are two elements: curl and shred.
Curl happens when the scoop travels along the top of the tub of ice cream, and a thick sliver rolls over on top of itself. If the ice cream curls over on itself easily, maintaining its structural integrity even at a broad radius, yet gives no evidence of being half-melted or runny, this is a subliminal cue that it contains a lot of fat, and is indulgent.
If not, it is a cue that your ice cream contains a lot of air, and will turn into a glass of milk in your mouth. (You do know that when you buy a cheap ice cream, you're paying, mostly, for air. Don't you?)
Same with shred. As the ice cream curls over on itself,there emerge tiny gash-wounds, which reveal fluffy mounds in their crevices. This is shred. Another cue to fat content, and hence, sensory reward.
Further, some minor perfection amid abundance made everything more appetising. Why do scoops of ice cream in commericals have a frilly collar of excess, rather than being a perfect half-sphere? An opportunity for ice cream to reveal its animal side.
My clients would watch the commercials with little understanding of the erotocism of ice cream, and an obsession with the pornography of it. Nobody cared about whether the interaction of the frolicking couple sharing the ice cream was interesting. But they debated endlessly over the perfect moment when the scoop doubled over on itself, and opened a gash of shred.
For them, the perfect ice cream commercial was dairy pornography; a succession of cues that just made you want more. We ad guys were more concerned with the story-line, the motivation...the art. We lost every argument.
Now, let's get back to sex.
Pornography is just a sexual equivalent of endless curl and shred. What are the cues that provoke desire? Work 'em out, and give us more.
Here's a cue. The way we breathe in sex. It's deep breathing, but not like athletic deep breathing. One breathes in deeply, but holds it in rather than exhalingit smoothly. When we release it, it's in a mild explosion of pleasure. That moment, which the French immortalise in orgasm as le petit mord, the little death, is a sure cue to sexual pleasure being had, and a trigger to desire.
Sucking--the sound of it, the sensation, the visual indelicacy--is another cue. Sucking anything inidcates pleasure. If you hear it or show it, at least a few members of the audience will arouse themselves. Breasts, dicks, toes, skin. Suck anything, it all works. That's pornography.
But let's just say that you're a novelist. You want to tell the world that your heroine is sexually frustrated. She's doing needlepoint. She pricks her finger. She sucks it. She enjoys it. That's eroticism. That's the first two pages of Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
Does that help, Drifterwood? Gotta confess that I'm a bit buzzed on some nice Adelaide Hills Cahrdonnay, where the "cool climate has resulted in stylish tropical melon, and buttery flavours, while the palate shows a fine balance of of creamy softness, subtle French oak flavours, and great length of lingering fruitiness." Ooooooh...I'm aroused!
Buit I should be. A great length of lingering fruitiness? Welcome to my life.
