Art or Porn?

[YellowRubberDuckie]

Poll question: Art or Porn?

Do you feel that Playboy is Art or Porn, remembering that porn is graphic sexual situations and Playboy has just pictures of naked and semi-naked women.
Note: This is not meant as a sex thread. I'm just curious of the consensus...And please don't go overboard with this. I'm just curious.

Poll result (51 votes)
Art	(20 votes, 39%)	Vote
Porn	(17 votes, 33%)	Vote
Neither	(12 votes, 24%)	Vote
TXlib is naughty	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Robb is a Dingbat	(2 votes, 4%)	Vote

[Fenris]

1. Porn

And I love porn. But Playboy is not art.

[LynneSin]

18. The naked body is art but....

....the naked body, after it's been carved up and stuffed full of silicone/saline gel paks is porn

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. It is pornography.

Definition of pornography: Art, photography, film or literature intended to appeal to a prurient interest. Playboy is soft-core (no genital closeups, no penetration), but porn nonetheless.

[camero]

3. I get it for the articles

[rock]

It's got articles!?

Why, didn't somebody tell me.

[mzmolly]

4. I guess if you consider all the airbrushing and special camara lenses

that are used, one could consider it *art*...

And, given the fact that most of the women in Playboy are "siliconed" and "suctioned" you've got some plastic surgeon-artists who should get proper billing?

[supernova]

5. In the middle

I don't think of Playboy as porn, it's not lewd or shocking enough. But it's not art to me either. I think of art as in high art... statues, paintings, perhaps lithographs. Some craft that the creator has to work to bring into the world.

[FDRrocks]

6. It's all in how you view it.

I could think of it both ways, actually. Porn, b/c its ... naked women posing. Art, b/c its... naked women posing (who are majorly airbrushed to fit some sort of standard).

[On the Road]

7. Porn (Not That There's Anything Wrong with That)

All I can say is: Playboy photographers are very, very good at what they do.

[JVS]

8. Must be art because it isn't good enough to be porn

[Aristus]

9. I dunno. Can you post a photo so that we can judge for ourselves?

[OneBlueSky]

10. can I vote "Neither?" . . .

I certainly don't think it's art, but I'm not sure it rises to the level of porn either . . . how about "slick magazine with lots of naked women?" . . .

[YellowRubberDuckie]

12. I added that as an option

[redqueen]

11. Actually porn is NOT just graphic sexual situations

1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

2. The presentation or production of this material.

3. Lurid or sensational material: “Recent novels about the Holocaust have kept Hitler well offstage to avoid the... pornography of the era” (Morris Dickstein).

IMO it's porn.

13. false dichotomy

see definition in post 2
Pornography is a form of art

[bubblesby2002]

14. Playboy photographers are very good with their

craft. Their craft is photography which is generally considered to be art (to wit: Maplethorpe is art). Therefore their pictures are art. Not porn. Hustler is porn.

Edited to indicate I am referring to the common conceptions of art and porn, not the formal definitions

[amazona]

22. if hustler is porn so is playboy

Hustler takes more risks than Playboy hence is more "artistic" -- without risk, you cannot have a genuine art form in my view. To be art, you must have some tiny measure of creativity, and there is none in soft-porn a la Maxim or Playboy. Absolutely nothing there to grab you above the waist...

They are both porn in my humble opinion but occasionally Hustler will let the prurient go by and just aim for the shocking, so it is arguably closer to art than Playboy.

[Tom_Foolery]

15. Cheesecake...

Playboy is pretty much cheesecake compared to what is out there now.

I've been a Playboy subscriber for 29 years now; and yes, I still have every issue.

My wife doesn't mind that I get Playboy. She says that it was "grandfathered" in because my mother bought my first issue when I was 15 years old.

Now I must say that my mother is extemely open minded. She's always believed that her children should be ready for life, so we were exposed to a lot of different things early. It worked for our family. My sister and I are both pretty level headed.

The whole thing with Playboy started as a joke. It was a Saturday afternoon in March of 1975, and I was watching Wide World of Sports. My mom was leaving to go shopping and asked if I needed anything. I jokingly said that I'd like to have a Playboy. Well, two hours later, she comes home with a Playboy and flops it down in front of me. I started to thumb through it. She was working in the kitchen, and I strolled in to tell her that I knew what I wanted for my birthday...a subscription to Playboy. She said that she'd pay for the first year, but I'd have to pay after that. Well, I've paid it for 28 years.

Art or not, I've enjoyed it.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

16. It's really well written and the comics are great.

[Az]

17. Porn is a subset of art

Cannot be extracted. Now as with all art, porn may not be to some peoples taste. But it definately conveys the artists ideas.

[supernova]

23. Some porn can be art

but not all porn is art.

[Az]

29. Nope

Some art just really offends some people. Example:

There is a red canvas that hangs in the Detroit Institute of Art that has a single white stripe down the middle of it. Thats it. A red canvas with a stripe. They paid $80,000 for a white stripe. This offends me. I find it distasteful to waste money on such a none work. Yet it is art. Someone finds some meaning in it. Just not me.

Sexual desire is just another of the wonderful array of emotions we can experience. Porn simply appeals to that emotion. It can be vulgar, crass, offensive, and anything else you wish to call it. But it conveys an emotion that the artist is attempting to convey. That makes it art. Maybe not good art. But art none the less.

[supernova]

30. You just made my point

I wasn't talking about offensive art, thought that exists, I was saying that what is "art" and what is "porn" is in its practical application an individual judgement call.

Personally, I place alot of material of the sexual variety in a category loosely called "erotica." Some of it, to me, reaches the level of art. Some does not, not because it's sexual, but because it doesn't pique my interest in either the content or poor production value.

There's a world of difference between Anaïs Nin and Screw magazine.

[SOteric]

19. I dispute your definition of pornography

Pornography is sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

Playboy is designed to cause sexual arousal, ergo it is pornographic.

[amazona]

20. absolutely it's porn and nothing wrong with that

They send me their publication from time to time, and it is completely without artistic merit (and the articles haven't been fact-checked in years either) -- it is a beat-off magazine, and absolutely not a thing wrong with that. The pictures/poses are of little interest to me personally but if there is a market for this soft-porn stuff and clearly there is, fine.

But don't pretend it's art when there is no creativity or thought involved whatsoever. There is more art in an issue of Vogue, although actually, not lately. Art in magazines is pretty much a thing of the past, sadly.

[supernova]

21. Have to agree with you there

Art in magazines is pretty much a thing of the past, sadly.

I used to love pouring over magazine illustrations as a kid. Now mags are mostly ads.

[cheezus]

24. BOTH!

that's the option I would have voted for.

[greendog]

25. It's worse than porn.....

....it's advertising design.

You can't take the photos out of context. On one hand, the photo features exist to lure potential readers to advertising that promotes a hyper-consumptive lifestyle. On the other hand, the photos display "products" that are an essential part of the lifestyle promoted in the ads.

The magazine promotes the idea that the value of a man should be determined by the number of "high end" products he surrounds himself with.

[redqueen]

26. I love this answer

I don't know what the ads are like, but from your description, I'm guessing they fall into my personal definition of the 'pornography of wealth' that we're surrounded by 24/7.

[Duckiesplaything]

27. I'd say somewhere in the middle

It's Pornish-art...

[truthspeaker]

28. Entertainment

Just like it says on the cover.