Page 390 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pornography |

continuing through film, home video, cable television, the Internet, and digital
imaging—historically have worked to expand its reach. Researchers study the
impact and effects of pornography on individuals as well as society: who uses
pornography and why; how pornography influences attitudes and behaviors, in-
cluding misogynist attitudes and violence against women; the history of pornog-
raphy; textual analysis of stories and images; and pornography as a cinematic
genre.
Feminists particularly have engaged in wide-ranging debate, with some view-
ing pornography as a cornerstone industry in promulgating sexist beliefs, actively
oppressing women and exploiting sexuality, and others claiming pornography
as a potentially liberatory genre, stressing the importance of maintaining the
freedom of sexual imagination. In recent times, sexual and sexually objectifying
and violent images, based in pornographic conventions, increasingly pervade
mainstream culture, raising further debates as to their impact.

PornograPhy tiMeline

1500–1800—In Europe pornography was widely used as a shock vehicle criticizing religious
and political authorities.
1524—Erotic engravings by Pietro Aretino along with a series of sonnets composed in
Italy.
1534—Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti becomes the prototype for seventeenth-century
pornographic prose.
1740s—Pornographic writings become considered a genre.
1769—The word pornography emerges in France.
1806—The earliest modern use of the word pornography found in Etienne-Gabriel Pei-
gnot’s Dictionnaire critique, littéraire et bibliographique des principaux livres condam-
nés au feu, supprimés ou cénures. The pornographic tradition in France strengthens.
1857—The word pornography appears for the first time in the Oxford English Dictionary;
Obscene Publications Act is put into practice.
Late 1800s and early 1900s—Forms of filmic pornography, stag films, begin to cir-
culate.
December 1953—Playboy founded by Hugh Hefner.
1959—Obscene Publications Act removes certain restrictions from texts that had been
banned as obscene/pornographic if they could be justified as art.
1965—Penthouse Media Group Inc. founded by Bob Guccione in England.
1969—Supreme Court decision, Stanley v. Georgia, which held that people could view
whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes.
1969—Penthouse comes to the United States.
Late 1960s—Full-length pornographic films begin receiving cinema distribution.
1970—Report by the Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, created by President
Johnson.
1970s—Video pornography appears.