Page 392 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pornography | 1

“i only read it For the interViews”
In the wake of hard-core pornography, many companies have been remarkably successful
selling “soft-core,” “artistic,” or “thinking man’s” pornography. Such pornography usually
eschews showing the actual act of intercourse in photographic form, or close-ups in video
form, and lays claim to legitimacy by surrounding itself with the nonpornographic. Leading
the pack here is Playboy magazine, whose interviews with major intellectuals, politicians, and
other cultural elites have allowed the infamous excuse for those buying the magazine that
“I only read it for the interviews.” By avoiding the label of hard-core pornography, moreover,
producers of many such images in this vein can also declare that they are merely continuing
in the age-old tradition of art’s fascination with the nude. As a result, soft-core pornography
fills much late night pay-cable programming, has worked its way down from the top shelf of
the magazine rack, and often enjoys mainstream acceptance or at least tolerance.

and dissemination of pornographic film and video, and the burgeoning of the
industry through mainstreaming as well as enhancement by new technologies.
Since 1957 the Supreme Court has held that obscenity is not protected by the
First Amendment. In 1973, the Court gave a three-part means of identifying
obscenity, including: Whether the average person, applying contemporary
community standards, would find that the work appealing to the prurient in-
terest; whether the work is patently offensive; and whether the work, taken as
a whole, lacks serious literary and/or artistic, political, or scientific value. All
three conditions must be met for it to be considered obscene.
In the contemporary period, Fortune 500 corporations like AT&T and Gen-
eral Motors now have affiliates that produce pornography and, while it is dif-
ficult to obtain precise data, most researchers conclude that pornography in the
United States annually results in profits from 5 to 10 billion dollars if not more,
and globally $56 billion or more. Legal actions against pornography have virtu-
ally halted, highlighted by a 2005 obscenity case brought by the federal govern-
ment against Extreme Associates, a production company featured in a 2002 PBS
Frontline documentary, “American Porn.” Extreme Associates has an Internet
site for members and also makes films featuring scenes of men degrading, rap-
ing, sexually torturing, and murdering women. A U.S. District Court judge dis-
missed the case. There was no dispute that the materials were obscene. Rather,
he found that obscenity laws interfered with the exercise of liberty, privacy, and
speech and that the law could not rely upon a commonly accepted moral code
or standard to prohibit obscene materials.

DEFiniTion anD DEBaTEs
Pornography is generally associated with deliberately arousing and explicit
sexual imagery, which renders it deviant for traditional patriarchal religious ori-
entations that continue to associate sexuality with sin, while equating chastity
and strictly regulated sexual behavior in heterosexual marriage with goodness.