The topic of porn came up on a comrade's page. Some thought that the display of women in straight porn was harmful, and destructive. Queer porn is just as bad. Anyway, that kick started a memory of just this problem.
Porn as it was and is demeans those in it.
So we thought my artist comrades of back in the day. Is there a way to do enjoyable erotica that doesn't hurt people? I mean the template we had then as now comes from when it was mostly illegal. So the Mob produced it all.
In other words, generations were given as a model the Mafia's idea of sex.
Which is akin to autopsy pictures. So I proposed what in my earlier boyish innocence I believed porn to be. As a lad of 11 or 12 I'd see this stuff on newsstands. I thought the pictures were taken by the people in it. The women themselves took the pictures, and the articles interspersed were by them talking about why they did it, and how they had such a nice time with their friends doing it.
An interesting idea we thought.
However, when we did mock-ups and proposed this to some of the art rags. They thought we were crazy. Basically, a big "fuck no" to the idea. Too bad it would have worked. Anyway, by this time it was the mid-1970's. I started my own small press. I published Queer prose poetry weird art, and stuff. Which was great fun.
Self-publishing is easier now than it's ever been. It's one of the vanishingly few advantages of living in this epoch.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's the question of the legality of content. That could be a bit of a sticky wicket, and one must proceed with caution.
Z
I had published a few small art folds.
ReplyDeleteThis mayhem several years back. No printers ink on my fingers.
Imagine if we had this back in da day. Angels would have rejoiced.
My lawyer gave tentative approval as no content was actually illegal. However, she insisted it be circulated only to my old friends from my arts days. Further, that 'no' personal identifiers appear within the leaves. including signing or writing personal dedications to said friends.
For our mutual protection.
Covered every base. She wasn't kidding.
Sort of like Samizdat underground prose in the former CCCP.
We have regressed to being outlaw Russian artists in 1955.
Barely a half step from da NKVD and a Gulag.