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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

literate smut

Matthew Fluxington

19:49 / 29.01.02

Okay, this stems from my stated distaste for Nerve from over in the Friends thread...

For those of you who have not read that post in the thread, are unaware of Nerve, and unwilling to follow the link: Nerve started out as an online magazine which has since branched off into print magazine and a show on HBO, and has developed a rather large online community. It is based upon the notion that is provides what it calls 'literate smut'. They sell this mainly to yuppies.

Now, aside from my own personal misgivings with their content and politics, I am very put off by the notion of 'literate smut', as if any porn is intellectual, that erotica needs to have a high and low art distinction. I think this is just a pretentious way for people to excuse their taste for pornography. And don't get me wrong: I have no real problem with pornography. It has its place in society, and need not be a horrible and demeaning thing for those who participate in the creation of it, or those who consume it.

The question: Is there *really* such a need for an elitist form of erotica, other than as a marketing angle? Are these people just deluding themselves? What do you think of Nerve and its content?

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

19:54 / 29.01.02

Ahem.

Back up, bunny.

First up, on what do you base the supposition:

It has its place in society, and need not be a horrible and demeaning thing for those who participate in the creation of it, or those who consume it.

And does "it need not be" mean "it isn't"?

19:58 / 29.01.02

I'm not sure it's such a dangerous distinction as you make out. Clearly, anyone trying to say that their preference for "literate erotica" is essentially different from the unwashed masses' interest in Page 3 is fooling themselves. However, I don't see the problem in distinguishing between different types of smut. After all, some people just don't get off on just seeing two people fucking.

I can see that it might be less divisive not to package it in such a snobby way, but does that invalidate the concept? Does the fact that a lot of people bought Captain Correlli's Mandolin purely for snob value eliminate the distinction between him and Tom Clancy?

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

20:04 / 29.01.02

People bought Captain Corelli's Mandolin for snob value?

Jesus. That really is disgusting.

Good point, W1re - a wank is a wank. Perhaps it's just a question of the premium service - you pay $6 for a copy of Nerve or Playboy and you get to walk out thinking that you are a hip young lover or a part of the middle-class that made America great and loves quality short fiction. You buy Saddle-sore Sluts for $1.50 and you don't get that. You know you're a pervert, and a cheap one at that.

Alternatively, possibly people just have different tastes. Which doesn't make "literate smut" any morally better, it just makes it a specialised taste, more expendsive because good-looking models charge more, good writers charge more and the audience is smaller. Liek a rubber fetish mag...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:18 / 29.01.02

A cliche, but nonetheless true:

"Erotica is what gets me off, pornography is what people I don't like get off on."

Matthew Fluxington

20:26 / 29.01.02

First up, on what do you base the supposition:

It has its place in society, and need not be a horrible and demeaning thing for those who participate in the creation of it, or those who consume it.

And does "it need not be" mean "it isn't"?

I'm just saying that being involved in the creation of pornography (ie, being the person filmed, photographed) isn't always a case of sexism or sexual abuse, I'm sure some people in the business can argue that they are not being exploited.

I don't mean 'it isn't'. I mean 'not always'.

Just to be more clear: I'm not at all against a wide variety of erotica, I'm just not in favor of branding a high brow snob appeal on some of it...

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

20:31 / 29.01.02

I'm the same with books.

20:42 / 29.01.02

another cliche: Q: 'what's the difference between erotica and porn? A: the lighting.

BUT i'm convinced that the brain, in human beings, is an important sexual organ. So i get off on engaging my brain with my body. If my intelligence feels insulted, this is a turn off. traditional pornography has been created to cater to/reinforce the fantasies of VERY straight white male audience . . . whether working class or those with bourgeois pretensions . . . having "literate porn" doesn't necessarily guard against that--playboy, if it qualifies as erotica, is classist and sexist, and the recent "erotic" short stories I've read by straight male writers (which isn't a huge quantity) seems deeply involved in a kind of snuff-film aesthetic that just kinda scares me...So I don't know where that leaves me...

20:49 / 29.01.02

Its the bourgois canon of smut!

20:57 / 29.01.02

It sounds to me, Flux, that your distaste is not with attaching "literate" to "smut," but that the "literate" in this Nerve thingy is *not* literate to your mind?

So possibly the porn has nothing to do with it? Maybe you're seeing they're just posers, albeit posers in sexual postures...

Alternately, well, I sort of think that sex looks a bit stupid always. So to me, someone trying to present themselves as smart whilst at the same time presenting themselves in sex is going to look at cross-purposes.

09:12 / 30.01.02

the idea of Nerve reminds me a bit of the Erotic Review. That was a few articles about sex (some quite good to be fair), some tug stories about spanking, and a lot of adverts for "erotic prints" and canes and so on. It, too, tried to pretend that it was for the more intellectual wanker.

quote:traditional pornography has been created to cater to/reinforce the fantasies of VERY straight white male audience . . . whether working class or those with bourgeois pretensions . . . having "literate porn" doesn't necessarily guard against that

so, would you say that the mythical "intelligent" porn wouldn't cater to the reader's fantasies but challenge them while simultaneously exciting them? That seems pretty tough, though I suppose it's possible. After all, it's always easier if you have an underlying fantasy to work with. You can try and sneak some literary bits in between the dirty bits but actually combining them is difficult.

Some porn is better written than others, but you always have to retain certain characteristics and themes or it ceases to become porn. It's even more restrictive than most genre fiction really.

14:28 / 30.01.02

i agree: porn is the most formulaic, and therefore the most boring--esp. if you don't buy the basic premise that sexuality is "repressed" in our culture, least imaginative, genre ... but i'm still curious about the line between "the literate bits and the dirty bits" between fantasy and intellectual activity . . . isn't fantasy basic to being human? (whoa--that's completely essentialist-speak, but I'm going to let it stand). all intellectual life has fantasy elements, no? all intellectual life involves imagination--we have to imagine links between the dots of historical events in all intellectual endeavors. I'm thinking more about literature--erotic writing--than about images, but there are some paintings that I find incredibly erotic that arent' necessarily pictures of naked bodies doing things to other naked bodies.

something's happening in the mind--some level of imagination, fantasy is involved in all spectacle, all reading... Joyce's Molly Bloom speech on another thread was cited as experimental erotic writing...

14:59 / 30.01.02

quote:the line between "the literate bits and the dirty bits" between fantasy and intellectual activity . . . isn't fantasy basic to being human? (whoa--that's completely essentialist-speak, but I'm going to let it stand). all intellectual life has fantasy elements, no?

Hmm. Yes. I think the thing about "dirty bits" is that you're using your imagination purely to visualise images and ideas that excite you, and they're a very limited subset of possible ideas. That's why I don't think literary porn is necessarily better than visual porn (or even phone sex lines) - it's just different mechanisms of stimulating the same fantasy.

Porn writing has to push a certain number of buttons. If you stray too far outside of the correct boundaries, it ceases to be porn. Stimulating the imagination in a different context is less limited.

I suppose one way porn could challenge preconceptions and still be porn was if it approached sex from a different perspective, say a man reading a woman's account, but still, if it's too different it's not going to turn the reader on any more.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:13 / 30.01.02

I dunno... from my own experience that isn't strictly true.

I do think that anything that claims not to be porn but to be erotica, or 'literate smut' instead is likely to be either kidding itself, or just a bit shit. But that isn't to say that porn can't be intelligent, literate, challenging - in fact, I'd argue that really well-produced porn (by which I guess I mean well-written, since I've only encountered this in prose form) can also be depraved, sordid and silly at the same time. Possibly not in spite of the intelligence/talent behind it but because of it...

16:32 / 30.01.02

not necessarily disagreeing with you, but any examples?

I've read one or two short porn stories that were both turn-ons and had literary merit, but those were in collections of erotica specifically designed for that. Most of the contents erred on the side of pretension.

09:06 / 31.01.02

examples?

pat califia's macho sluts is a pansexual dyke porn classic - a collection of well-written and incredibly sexy short stories designed, basically, to fuck up any ideas about your sexuality you're excessively committed to.

samuel delany's the mad man is one of my favourite books ever. basically, it's about a gay grad student studying the work of a young gay philosopher who was killed a decade earlier, and is now on the verge of canonisation. it combines the grad student's coming-of-age story with the murder mystery and some of the flat-out filthiest sex i've ever seen committed to paper - including frequent sex with homeless men, water sports, scat, dick cheese fetishism, etc. it's so well written it actually made me want to do scat, which was pretty amazing, not a feeling i have often.

by the way, both these books are explicitly porn, not 'erotica' (middle-brow shit). and since we are in the head shop, i gotta take issue with this:

quote: porn is the most formulaic, and therefore the most boring--esp. if you don't buy the basic premise that sexuality is "repressed" in our culture

how is that the basic premise? you don't have to think wrestling is "repressed" in our culture to enjoy wrestling magazines. you just have to like wrestling enough to want to read about it. and plenty of gay porn is based on the premise that sex is plentiful, that you can go out and fuck 20 guys in a bath house or whatever... am i missing something?

Disco is My Class War

09:06 / 31.01.02

I believe in literate smut, 'cause I write it. I don't mean to say that I write erotica with literary pretensions, though.

Flux, are you aware that there is a canon of so-called 'literary smut'? Amongst which I would name Story of O, Fanny Hill, The Story of the Eye, Venus in Furs, various other novels whose names I can't think of.

What wirebaby says about genre is fair enough, but I don't agree that it has to do with repressiveness, necessarily. Porn is a genre like any other; and for me, writing porn is way of fucking with the conventions of that genre, turning them inside out, making my own comeshots, climaxes, narrative forms. There is an abundance of good porn out there, both well-written and sexy. You just gotta find it.

Matthew Fluxington

09:06 / 31.01.02

I am aware that the canon exists, though I certainly can't say I'm very well read in this area.

I just want to make it clear that my problem is not so much with this sort of writing or erotica, but with a company taking a phrase like 'literate smut' (an aside: why not 'literary smut'? is mainstream smut somehow for illiterates?) and using it as a buzzword in a marketing campaign which sells soft porn, the literary smut canon and its ilk, and a supposedly openminded sexuality to yuppies.

Examining Nerve's website, tv show, and its print magazine, I'm very unconvinced. It fronts as if it has a progressive approach to sexuality, but I think it's really the same old same old - it's just about skinny predominantly white yuppies and their desires. Though I understand it is just good business to go after a demographic and please them, it still irks me to see this sort of co-opting going on...

09:06 / 31.01.02

well i like my sex writing both sleazy/sordid and intelligent, i.e. british dyke mag quim and america's lezzie smut. however 'heavy' the subject matter may get, all parties are treated with respect, as is the reader.

nerve does nothing for me on any level. is does seem rather 'irritating' but perhaps that's because it's aimed at the yuppie types, thus pressing my working-class-chip-on-my-shoulder resentment button.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

09:06 / 31.01.02

So, sorry, help me out. Is the objection to Nerve only that it claims to be "literate smut", but that to be literate (following Flux's "same old same old" complaint) it would have to engage the text of human sexuality, and in fact it only reinforces "yuppie" ideas of transgression and thus calcified notions of sexuality and sexual attraction?

Or is the objection to the viability of the term literate smut in general, as (Flux again - "is mainstream slut somehow for illiterates?" - to which in my experience the answer is a resounding "yes!", although that needn't be a bad thing - I feel a thread coming on about the use of language in porn and how it resembles and diverges from "English") it creates an artificial category or fails to understand the qualities implcit within the idea of "smut".

In pure terms, btw, Flux, I would suggest it goes for "literate" rather than "literary" for the very simple marketing reason that "literary" makes an appeal to the "canon" mentioned above, or by extension the canon of "classic" writing, whereas "literate" suggests that it is created by and for the "well-read" - an aspirational claim rather than the appropriation of a specific genre.

But then, I don't read it, so what do I know? Will do some research when I get a chance.

(DPC - on Califia, what did you think of "Doing it for Daddy"? Literate, literary, both or neither?)

Matthew Fluxington

01:40 / 01.02.02

So, sorry, help me out. Is the objection to Nerve only that it claims to be "literate smut", but that to be literate (following Flux's "same old same old" complaint) it would have to engage the text of human sexuality, and in fact it only reinforces "yuppie" ideas of transgression and thus calcified notions of sexuality and sexual attraction?

Well, I think that is essentially what I was trying to say, but you've articulated my own feelings much better than I have. Which does not shock me at all.

I feel a thread coming on about the use of language in porn and how it resembles and diverges from "English") it creates an artificial category or fails to understand the qualities implcit within the idea of "smut".

Sounds good to me. I probably would have nothing to add, but I would be interested in reading what you or anyone else would have to say expanding on that thesis...

I didn't really start this thread to get on a soapbox so much as to throw the ball in the 'theory-bitch' court and watch you all play a little game of basketball with it...

02:22 / 01.02.02

All I remember about Doing It For Daddy is not finding it very sexy - that's not a value judgement, by the way, just personal kink preference.

Incidentally, there is an essay from the 60s by Susan Sontag called 'the pornographic imagination', which is amusing mostly for it's quaintness and the absurdly excessive praise it heaps on The Story of O - but also v. insightful, and it is interesting to see what a really smart writer could make of the topic before it was so heavily overdetermined by antiporn critics. I wish I had a copy handy but thought I would mention it anyway - I think it is probably the first argument in favour of porn as a literary genre, at least in English, but I could be wrong.

Disco is My Class War

03:45 / 01.02.02

I qute liked Doing It for Daddy. Actually, hmmm. It is 'literate' in the sense that while some of the stories are smut and nothing else, there are a few that kick out towards radical reflections on how culture works, and families, and so on... The Wendell Ricketts story, eg, and the Wickie Stamps one.