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[–] Nihilist_front 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

It can be said that the problem with pornography is not that it is "obscene", but that it is not "obscene" enough. After all, at the heart of all criticisms of pornography — be it conservative or feminist (MacKinnon, Dworkin et al) — is that it is normative or didactic. Some of the work of British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman has been called pornographic, but you would have to be a complete cretin to believe grotesque resin sculptures of children with penises where their noses should be is in any way normative. Same goes for Dworkin's novels Ice and Fire and Mercy which could be read as pornography.

Of course, the counter to this would be that norms change over time and that pornography produces discourses of the body, which itself cannot speak, that effects these changes. Especially relevant in the information-internet age. The spectacle is never obscene, says Baudrillard, because it is always at a distance but the spectacle has been superseded by immediacy. Pornography is always en scène. Later Baudrillard, beginning from his 1987 essay, The Ecstasy of Communication, deals with this.