History+of+Pornography

=**A Breif Look into the History of Pornography**=

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Ancient Pornography
In today's society, we are constantly bombarded with sexual, pornographic images dispered across all arenas of our everyday life. Some may think that pornography is a product of "our time" due to its liberal expressions of sexuality. To think about pornography during our grandparents' era does not only appear questionable, but kind of creepy. However, as I was surprised to learn- the roots of pornography stretch as far back as history itself. As long as humans have had the ability to draw and write, they have been crafting erotic art. While attempting to specifically define the conception of pornography is not possible, it is well documented that many sexually explicit artifacts, including the first dildo, were constructed during times of Ancient Greece and Rome (See Figures 1 & 2). The original translation of the word pornography meant writing about prostitutes." The definition of what pornography is has changed a lot since these ancient times and has become somewhat of an elusive term, menaing, "graphic depictions of sexual activity designed specifically for the arousal of an audience." However, the shift of the definition of what porography is was not driven by time alone; our constantly evolving technologues have altered the pornographic industry completly.

//**Figure 1**: Roman Oil Lamp// //**Figure Two**:5th Century Courtship Scene//

**Printing**
Prior to the advent of the printing press, pornographic images were handmade and expensive; making them exclusively available for the rich. The upper class individuals who did have access to these forms of pornography intentioanlly kept them away from the women and the lower class because they were concerned that it would corrupt the uneducated minds. When the printing press was invented, mass circulation of pornography began. Erotic books and illustrations were printed dispite opposition from certain religious and political groups (See Figure 3). The first recorded instance of erotic text an images printed together was the //I Modi// composed by Pietro Aretino and Marcantonio Raimondi in 1524. This book included images of 16 different sexual positions as well as accompanying graphic sonnets (such as "both your pussy and your behind, my cock will make you happy, and you happy and blissful"). However, the circulation of this book did not last long due to the censorship placed on it by the papacy. No originals have ever been recovered. //**Figure 3**:// Illustration from //Juliette// (published 1797)

**Photography**
The invention of photography helped to advance the pornography industry immensly. The reality of photographs and the ease of their reproduction almost immediatly spawned nude potography. This first form of realistic pornography was beginning to florish and was centered in Paris. Pornography was still uder strict sanctions at the time and was only supposed to be produced for artistic purposes only. However, the underground erotic photo industry was reaping huge profits by selling illicit pornography on the streets and at the train station (See Figure 4). Many porn dealers developed a system of reaching their customers by disguising the pornography as plain letters and mailing them through the postal system. These early pornographic photos were growing in popularity in an era largely focused on scientific development. As a result, the photographs reflected a very "mechanistic" view of the body. **//Figure 4//**: Early pornographic photograph of the period

**Magazines**
At the beginning of the twentieth century, photographic technology had evolved to a point where they were easily and inexpensivley reproduced. This was the point where pornography became a mass medium- it was now accessible and affordable in the form of magazines. The first porn magazines appeared in France and featured nude women, what would be coined as "softcore" nowadays but was quite radical for that period. An interesting form of pornography magazine for the time were comic books that featured sexual representations of popular cartoon caracters, also known as Tijuana Bibles. During World War II, the term 'pin-up' was used to describe the photos of women that soldiers would tear out of porn magazines and pin up on their wall. The 1950's was the decade where porn definitly jumped in its rise to becoming the massive industry it is today. The creation of //Playboy// by the infamous Hugh Hefner was an instant success- featuring Marilyn Monroe as the first centerfold (See Figure 5). The so-called men's magazine quickly became the most widely consumed form of pornography. Over the following years, various magazine publications were introduced including //Penthouse// and //Hustler//, which featured more explicit erotic content. These magazines spawned the development of countless similar publications but still remain the most recognized today.
 * //Figure 5//**: Playboy's First Issue (1953) and Playboy's most recent issue (December 2006)

**Film**
The technology of the motion picture emerged in the early 1900's, providing the pornographic industry with a new medium for producing their erotica. A variety of technological advancements in the field of motion pictures and film occured during the 20th century- and all of the innovations were used to compose pornography. The mutoscope is an example of one of these technologies. The mutoscope was a hand-cranked peep show machine that often featured women undressing or posing as artistic subjects (For an example of this technology see the video clip below). media type="youtube" key="LpWzeFtWJfw"

Soon after the motion picture projector was invented in 1895, pornographic films were being produced. The first known pornographic film was //A L'Ecu d'Orou la bonne auberge.// It was made in France and depicted a soldier having a tryst with a servant girl at an inn. While pornography remained an underground industry until the 1970's, it continued to develop along with the new film technologies that seemed to be consistently emerging. Pornography started to become mainstream when more liberal legislation was developed in the US during the 1970's. The erotic films being produced at that time were released into movie theaters and grossed large numbers at the box office. However, the largest rise in the pornographic movie industry was the invention of the home VCR. With this new innovation, porn viewers had a large selection of videos to satisfy all of their particular fantasies and fetishes- all within the comfort of their own home.

Censorship
There is a term called moral censorship which basically implies that information that is seen or deemed as immoral or unethical in a particular society has restrictions on who gets to view the material. Pornography is not in regular magazines or on television in the day time it is restricted to a certain day and time on television and only in specific magazines for adult use only. This form of censorshop restricts human expression and media has influenced this change.

**Online**

 * [|www.playboy.com]
 * [|www.karasxxx.com]
 * [|www.seeasians.com]
 * [|www.everythingfreeporn.com]
 * [|www.hoes.com]
 * [|www.wetsex.com]
 * [|www.naughty.com]
 * [|www.pornhunter.com]
 * [|www.milfhunter.com]
 * [|www.ampland.com]


 * Timeline**

The above chart/timeline is from: http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/pornography/
 * || The sexual farce //Sodom; or the Quintessence of Debauchery// is published posthumously, penned by the second Earl of Rochester John Wilmot. ||
 * || John Cleland publishes //Memoirs of Fanny Hill//. ||
 * || The [|Marquis de Sade] writes //The 120 Days of Sodom//. ||
 * || //Playboy// magazine. ||
 * || //Roth// v. //United States// -- works cannot be obscene unless they are "utterly without redeeming social importance." ||
 * || //Penthouse// magazine (London Edition). ||
 * || [|Al Goldstein] launches //Screw// magazine, with $150 funding. ||
 * || //Penthouse// magazine (U.S. Edition). ||
 * || The Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography issues a 646 page report concluding that all sexually explicit films, books and magazines aimed at adults should be legalized. One publisher, William Hamling, sold 100,000 copies of the report with 546 additional "illustrations", for which he received four years prison time. ||
 * || Ivory Snow model [|Marilyn Chambers] stars in //Behind the Green Door//. ||
 * || The film //Deep Throat//, starring [|Linda Lovelace], debuts at the New Mature World Theater on 49th Street in New York. ||
 * || //HUSTLER// magazine. ||
 * || Burt Reynolds inexplicably appears naked in //Cosmopolitan//. ||
 * || //Debbie Does [|Dallas]// ||
 * || The Playboy Channel launches. ||
 * || Videogame producer Mystique releases //Custer's Revenge//, an Atari 2600 cartridge whose object is navigating a palefaced cowboy through a hail of arrows so he can rape an Indian maiden. ||
 * || After spending one year and half a million dollars, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography releases their two-volume, 1960-page final report. In contrast to the 1970 Presidential Commission on Pornography, the report finds that porn causes violent sex crimes and other antisocial activities. Afterwards, one impartial commission member admits: "//I, for one, have no hesitation in condemning nearly every specimen of pornography that we have examined in the course of our deliberations as tasteless, offensive, lewd and indecent. According to my values, these materials are themselves immoral, and to the extent that they encourage immoral behavior they exert a corrupting influence on the family and the moral fabric of society.//" ||
 * || Sierra Games releases //Leisure Suit Larry//. It sells for $40 and comes on two 360K floppy disks. ||
 * || The [|Cincinnati] Contemporary Arts Center and curator Dennis Barrie charged with obscenity over a [|Robert Mapplethorpe] exhibit of 175 photographs. ||
 * || The MPAA deploys its new NC-17 rating to replace X. ||
 * || Over ten hours in Los Angeles, Annabel Chong has sex 251 times (with 70 men), breaking the world gangbang record. ||
 * || The cover story in //Time// magazine is an exclusive article on Carnegie-Mellon University electrical engineering undergraduate Marty Rimm's forthcoming cyberporn study, "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway." The article proposes that the Internet is a cesspool of antifeminism and pornography, even though the study itself actually examined only the text descriptions of just 2,830 porn images from six adult BBSes (not Internet sites). Nevertheless, //Time// declares a state of emergency. ||
 * || Volume 83, issue 5 of the (//non//-peer reviewed) //Georgetown Law Journal// includes Martin Rimm's cyberporn study "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of 917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded 8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries, Provinces and Territories." ||
 * || Paul Thomas Anderson's //Boogie Nights// premieres, roughly based on the life of [|John Holmes]. ||
 * || [|George W Bush] proclaims the start of //National Protection from Pornography Week//. ||

=Stripping, Media and Art=

The act of stripping might not be catagorized as pornography, however today's society interlinks these two terms constantly. Stripping is a "form of dancing combined with acting" and could therefore be considered an art. This concept has been reinforced in various countries recently, most notably Norway. A Highly publicized trial between the owners of a strip club known as "Diamond Go Go Bar" and the tax authorities lead to the act of stipping being officially labelled an art. The case erupted after the owners of the strip club refused to pay Value Added Tax (VAT) on entree fees.