Erotica or Porno?

At one of the workshops I attended at the RT convention, a man in the audience asked the panel to explain the difference between erotica and pornography. I was a bit taken aback when the entire panel agreed that there was no difference. One panel member went so far as to emphatically state that as writers we were doing ourselves a disservice if we insisted on trying to impose a separation between erotica and pornography.

Hmph. I never in my wildest imagination aspired to write pornography. To be absolutely truthful, I didn't aspire to write erotica or erotic romance, either. But it seems to me that if we as writers are going to insist on the differentiation between erotica and pornography, then we ought to be very clear where the lines are drawn. To that end, I offer you two definitions from dictionary.com:

erotica~~literature or art dealing with sexual love.

pornography~~obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit.

Now looking at the definitions, it would appear that the sole difference is a determination on whether or not our work has "artistic merit". Pornography doesn't depend on a happily ever after ending--it depends on whether the story can be judged to have artistic merit.

According to Wikipedia~~ Artistic merit is an English language term that is used in relation to cultural products when referring to the judgment of their perceived quality or value as works of art.

Artistic merit is a crucial term, as pertains to visual art. Whether or not a work is considered art is a question of artistic merit. And the quality of a work of art is largely based on the artistic merit that people attach to it.

It is also a term frequently encountered in obscenity and censorship trials. For example, it has been said that the difference between erotica and pornography is artistic merit.

Ah, that cleared things up, didn't it? No? As I understand it then, whether my work is called pornography or erotica depends on the value my readers and I place on it as a work of art! Based on that, it appears that any given work could be both erotica and pornography, depending on who is reading it and their personal moral parameters. My father, the Baptist minister would no doubt consider all of my writing pornography. My friend is not quite sure whether it is pornography or erotica. My publisher markets my work as erotic romance.

As I pointed out to a friend earlier today, everyone has a line that they will not cross. One side of that line is permissible levels of eroticism. On the other side is the "ick" factor. For each individual, that line is in a different place. As a young married woman, I cut my teeth on Victorian Erotica that would no doubt be called pornography by the vast majority of readers today. Those Victorians were quite a hot blooded lot. As far as I can tell, there wasn't much that they didn't try out. Quite frankly, I haven't encountered anything in the current era that could come close to giving the Victorian underground literature a run for its money.

Think about that. Apparently, there are no new perversions in the modern era. I suspect that there were no new ones in the Victorian era either. Nor in the time of the Ananga Ranga or the Kama Sutra.

I believe that my writing has artistic merit. It brings joy and laughter to my readers and that is merit enough. So what do I write? I write romantic erotica.

Anny Cook
www.annycook.blogspot.com
www.annycook.com