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What’s the Difference Between Erotic Lit and Pornography?

As it turns out, and depending on who you speak to, there is a BIG DIFFERENCE! First off, erotic literature and pornography both present the human organism in a sexually compelling light. In our culture, the US and Western Europe, Australia; pornography is more visually direct than erotic literature which aspires to be something more - something that provokes more thought than mere physical arousal. Pornography has a more “commercial” value, in that it exists as a commodity to be sold; a money making venture. It is looked on as a vice, a bad addiction that, if exposed, can ruin lives of both the consumers of it, and their families. There is no story behind it. It simply presents as is - a picture of a penis or vagina, etc, or people engaged in sexual activity, without much depth to it, or story line. Erotica, while visually stimulating as well, goes more in depth - with both story line and also in backgrounds of characters.

Some describe pornography and erotica with class connotations, like pornography is for “mass consumption” with no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire. Erotica, has greater social aspirations - “the writer or erotica artist creates something they hope will be praiseworthy, something to take pleasure in, exalt, or glorify” - this, according to retired American psychologist Leon Seltzer in 2011. Pornography almost exclusively appeals to base senses and carnal appetites, or more in the extreme - lusts. Its aim, is solely to “turn on” the consumer of it. 

Erotic literature aims to be aesthetically pleasing, in some way an ideal of what human beauty is. The final determinant of that belongs with the writer or the artist and how they present their material. Feminists have long had issue with pornography because it “objectifies” women, thereby reducing them to sex objects which satisfy lust - period. Over time, pornography has no redeeming social value, unlike erotica which celebrates human beauty and the sexual union between two human beings (or three or four!). Others say that “beauty (or pornography) is in the eye of the beholder.” What is dull and banal to one may be stimulating and interesting to the other. 

I spoke earlier about “class distinctions” between pornography and erotica. American film producer Lucy Fisher is considered to be a pioneer for women and working mothers in the entertainment industry. This is what she had to say: “Erotica is brunettes in silk, pornography is blondes in nylon. Erotica is for nice middle-class literate people like us, pornography is for the lonely, unattractive, and uneducated.” Pornography is like pin-ups in bathroom stalls or high school lockers; magazines found under a male teenager’s bed, or deep down in dad’s underwear drawer.

Interesting question: In the sixties Playboy and Penthouse magazines were considered “erotic,” and “Hustler Magazine” was considered pornography. Why was that? Because the  aim of pornographic literature and art is in pure “shock value,” designed to produce a “WOWWWW” for $12.00, where the former presents the same sex act as a far more complex activity, engaging more senses and thought than just the picture of the big penis. If presented in a very entertaining way, it will be read again and again. The picture of the big penis or whatever, is replaced hundreds of times with bigger penises in all kinds of sexual activity. 

Porn is “take a peep through the hole for $5.00,” and erotica is “read this short book in the subway to work on your smart phone,” and get something perhaps more redeeming from it: an insight into human nature that you may not have thought about, a satirical presentation of a life situation that you enjoyed and may bookmark to come back to again. 

As long as people engage in sexual activity, this question of differences between erotica and pornography  will be discussed again and again, and that is how it should be. What’s YOUR opinion? I’d love to hear from you! Please comment and let me know what you think. Thank you. 

JD