III. In Between Neurosis and Perversion If one thing comes clear from the considered above reviews, it is the fact that explicit topics (like prostitution) and explicit scenes (showing nudity, sex, or genitalia) are still not always welcome in cinema that aspires to be serious. Somehow, these elements make film less serious and worthy of attention in the eyes of many critics – they make films “pretentious.” However, as we have seen in the case of Breillat, if one is a known director, there is a lesser possibility that one's film will be interpreted as pornographic, whereas if one is a young and relatively unknown filmmaker. It should be mentioned here that the separation between art and pornography is not a new phenomenon. Walter Kendrick brilliantly traces the origins of modern pornography in his book The Secret Museum(Kendrick 1988). He shows how ad hoc are many definitions of pornography, as well as authorities' decisions to classify some artworks as pornographic. Kendrick's book nicely shows how certain artifacts can be continuously moved from the category of pornography to art, and vice versa. Similarly, philosopher Hans Maes in his …show more content…
Williams quite bluntly states in there that the “separation between eroticism and pornography is typical of the anti-pornography position”(Williams 1989, 265) – and that it is rather an artificial border and a useless one, because instead of devaluing pornography, it makes more sense to study it – as it “can teach us many things about power and pleasure that once seemed mystified and obscure”(Williams 1989, 266). Robert L. Caserio in his essay “Art and Pornography: At the Limits of Action” reaches a similar conclusion. Studying the works of the of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and John O’Reilly, he writes that pornography and art are often merged(Caserio et al.