Cut out that erection!: some musings on "Erotic Art" and the ever-problematic penis

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” We all know this one. It’s probably also fine to say “Erotic is in the eye of the beholder” as well, except perhaps when it comes to commercializing erotic images, or defining fine art as erotic.

I recently looked through a Juxtapoz Erotica book, expecting some diversity for an art publication catering to a more educated audience, but was I sadly disappointed. There were approximately 115 women and about 15 men in this collection of contemporary "erotic" art. What is worse is that I'd guess about 90 percent of the women were, of course, young, attractive, and thin. Today’s typical standard of beauty. The men in the book were usually just watching women do something sexual, or were themselves doing something to the woman who was clearly meant to be the point of focus in the composition. I did not see a single image of a male, without a sexualized woman present. As a heterosexual female, and as a consumer who not only buys but also creates art, I don't find this representing the spectrum of "erotic." I find it catering to a typical, traditional, and very limited viewpoint entrenched in gender and sexual bias.

Using the word "erotica" in a coffee table artbook like this one suggests that only young women's bodies of a certain type are erotic, and assumes the viewer is a heterosexual male. We all know that sexuality comes in so many flavors, it would put Baskin Robins to shame, but what gets repeated over and over again in the world of art and advertising does not come close to addressing this fact. Defining a 20-something thin female body as the end-all be-all of what is “erotic” sends out all sorts of narrow messages: “This is how a woman should look to be sexually meaningful,” “Women with other body types are not sexual, and thus meaningless,” “Older women are not sexy,” “Men's bodies are not erotic,” “Men always consume sexual images. Women always give them.”

Caveat: Juxtapoz's readership most likely leans a little heavy on the male side, if reading the intended audience of their ads is any indication. I still find this a lame excuse to not expand the repertoire a bit. Another caveat: I'm aware I'm only reading into one example of "erotic art," albeit a popular and acceptable one. If you open up a porn magazine geared towards a gay male readership, these messages don't quite pertain the same way. But gay male porn is on the fringe of visual erotica, books like Juxtapoz Erotica are not. (One of my collections of "20th Century Erotic Art" I purchased at a Barnes and Noble in Lousiana. I don't imagine one can find much gay male erotica at chain book stores in the Deep South.)

I am, however, talking about art. I'm not talking about porn. Arguably, porn is created explicitly to make income. Most art seems to be, in my experience, created for more esoteric reasons, with making income as a secondary cause (sometimes). I'm looking at examples of what most call visual art, erotic art even, although, sometimes the line between erotic art and pornography are extremely hard to define (see some films from the Golden Era of Porn such as Behind the Green Door, or The Devil in Miss Jones). Doesn't change the fact that when someone says "nude painting," you will probably imagine a woman, like Goya's La maja desnuda. You will most likely not imagine a nude male sitting in the same pose, on the nice fluffy couch or bed under a flattering light, with milk white skin.

La maja desnuda

I know several art models that pose nude for artists and art classes. I have done this myself on occasion. Most of the models are women, between the ages of 24-30, white and fit. I know of only one male. His confessions about how artists or students deal with the male body are funny, strange, and alarming. He has told me of more than one occasion where a student has refused to partake in class because there is a nude male, not a nude female. This non-participant is always another male, usually the kind that is in the class for an "easy" elective credit. This male model has told me how some students refuse to draw his penis, and there is just this blank spot on the page where the penis would be, like some recreation of a Ken doll, castrated by the good folk over at Mattel.

In my first feature as a director, In the Shadow, there are two sex scenes. In the second scene, the lead actor's erection is visible in a wide shot. We shot this at night, so it's not terribly obvious. It's certainly not following the shooting conventions of porn, and the wide shot itself has some really fabulous lighting to highlight the mise-en-scene, not the erection. When we acquired distribution, the film was kicked back to us for our cable release because an erection was visible for two seconds. I had to edit out these two second to get rid of the erect penis, then send it back if I wanted the film in a cable release. I call the original film where the erection is still visible, my "Director's Cut," which well, if I tie in circumcision, cutting, and…never mind.

The notice for re-editing my film did not have any issue with the fact that there is full frontal nudity of my lead actress. I guess boobs and female pubic hair isn't deemed as offensive as an erect penis. I imagine the offended censor now: How dare a movie show an erect penis! It will frighten the masses! The audience will refuse to see the movie because of those two seconds of an erect penis! They will call their Congress people and complain about the penis! They will write letters explaining how scared they were to see two seconds of an erect penis!

Hey folks. Hate to break the news to ya, but whether you like it or not, an erect penis is one reason you are breathing and telling artists to take out male nudity from their films. You, yourself, might benefit from the function of an erect penis. If you are alive, and consider life a "gift," you certainly already have benefited.

I find it strange that on one hand, people are so fascinated by the cock: the jokes we make about it, the egos and status involved with its size and performance, the masculine identity so connected to it; and yet people freak out when it's actually right in front of them. Why are we so threatened by the penis? Why do we have to cover it up, put little fig leaves on statues from antiquity when royalty are around? Put black bars over it, or tell directors to cut it out of their movies entirely?

Ancient Rome examples

This phallus phobia isn’t inherent for all cultures. In fact, many had or have a very different relationship with the phallus. It's too much to go into detail here in a blog, but some examples are the Osiris Cult in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome also had their ample share of the phallus in visual culture (see picture above), and a lot of us are at least visually familiar with worship of Shiva's lingam in India.

In my recent historical research on Puppetry for my next feature, How to Eat Pho, I read over and over again about how many puppet shows had characters with rather oversized erections. Ancient Egyptian puppetry embodied the god Min and Osiris, and gave them removable penises. Indonesian shadow puppet theater often used characters with insanely large erections. Countless cultures have enacted fertility rituals by creating humanlike objects, many with erections. (My book is full of photographs, while the internet seems to be largely devoid of these images. I wonder if this also sheds light on phallus-phobia.)

I know as cultures change, their sexual phobias and interests ebb and flow. Someday, the phallus will be back in fashion, and perhaps even it will become a mascot for a high school football team. But until the day that happens (and I will sadly not be alive to see this, but I’ll write it into a story somewhere), I'd like to suggest that all of us artists need to give the general public a swift kick in the arse, starting with ourselves. If change of what we deem as erotic is going to happen, we all need to take a look at our own phobias, and get over the addiction to the young female nude. Can’t bring yourself to draw that male nude’s “pee pee?” That is your problem. Get over it.

Those young skinny women subjects that artists keep painting or sculpting, or what is shown in films over and over is only part of the spectrum of what is erotic. I'm tired of seeing female nudes. I want to see body types of all sorts, at all ages. I want to see more men deemed as erotic in art, worthy of the gaze of spectators, under the scrutiny of the artist and the brush, pen, camera, etc. And I want to stop having to edit erections out of my films in order to reach a wider audience. I should not have to change my vision to cater to fear or irrational disgust with the human body.

In the meantime, I will leave a link to some modern artists taking a look at the "dirty parts" of the human body. Note, however, the disembodied nature of most of these works, and think: what does it mean to look at a sexualized body part without the rest of the body visible, like the face? In contrast, what is it like like to see the whole body with these "troublesome" parts also in view? How does this change things?

A Brief Survey of Blatantly Phallic and Vaginal Art  on Flavorwire