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Transformation porn, without the semantics
14 years ago
First of all, if you're not well acquainted with the transformation art and writing community, you might not be familiar with how much people fret about the existence of fetish porn in their transformation drawings. It's a, uh, interesting social dynamic. At any rate, the bickering is boring, I find it rather unpleasant. In fact, the whole argument is rather silly. As adults, we should talk about mature subject matter in a mature manner! The TF community, such as it is, is very well insulated and very well connected—we're small enough to talk about gaining a new perspective on what the presence of porn means to our collective fandom, we don't need to keep playing the same game.
Before we throw definitions out the window, let's go over them. For the most part, when people say that a transformation picture is pornographic, it's because it has visible genitals. This is pretty arbitrary, since a lot of the triggery stuff that arouses transformation fetishists isn't sexually explicit in the slightest to begin with.
So a few people cast a broader net; they say that transformation porn is an image or story stripped of narrative, heavy on the evocative description, light on context and characterization. In the same way that a show with a title like America's Deadliest Car Crashes might be referred to as "disaster porn", a transformation sequence showing an anonymous (or barely nonymous) clothed woman turning into a dog in white void world would constitute transformation porn.
To go even further and say that all TF art is porn in a sense is, natch, a controversial opinion that's sure to garner argument almost anywhere you express it. To my mind, getting upset when people are turned on by your excerpted TF clips on YouTube makes about as much sense as being chastely enthusiastic about a wet T-shirt contest. Nevertheless there's such a sharp line drawn between porn and non-porn that artists will frequently upload two versions of the same picture, one with visible genitals, the other without. It's as though these two nearly identical images were meant for different purposes! Gerrymandering the meaning of words so that they can dictate which art is meant to be viewed by some imaginary public and which art is meant to be censored is a popular fandom activity, but nobody outside the ingroup gives a shit about anyone's stupid dictionary definitions.
So you can forget the aforementioned, it don't matter.
The main thing I want to point out to the ingroup is that applying the word "porn", no matter how a particular person defines it, isn't a neutral activity. The word "porn" disempowers the thing it's applied to, and it's used to empower anything that isn't porn. There's an implied power dynamic between (let's use the words) "clean" artwork and "pornographic" artwork, where clean art is said to be clearly superior or preferable to the porn. Universally, clean art is capable of speaking to something like "higher values", and the minute you draw a drippy snatch then all of that high art is out the window. It's a brain vs. libido battle royale. Don't question any of that, by the way. Everyone knows you can only use one or the other and never both at once! Anyway, despite this crucial but totally imaginary dichotomy, nobody seems to be able to clearly draw the line between "clean" and "pornographic" without the argument devolving into quibbling over semantics—I think I've already mentioned—I'm not interested in doing that. The reason that people have different definitions for the word porn is because they want to say, "This porn is worthless and not good, don't pay attention to it. This Art, the Art I'm making, it's so good. Stop paying attention to them and pay attention to meeeeee!"
What we need to deal with as a community is not a divide between the clean art and the porn. What we need to deal with is the fact that no matter how pretentious we get with the tacked on backstory, all of TF art is created from an indulgent perspective. The transformation is almost never a metaphor—if it were, Franz Kafka would be an idol. If it's symbolic in any way, the meaning is secondary to the fact that literally growing something or someone else's body out of our own flesh would feel fucking neat and cool as all hell. We need to grow a pair (of perky horse ears) and just accept the fact that whether or not a thing is porn has no bearing on whether or not it's good.
Before we throw definitions out the window, let's go over them. For the most part, when people say that a transformation picture is pornographic, it's because it has visible genitals. This is pretty arbitrary, since a lot of the triggery stuff that arouses transformation fetishists isn't sexually explicit in the slightest to begin with.
So a few people cast a broader net; they say that transformation porn is an image or story stripped of narrative, heavy on the evocative description, light on context and characterization. In the same way that a show with a title like America's Deadliest Car Crashes might be referred to as "disaster porn", a transformation sequence showing an anonymous (or barely nonymous) clothed woman turning into a dog in white void world would constitute transformation porn.
To go even further and say that all TF art is porn in a sense is, natch, a controversial opinion that's sure to garner argument almost anywhere you express it. To my mind, getting upset when people are turned on by your excerpted TF clips on YouTube makes about as much sense as being chastely enthusiastic about a wet T-shirt contest. Nevertheless there's such a sharp line drawn between porn and non-porn that artists will frequently upload two versions of the same picture, one with visible genitals, the other without. It's as though these two nearly identical images were meant for different purposes! Gerrymandering the meaning of words so that they can dictate which art is meant to be viewed by some imaginary public and which art is meant to be censored is a popular fandom activity, but nobody outside the ingroup gives a shit about anyone's stupid dictionary definitions.
So you can forget the aforementioned, it don't matter.
The main thing I want to point out to the ingroup is that applying the word "porn", no matter how a particular person defines it, isn't a neutral activity. The word "porn" disempowers the thing it's applied to, and it's used to empower anything that isn't porn. There's an implied power dynamic between (let's use the words) "clean" artwork and "pornographic" artwork, where clean art is said to be clearly superior or preferable to the porn. Universally, clean art is capable of speaking to something like "higher values", and the minute you draw a drippy snatch then all of that high art is out the window. It's a brain vs. libido battle royale. Don't question any of that, by the way. Everyone knows you can only use one or the other and never both at once! Anyway, despite this crucial but totally imaginary dichotomy, nobody seems to be able to clearly draw the line between "clean" and "pornographic" without the argument devolving into quibbling over semantics—I think I've already mentioned—I'm not interested in doing that. The reason that people have different definitions for the word porn is because they want to say, "This porn is worthless and not good, don't pay attention to it. This Art, the Art I'm making, it's so good. Stop paying attention to them and pay attention to meeeeee!"
What we need to deal with as a community is not a divide between the clean art and the porn. What we need to deal with is the fact that no matter how pretentious we get with the tacked on backstory, all of TF art is created from an indulgent perspective. The transformation is almost never a metaphor—if it were, Franz Kafka would be an idol. If it's symbolic in any way, the meaning is secondary to the fact that literally growing something or someone else's body out of our own flesh would feel fucking neat and cool as all hell. We need to grow a pair (of perky horse ears) and just accept the fact that whether or not a thing is porn has no bearing on whether or not it's good.
Exxxxxactly. The same can be said for "clean" art involving any fetish. It's just silly to pretend there's a distinct line between porn and not porn.
Yes, it's porn. Who cares?
"Porn" is anything that contains genitals.
"Smut" is anything that causes a boner.
The general cause of tension becomes when people ask "How can I disguise my smut as not-smut?" which is entirely the wrong question. This leads to people desperately not wanting their smut to also be porn, because once you've got tatas and wingwangs waving around then, well, the jig is up! You can't well claim that there's nothing arousing about your fetish when you're being confronted with dongs flapping in the breeze. Personally, I don't really like genitalia for genitalia's sake. (Don't just show it to me, do something with it; if you're going to have a penis in your drawing it damn well better be getting sucked.) However, You've Got To Hide Your Smut Away makes the issue of yescocks/nococks not of "do I like cocks or not", but of snivelling concerns about one's "image". No, no, no!
You also wind up with the people frantically passing their smut off as "cute" or "funny". Now, I can appreciate needing to have codewords for "hot" so that you're not the first guy in the stream talking about how sexual the image is and how you're stroking your shaft while watching it being drawn. Unfortunately this is also a hard (ha) charade to keep up - for one, if you only draw X not because it is smutty but because it is "funny", then how come you don't draw any funny images that don't involve X? Additionally, trying to shoehorn your smut into some sort of disguise generally only serves to cheapen the hotness of it. I mean, what you really want to draw may be two ladies crawling all over each other but that's too obvious so you need to hide it by instead only having one person and having them stand awkwardly in the corner and then you post it and then still resent yourself for your secret shame smut and your smut isn't even really what you want anyway and you hate yourself forever and just fucking draw it already!
No, what we should be concerned with is "How can I make my smut into incognito stealth-smut?" but instead "How can I make my smut interesting to people who don't find it hot?" The real reason you shouldn't draw a nameless lady turning into a dog in a white void isn't because it's shamelessly gratuitous, but because it's fucking boring. Draw a pretty sunset or something instead of leaving a #FFFFFF wasteland. Add a joke or two - as long it complements the hotness, instead of detracting from it. Write your stories with an actual beginning and end, instead of simply stopping the story at the point where you finish masturbating. People will still be petty and squabble, and point at your work and gasp because it has exposed ankles, but if you strive to make it something at all more than just a source of boners/ladyboners, what do you care what they say? Tell them, "I have made Art today, and I got a good wank in. What have you been doing with yourself?"
And smut is anything that causes a boner? Heavens! People get boners to knit sweaters. Those smutty knitters! "I swear, I just want to be warm! It's not a fetish!"
I hope that helps to illustrate the point about semantic arguments being pointless.
And yeah, just like, make the thing you enjoy good and people who aren't even into your thing will enjoy it. I don't talk about it much because I take it as a compliment and don't wanna toot my own horn but tons of people have told me that they appreciate what I draw even though it's porn, and I'm like, you know you're allowed to like porn you're not turned on by, right? :)
And yeah, those sweaters are totally smut! If you get off to sweaters, then your C:/Sweaters folder is fulla smut. This, of course, does not reflect poorly on poor old Grandma who knit the damn thing in the first place, and of course, it's not smut to her.
Of course, I only stress the point not because I think my definitions of the words are the best, or even any good, but to highlight that there is a distinction between "openly sexual material" (for example, an erect, ejaculating phallus generally indicates something sexual going on) and "secretly sexual material" (women turning into dogs, fat people, sweaters, and potentially anything that has ever existed ever). If you try to cover that up, you have "clean" art vs "pornographic" art, the smuttiness isn't explicitly stated, and you wind up playing "who can hide their smut the best" - leaving "clean art" the clear higher ground if you let them frame it that way. But if you want to call it all smut up front, then you have a very silly contest between "clean" smut and "porn" smut - where the artisticness isn't explicitly stated, and the game changes to "who can make the best art". Thus, my point from above.
In the long run it doesn't really matter what words you personally or anybody else uses, though. If you like it, draw it. If you're worried about image, don't post it.
Blah blah blah I wrote too much and said too little derp :B
Perhaps it's the need to legitimise their own decisions outwardly, as if other transformation fans enjoying 'adult' art is somehow detrimental to their own enjoyment of transformation.
Oftentimes when drawing it even I don't call it porn. Just "fetish stuff." I guess it is not porn to everyone, and semantics are often kind of...well...stupid.
WHICH I GUESS IS TO SAY, I agree.
As far as I can tell, none of this is actually hurting anyone, nor is it dismissive or diminishing of any person or group of people. You may all still have to deal with prudish people trying to tell you that liking something like this is wrong and you should feel guilty and/or ashamed, but I think all of you would do well to never internalize something like that. Just smile and nod at them, and then go back to what you were doing (and find ways around people like that if they are blocking you somehow)! :)
Mind you, I only ever had an extremely tepid and mild interest in TF. My fantasy fetishes are mind and body control (in real-life practice, I'm a hypno-fetishist, ah-heh!). I've gone so far as to talk to a therapist about my fantasies and how I'd feel ashamed about them, like there was something wrong with me (I'm not trying to imply you're all like that, it's just well... what I said above!), and I finally just came to accept that it was something I liked, and liked to explore, and that I shouldn't feel ashamed or embarrassed about it. It's not a sin for me to like what I like, and it's not a sin for you to like what you like, either.
Art perceived as being pornographic is perceived as taking an easy route to aesthetic. If the viewer suspects the artist targeted some fetish to garner quick and easy popularity, they will call it smut.
This becomes difficult then in several cases: if the artist was unaware of the fetish, if the artist wants to rise above and please both mind and libido, if an artist wishes to express the aesthetic of a fetish to those lacking that particular fetish, any situation under which the libido portion of the work is "not the point."
To address another topic on the other end of the spectrum, there are some who feel elitist in their fetish. Those who feel that if the fetish piece also includes traditional sex, it doesn't count. If you are a true fetishist you should be able to get your rocks off to a completely asexual scenario, and to say otherwise is to be a poser.
(If you are more in to lactation that jissom, you might prefer the sister sculpture <a href=http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/.....ropon</a>;. In all fairness, that price was realized 6 years prior in the logarithmic curve of Murakami's success.)
And perhaps his final blow that knocked down the wall between low-brow, manufactured, digitally assisted art work and the institutions of "fine art": <a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gal.....urakami's exhibition at Versailles</a>! That one still makes me giggle.
(If you are more in to lactation that jissom, you might prefer the sister sculpture http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/.....jectID=3914610 Hiropon. In all fairness, that price was realized 6 years prior in the logarithmic curve of Murakami's success.)
And perhaps his final blow that knocked down the wall between low-brow, manufactured, digitally assisted art work and the institutions of "fine art": http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gal.....93&index=0 Murakami's exhibition at Versailles! That one still makes me giggle.
34: If there is art of something, there is porn of it.
Mine, 43: No matter what the thing is you made, someone considers it to be porn.
I suppose I've found it to be a convenient mental shorthand for this debate. Porn is a rather arbitrary term on its own, to say nothing of 'What it is or isn't'. The debate becomes white noise, save to say that no matter what is out there, someone thinks that 'that thing' is.
In all seriousness, though, I greatly agree with many of the points you're making, but then again I am very open-minded about these things, since I have a philosophy behind it. Yes, there is indeed a madness to my method.
I personally believe that any part of the body is nothing more than a part of the body, no matter what it might be doing or what it might be associated with. Likewise, I maintain the strong belief that art is art. Not porn, not smut, not any other word you might use. You might go up to a guy, wave a painting of a horse with its dong hanging out and say "hey, is this art?" There are three responses to this. "yes." /argument. "Well... It's art but it's smutty art." Excuse me? Did I hear the word "art"? Yes, yes I did. In a more extreme case, one might say "No, this is not art. This is porn. This is bad, and you should feel bad. GTFO, FAG." Well, let's go to the art checklist. Is it a personal depiction? Yup. Was it inspired? Yes. Was it developed by some sort of medium? Also yes. Survey says: Art. Now with this, you might be thinking "What about the smut part in the second and third arguments? You never accounted for that." True enough, I did indeed pass over those points, but I did so intentionally, because that part really doesn't matter. That is not what I'm arguing. I'm not trying to say that art doesn't turn people on; nay, I'd say it does depending on the piece, especially when TF is involved-- I might even go so far as saying when the fandom itself is involved. Have you ever been to SoFurry? Yes? Then you know what I mean.
My only idea as to why people are so skittish around "fetish art" (hey look, there's that three-letter word again) is because people are tempted to feel like they are above this, perhaps even ashamed that this is what they're looking at. Logic circle: Maturity = Immaturity? I'm seeing an issue here :/
We really shouldn't feel the need to draw a line between clean, porn/smut, erotic art. It's all art. It was all created by human hands and can be enjoyed by anyone whether it gives someone sexual pleasure or not, because that is too individual. Each individual responds to stimuli differently.
Oh right. Better. My mistake.
We all have different interests so perhaps the most practical way to differentiate is to consider context. It suggests a motive, assuming the work as is, is complete. Like you point out, a character without a background suggests that the subject and whatever is up with it is enough to serve the artist's purpose. Sex in the middle of a movie--storytelling/artistic statement. The clip of the sex scene from the movie--porn. Turning a romance novel into a film--still kind of porn even though it's more than just sex scenes.
Another interesting thing to consider is what if someone like Van Gogh painted some fetish paintings or Hemingway wrote a fetish story. Is that porn? Something from a great artist usually has context or deeper meaning. (But which comes first: great-artistdom or deep meaning in everything?) Art museums are full of nudity. Maybe we've built buildings for what was ancient porn?
All works have the potential to move us. Maybe the ones that move us sexually instead of in some higher way are perceived with disdain. There are two different contexts to consider: the artist's and the viewer's. In the end, it is probably a matter of the viewer's interpretation since most works have context and backgrounds. In that way, just a character or depicting an obvious fetish, then we know the 'visual' interpretation without any deeper meaning is what is intended, and definitely porn.
Here's some fun. Is this porn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn.....ouring_His_Son I believe that's a category 'round these parts. Did he just want to paint a painting and happened across this idea first? Did it turn him on? The context is he painted it for his dining room and it becomes more reasonable. I think it's more something that happened to become a fetish.
This is getting long and I'm not sure how to say it succinctly. Perhaps: a work by an artist for the sake of sex is porn and interpreting a work sexually can make it porn, at least for that person, whether or not the artist intended. There are a few common fetishes around which porn has formed so it's also easy to spot clues and categorize. For whatever reason it's developed in our culture that sex for the sake of sex is bad.
You're doing the thing I didn't want to do, you're defining this arbitrary bar between "art" and "porn" as being art that contains sexual material and doesn't belong in a museum. Like, why? Why does it matter if it's in a museum? Saying "oh, it's all in how you interpret it, it's all about the context" is really easy. Everyone knows that art is about the context. :)
I think what gets me is that I'm not really into sex in stories and art but rather the tf aspect. I expect most people would expect sex in a story. But, I suppose real artists do their own thing regardless of other people.
It's unfortunate that the country is so uptight about these sorts of things. Curse the pilgrims and their puritanical ways!
My favourite contemporary example would be Robert Crumb, whose self-admitted fetish drawings are now proudly displayed in a number of major contemporary collections.
I think it is amazing to look at 20th century examples of folk/outsider/underground art that has now entered the "respected" mainstream erudite institutions, and I have no reason to believe that even transformation fetish artwork will be isolated from that institutional co-opting. I would even make a long bet that in 40-50 years now art majors will study the advent of the internet and socially-distributed folk art, and furry art will most certainly be mentioned. (this will of course be undeniable after a handful of talented now-20-something furry artists break in to the big time gallery system and command 5-figures for large canvases of their contemporary smut!)
And probably the strongest contemporary example that confirms what you wrote (and which I think strengthens my predictions,) is the change of attitudes towards homosexual art. Much of it, especially that created in the 40s/50s/60s with the advent of communities strengthening (and organizing as homophile organizations,) was created specifically to arouse. It bore even more scorn and isolation then as furry art does today, and it existed in even further insular circles for the sake of protection.
And now art historians are playing catch-up. :)
In fact, even when talking about straight-up porn, few people will admit their interests deviate from what is considered to be standard, "normal porn"...
Thinking about what has been said though, there's a lot of "pornographic" material that is considered masterful art, so why would it matter? I have my opinions, but as long as you're putting your all into your art, who cares? As far as the comments about "clean" artists versus "porn' artists, I completely understand this. It is difficult to get noticed here if you don't draw mature art. The only fetish I do is tf and when I finally posted some my pageviews skyrocketed. (Not that I'm popular or anything, but I just couldn't fathom that that many people actually enjoyed this sort of thing too) Hell, I know that I've got a lot to learn but damn did things go faster when I just went for it. I suppose I am lucky that what I want to draw doesn't stray into "pornography" but I don't think you can fault somebody for that. As long as you give people the option to look or not to look I don't think they should get upset.
(And now, I have no idea where I was going with this, I just thought I'd try to get my thoughts out, but it's a bit jumbled.)
Great work. Maybe the disgust over directly sexualizing transformation art stems from fear? EG: Fear that this is a thing involved directly with their sexuality, making their sexuality hinge upon something nigh-impossible, or subject to ridicule.. Meaning people who'd insult their own porn are too fearful of their own brittle ego.
When we label something porn, we are dumping the taboo of sex on to it and attempting to diminish its status likewise.
An artist can attempt to imbue a piece with the purest meaning, just some aesthetic varnish for a larger message in the work, but at the end of the day, someone will still be thinking about that lady riding the open clam or the come-hither look on the marble statue's face.
The assumption that people who do transformation art are all indulging a proclaimed or un-proclaimed kink isn't nearly as damaging as the idea that this should be a stigma. Are Sorayama or Manning any less an artist because of the fetishistic edge to their work?
You mentioned the idea that some people consider genitals to be the boundary between art and porn. I think it's an especially silly view to take because of how readily people sexualize things that were produced with no sexual side to them. Transformation as a kink owes its survival to the little Saturday morning cartoon moments that messed with our collective heads.
I must say, I've never been aware of the silent clash between the porn transformation people and the clean ones until now. It seems excessively silly, but I guess I side with the bigger freak flag flying.
Closet furries need to come out and admit the fetish... One of us, one of us...
Anyways, yeah, I do agree with this entirely. Even if you aren't drawing for the porn-loving portion of the community, you can bet your (transforming) ass that somebody will get off to it. The same can be said about almost all other fetish art. The term "fetish" generally implies a sexual desire, so, naturally, somebody is getting turned on enough to draw/look at the work. That's just how I see it, at least...