Gallery
A distinction between “hardcore pornography” and “borderline pornography” (or “borderline obscenity”) was made in the 1950s and 1960s by American jurists discussing laws. “Borderline pornography” appealed to sexual prurience, but had other positive qualities, such as literary or artistic merit, and so was arguably permitted by obscenity laws; “hardcore pornography” lacked such merits and was definitely prohibited. In (1957), the government brief distinguished three classes of sexual material: “novels of apparently serious literary intent”; “borderline entertainment … magazines, cartoons, publications, etc.”; and “hard core pornography, which no one would suggest had literary merit”. in 1959 distinguished “erotic realism” from “pornography”; in the latter “the main purpose is to stimulate erotic response in the reader. And that is all.” Most famously, in (1964), wrote:
From the 1970s, the salient distinction was between hardcore pornography and , which may use simulated sex and limits the range and intensity of depictions of sexual activities. For example, ‘s 1973 classification subdivided the for erotic films: “The XXX-rating means hard-core, the XX-rating is for simulation, and an X-rating is for comparatively cool films.”
In this now-classic study, Linda Williams moves beyond the impasse of the anti-porn/anti-censorship debate to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does―as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic form, and as part of contemporary discourse on sexuality. For the 1999 edition, Williams has written a new preface and a new epilogue, “On/scenities,” illustrated with 25 photographs. She has also added a supplementary bibliography.
“”Hard Core is a brilliant demolition of the position that pornography represents one thing only. Arguing against the feminist case for censorship, Williams urges that we take pornography seriously, which does not mean that we like it, or that we believe it is art.”–Alan Wolfe, “The New Republic
