以色情文学看英国文学的发展课程作业

前言 Introduction

除了法律定义,色情文学也是精英文学和大众文学争论的核心，符合现代主义文学的合法性,特别是在英国两次战争之间文学潮流。约翰·凯里和D.L马耶提出，这场辩论的性质显然起源于文化权威和艺术价值的问题，这场辩论关注知识精英之间的战争,并对大众文学产生轻蔑的斯维斯派态度。
 

然而,这不仅仅是关于文化的争论。对性改革者而言,可以说是新的社会实践。1945年之前和之后,性自由的思潮不仅谴责了大众文化的形式,也袭击了各种商业休闲娱乐的实践活动，而这些实践活动对于现代异性恋起到基本的作用。这些些实践活动来源于公共空间和商业休闲所孕育的异性求爱文化。随着家庭被商业和公共空间所取代，网站求爱,新规则,实践和病理学等都与这些休闲空间紧密相连。
 

In addition to the legal definition, pornography was also at the centre of debates on elite and mass culture, and on the legitimacy of modernist literature, especially in interwar Britain. The nature of this debate clearly had its origins in the question of cultural authority and artistic value which preoccupied intellectual elites between the wars, and produced the disdainful Leavisite attitudes towards the masses catalogued by John Carey and D. L. LeMahieu.
 

However, this was not only ? debate about culture. (Quayle E, Taylor 2002, p331-61) For sex reformers, it was also about new social practices. Before and after 1945, sex radicals not only decried the form of mass culture, but also attacked variety of practices of commercial leisure that were playing constitutive role in the making of modern heterosexuality. These practices emerged from culture of heterosexual courtship which was increasingly based on public spaces and commercial leisure. As the family was supplanted by commercial and public space as site for courtship, new rules, practices and pathologies were associated with these spaces of leisure. (Jones MJ, Rehg 2002, p81-96)
 

Discussion

New rituals such as ‘dating', pre-marital sex in the form of petting, the use of public and semi-public spaces like dance halls and parks as an arena for courtship, and ? vibrant and expanding obscene print culture, all formed part of ? complex of practices in opposition to which new standards of sexual knowledge and health were defined. For sex reformers, the principal problem with these new forms of expression was that they encouraged forms of sexuality that were inherently unsatisfiable. Sexually titillating material of all kinds in cinema, theatre, print culture and in social practices such as dating or petting threatened to arouse the sexual instincts outside ? moral or ethical context.
 

For conservatives, the threat posed by obscenity resulted from the lack of the former, for sex reformers, the latter. The result was ? culture which was assumed to produce forms of sexual expression such as petting, homosexuality, masturbation or fantasy which were at best emotionally detached and at worst were foreign to the true nature of the sexual impulse. The ignorant sensuality of the masses, and the passivity of their new recreations was one of the cliche's of interwar cultural debate. (Quayle E, Taylor 2005)
 

However, ? characteristic feature of sex radicalism was the belief that such ignorance was not necessarily the fault of the masses themselves, but resulted principally from British habits of censorship. The argument put so ferociously by D. H. Lawrence, that censorship eroticized secrecy, and thereby distorted the sexual impulse, was widely adopted. Edward Charles, author of an investigation into the nature of the sexual impulse, was only one author to put Lawrence's case. He described ? fixation on the veil of secrecy which was ‘very like fetishism' and which ‘obsesses probably 70 per cent of the population'. As ? result, an ‘unsatisfiable lasciviousness' characterized the treatment of sex in popular culture, while most people were content to ‘spiritually masturbate before the knees of chorus girls or the walnut-stain sun-tan of the athletic-looking gigolo'. (Quayle et al 2005)
 

Analysis

Part of the antidote to mass taste was the spread of expertise. George Bernard Shaw, stating ‘The need for expert opinion in sexual reform' to the World League for Sexual Reform Congress in 1929, observed that the masses were inherently conservative and incapable of selfrealization. Brought up as they were in clouds of secrecy, ‘the mass of people . . . have no idea of liberty in this direction'. On the contrary, he continued, they were ‘the most ferocious opponents of it'. Democracy, in which this inert mass ruled, tended only to reinforce this tendency. (Quayle 2005)
 

Arguing along similar lines, the progressive journal Plan stated in 1935 that sex education must ‘eliminate the obscurantist view of sex' through ‘the deliberate adoption of ? scale of values based upon reason and knowledge as distinct from superstition'. This was to be done through the establishment of networks of expertise, through the provision of ‘easily accessible sources of information (e.g. public clinics, lectures, books) upon sexual questions'. In spite of this imprecision, it was generally accepted that controlling the trade in such ‘low' material was both necessary and desirable. The problem was that the current law was not specific enough. (Jones MJ, Rehg 2002, p81-96)
 

The withdrawal of the Well of Loneliness in 1928 focused the debate on the failure of the law to distinguish between ‘frank' pornography and art. But in the wake of the trial, many supporters of Radclyffe Hall and D. H. Lawrence were happy to argue that ‘actual' pornography should be properly policed. The publisher Eric Partridge was not the first to conclude, following the case, that the Obscene Publications Act permitted ‘genuine literature to be confused with worthless pornography'. Partridge, whose firm published Norah James's Great War novel Sleeveless Errand which was banned in 1931, wrote that although literary censorship was foolish, ‘Few would care to countenance the importation of books and pictures so filthily pornographic that they horrify and nauseate.' (Ost 2002, p436-60)
 

Equally those in literary circles, like the journalist Kingsley Martin, who was also ? member of the FPSI board, argued: ‘Most people agree that it is ? good thing to maintain ? hold over the vendors of books and postcards whose only object is to excite passion. (Quayle E, Taylor 2002, p331-61)
 

Selling pornography, selling science

Historians of the twentieth century have tended to think of the market in pornography as furtive, largely invisible and devoid of the ‘real' erotic content and photographic detail that has defined contemporary culture. However, networks did exist which brought pornography directly and indiscriminately into the middle-class home via the postal service. The sale of erotic postcards and literary classics seems to have functioned in two ways. Customers were either approached by speculative mail shots or were reached through the careful compilation and sharing of names by distributors.
 

By the 1930s, the other principal outlets for pornography were the bookshops in most major cities. Some pornography was also distributed by legitimate companies. The problem posed by this market for sex reformers was not just that canonical works of sexology, but also their own books, often circulated along the same networks. Not only did the nature of the Obscene Publications Act make this situation uniquely problematic, but some of the obscene genres which emerged at this time, such as pulp magazines, set themselves up as more digestible, accessible and successful rivals of more serious sex reform and education. It was, he argued, ‘perfectly legitimate for ? reader to respond to writing which may be classified under the category of erotic realism'. (Quayle E, Taylor 2002, p331-61)
 

Conclusion

Since it was ‘entirely legitimate' for any reader to be interested in such things, it was ‘equally healthy and legitimate for him to derive instruction and enlightenment from such works - whether they be fiction, poetry, or strictly scientific studies'. There was, though, an equality of value between these media because now, more than ever, ‘the man in the street may well, in fact, derive more enlightenment from an erotic novel than from ? medical treatise.' Yet for sellers, buyers and advertisers of these different genres, such equivalence had always been obvious, and had made up ? vital element of the sexual lifeworld of individual readers. ? body of sexual knowledge, which linked therapeutics and instruction with ? new ethos of lifestyle pornography, was formed therefore partly via the protracted but ultimately enthusiastic compromise of expert opinion with consumerism. (Quayle E, Taylor 2002, p331-61)
 

References

Ost S. 2002. Children at risk: legal and societal perceptions of the potential threat that the possession of child pornography poses to society. Journal of Law and Society 29: 436-460.

Phung S, Bouzerdoum A, Chai D. 2005. Skin segmentation using color pixel classification: analysis and comparison. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 27: 148-154.

Proulx J, Perreult C, Ouimet M. 1999. Pathways in the offending process of extrafamilial sexual child molesters. Journal of Research and Treatment 11: 117-129.#p#分页标题#e#

Quayle E, Taylor M. 2002. Child pornography and the internet: perpetuating ? cycle of abuse. Deviant Behaviour 23: 331-361.

Quayle E, Taylor M (eds). 2005. Viewing Child Pornography on the Internet: Understanding the Offence, Managing the Offender, Helping the Victims. Russell House: Lyme Regis.

Quayle E, Erooga M, Wright L, Taylor M, Harbinson D (eds). 2005. Only Pictures?: Therapeutic Work with Internet Sex Offenders. Russell House: Lyme Regis.

Jones MJ, Rehg JM. 2002. Statistical color models with application to skin detection. International Journal of Computer Vision 46: 81- 96.

Quayle E, Taylor M. 2002. Child pornography and the internet: perpetuating ? cycle of abuse. Deviant Behaviour 23: 331-361.

Quayle E, Taylor M (eds). 2005. Viewing Child Pornography on the Internet: Understanding the Offence, Managing the Offender, Helping the Victims. Russell House: Lyme Regis.