High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 6: Erotica

Erotica

You've come with me this far, and I expect you'd like to know where I'm going with all this.

We've established that there was a mention of a thing that happened in a real old storybook.

We've established this thing has gathered quite the fanbase through the years.

Those fans (Ledacon or Ledis) produce a lot of fanfiction, fanart, cygnetslash, and inspired-by work. I'm focusing on the fanart.

The fanart is kinky porn. Not surprising, considering the source material.

Because this fanart has a loooong history, it has been designated High Art.

The High Art Invested get real uppity when you address the fact that these pictures, in particular, are kinky porn. Forms of silencing include ignoring, evading, and scorn.

I, personally, do not care if you want to masturbate to paintings of swan/girl sex. Go nuts, weirdos. What I resent is being told, disdainfully, that it is culturally invaluable, uncriticizable, not-porn art. The whole goddamn shell of denial crafted around Leda and the Swan by the High Art Invested is infuriating. 

Let's digress for a moment, and I'll state what has probably become obvious; I believe art is for the people, and it's worth exactly as much as your aesthetic experience looking at it. Maybe an argument could have been made for obscenely expensive art back in the days before internet and cheap printing, but the only thing giving it excessive value now is the ego of the competitively wealthy. 

I'm not talking about the $1,000 or $10,000 pieces; pieces that have their prices calculated based on labor, overhead, materials, etc. 
I mean the record-breaking pissing-contest auction battles where the gajillionaire could not care less what he was bidding on, just as long as he gets the status bauble. 
I mean the social-climbing, wannabee elite, nouveau riche who think their trust fund makes them better than most and they buy art based on "what's hot right now". Fuck you. You're not buying art, you're buying status.

It's the difference between people who buy a Porsche because the experience of driving it makes them happy, versus those who buy a Porsche because they want to say they own a Porsche.

Back to the swan thing.

Because this noxious cloud of "status" has gathered around old-ass paintings, the High Art Invested will leap to defend any old-ass painting. I once attended an exhibition in an actual palace, and not one, not two, but twelve of the gilt-framed paintings were of orgies.

Okay, cool. What a historically relevant bit of pornography, with all those wiggly satyr-cocks wildly fucking geese, goats, women, nymphs, other satyrs, etc. How very weird and neat. Please tell me more about it.

It's telling that I made a game of counting all the unwanted satyr dick
while in Italy, but can only find one online on a couple's travel blog.

The placard will say something like Depiction of a fertility ritual, possibly of Dionysus. Noooooooooo shit. You know what else depicts fertility rituals? Hustler. Can you tell me why this orgy is in a palace, surrounded by velvet rope and dudes wearing white gloves? Is it how musty it is? Cause I bet we can go into any baby boomer's garage and find boxes of Penthouse of equal or greater mildew levels.

But one of these things gets to hang in museums and galleries, guarded as Cultural Treasures© and giggled at by middle schoolers to the consternation of their teacher.

Or be tastefully displayed in neon on the street.
AES, at Estrel Hotel Biergarten, Berlin, 1996.

Yet when we pause and ask ourselves what's this all about? we are not given impartial history or a social commentary... 

(Perhaps like: wow can you believe this was acceptable in Florence in 1664? You'd think the fact that this shit hung in a pope's bedroom would mean the society that created it was libertine as hell, but actually it's a product of a draconian patriarchy where the women were literally listed, taxed and sold as chattel! I bet there are at least a dozen different graduate theses you could get out of that clustercuss of a Freudian nightmare.)

...but instead fed this litany of hot, wet bullshit; shaming and cajoling you into blindly accepting 1) that this is High Art and therefore super duper valuable 2) that it is definitely not porn 3) okay it is technically a picture of intercourse and that is technically porn 4) but it is definitely not porn and you should be ashamed for thinking it is you disgusting philistine/pearl-clutching prude 5) it is hella erotic though 6) but not porn erotic. Porn is for poor people.

You know what? The middle schoolers are right. It's giggle-worthy that we have all these Victorian rules about what can and cannot be shown,- down to the friggin areola of a female nipple,- but the blinders come on when it's an old-ass painting. Educate on why this painting is historically relevant, but don't wax poetic on the sumptuousness of Leda's bosoms and the lithe dick neck of the swan. I don't want to know what turns you on, placard writer/art historian/gallery owner. Save it for your readers on fanfiction.net.

Epilogue: Intent