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Murray Davis Smut, Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology

Murray Davis' Smut, Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology

Murray Davis' Smut, Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology

    In the book Smut, Erotic Reality/ Obscene Ideology , by Murray Davis
(1983), the author expresses the idea that the best source for studying human
sexuality objectively is "soft core", rather than “hard core” pornography.
(Davis p. xix). The purpose of this paper is to critique Davis's claim and to
study what understanding of human sexuality someone might have if they used some
other resource that is available today, in this case the Internet.
Davis argues that , "hard core pornography is usually more abstract and
less explicit than soft-core pornography". (Davis, p. xix, 1983). Davis doesn't
go on to explain how hard-core pornography can be less explicit than soft-core.
However he does explain that hard-core pornography is more abstract in that, it
depicts the sex act only and not the emotional or personal characteristics of
the people involved in the act. (Davis, p. xx) He believes soft-core
pornography is describing "a sexual experience", which conveys characteristics
of the participants that are not described by hard-core pornography. Hard-core
pornography describes "sexual behaviour" which involves more of the act of sex
rather than the characteristics and feelings involved with sex. (Davis, p.
xix) Although Davis admits that the vocabulary of sex is changing (Davis, p.
xxv), he also states that hard-core pornography uses considerably more vulgar
terms that are associated with lower-class activity, such as, "prick, fuck, and
suck" (Davis, p. xxiii). Davis believes that hard-core pornography, induces
imaginative behaviours by using these lower-class, four-letter words. The
stories use phrases such as "First we sucked, then we fucked."(Davis p. xix,
1983), to allow the reader the tools to imagine the scene actually taking place.
The reader is lead by the author through the story by using words that may be
more understood or common in the readers' everyday life. He also accuses hard-
core films of being "behavioristic" and "abstract" because they often fail to
"fully inform the audience about the characters personality types and social
categories."(Davis, p. xx, 1983) Soft-core pornography, on the other hand,
often depicts "the subtle phenomenological effects that result when a
character's sexual behaviour clashes with his or her personal and social
characteristics." (Davis, p. xx, 1983). In short, he study's literature or
films

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