Obscenity or Art
Obscenity and pornography look like birds of a feather, though they are not fully congruent. Like a cuckoo, they roost in the boughs of art and the undergrowth of the plantation that is culture. More or less camouflaged, notions of obscenity permeate to a greater or lesser degree the sites of cultural production and consumption of contemporary society, especially where these intersect with society’s ethical imperatives and legal frameworks.
What actually is obscenity? Obscenity is a valorising cultural category of relatively recent origins that is applied to representations to denote, generally speaking, their indecent and vulgar, dirty and lewd, gross and vile and thus morally corrupting and potentially illicit character. The obscene then functions as the other of the aesthetic, where it intersects
with moral standards and the law.
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