C.S. Lewis once wrote in one of his books the difference between milk and urine. He talked how, if looked at from a complete cynical view, milk and urine are both simply excrements from a cow. Of course to any rational person the idea that milk and urine are the same is absurd. Yes, they are both liquids. Yes, they both come from a cow, “but milk is meant for nutrition, urine is waste (Lewis).”
It is obvious that milk and urine are not the same, even though they hold things distinctly the similar. So why is it that we humans have problems understanding this concept in other arenas of thought? Why is it that we equate porn to art? Even when art is meant to flatter and glorify the human form and pornography is by definition the explicated showing of human’s baser self even to a degrading manner. Art raises us above the clouds of the possible where pornography equates us to dogs and pigs in heat.
It is interesting that it is illegal to pay a woman for sex, that is prostitution, yet it is legal to record a man paying a woman for sex and then selling the tape. Interesting. Where is the line I wonder? Is there a line? Is porn that bad? Is art that good? What is art and what is porn?
The dictionary defines art as “the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works.” Pornography is defined as “materials that are sexually explicit and intended to cause sexual arousal.” That I think is the key, the why of a thing. Why does a cow make milk? Why does it produce urine? In the reason is the definition.
If I create a machine to destroy and I create a machine to build, are they the same? They are both machines, in fact they will most likely have the same parts and work much the same way and yet their purpose is so different that one can clearly say that they are not the same.
So if art is made to provoke thought and beauty and pornography is created to arousal sexual pleasure are they the same? If a painting shows a naked woman and a pornographic video exposes a naked body are they the same? Is the point behind them the same? Or do we lie to ourselves to make them the same. Do we see with our eyes or do we see with our reason through our eyes? Is beauty the same as flit? Is milk the same as urine?
