I sliced your comment up in order to reply to it in a way that suits my purposes more. I don't think I actually mangled your points, but I thought a disclaimer was in order.
So I would counter while our literature does have a history of sexual reference, the more explicit and graphic literary forays have tended to be sources of long standing public disdain regardless of their other literary merits.
I think you're taking a very narrow view of "long standing public disdain." Or, perhaps, a very loose view. Many of the works I listed are now viewed as great classics, taught in high schools and colleges throughout American and Europe. These are great works we're talking about. You can say you don't like them, but it's... well, it's just plain wrong to claim that they have suffered "long standing public disdain." A more accurate description might be that they suffered "short term and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to ban them." That's the history. That's what happened.
The whole notion that art needs to shock the sensibilities or challenge tradition, or the common cultural mores never had much traction with me. I'll admit there are limited occasions when use of the arts to challenge some conventions are warranted but that would be more when dealing with some entrenched injustice like Jim Crow laws, or filthy meat packing plants, hence works like To Kill A Mocking Bird, Invisible Man, the Jungle, or the children's books Beautiful Joe.
This is an interesting conceit, and I won't argue with you much here. Yes, it's true: major injustices often need to be combated with incredibly distressing art. Less striking issues don't demand the same degree of challenge. Whether or not (and to what degree) you like being shocked, appalled, and challenged by your art is a very personal choice, so here I'm satisfied if we just agree to disagree. I like it when stories throw me for a loop, distress me, and make me question my assumptions about life, even when it isn't about a "major" issue. You have an issue you don't want to be challenged on: sex. That's fine.
That brings us to your last point...
As for what I don't like about it...its simple, it is a very private, and dare I say holy congress that is simply inappropriate to put in the public eye. Other human beings come from that act. Turning it into a mere voyeuristic entertainment trivializes it, degrades it. In short such use of it is shameful...an antiquated conceit in an age where shame is reserved for smoking, wearing fur, voting republican and eating nonorganic tofu, but there you have it. It's not quite as bad as snuff films, but then what is?
Beyond that I really don't like foul language...to read or to hear. I will endure a very little knowing what times we live in...but only a little and it is a little that I do not like very much at all. The combination of foul language (which to me is just crude and impolite) and graphic sexual depictions is more than I am willing to endure. Others can read it if they like. I don't.
I know this view is a little narrow-minded by today's standards, but as I once heard it explained I try to treat my mind like a living room and not a junk yard. A living room is narrow minded. Some things are permitted in...if they meet a certain standard, but not just anything. The junkyard on the other hand admits anything without any discernment or discrimination. There are images, thoughts, ideations that I simply do not want in my head. One cannot unexpose oneself to things that are inherently corrupting...sort of like pee in the pool, there's no getting it out once in. But with enough time, and chlorine, and sunshine, and great care about who you let swim in your pool...the effect of pee past can fade away....but that will never happen if you keep giving the peeers free access.
I respect your opinion here. I'm going to post with my opinion, but that doesn't mean I disagree with you; how can I disagree with what you prefer?
In my mind, there is nothing dirty or bad about sex. There is also nothing holy or sacred about sex. Dirty and bad, holy and sacred - these concepts are nothing more than concepts. As far as I'm concerned, I made them up and I can do whatever I want with them. Sometimes I like my sex holy and sacred... and sometimes I
like it dirty and bad. As my fiancée (the English major) just called out from across the room: "sometimes I want to be treated like a piece of meat." I think a lot of people feel that way from time to time, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So for me, tending to the living room of my mind doesn't mean keeping the sex out. I prefer a food metaphor to a living room metaphor. I feed my head a balanced diet of fiction and nonfiction, science and fantasy, brownies and salad and steak. Sometimes I want to sink my teeth into something substantial and greasy and wonderful (the
Mistborn Trilogy) and sometimes I want something sparse and healthy (
The Death and Life of the Great American School System) and sometimes I want to enjoy some chewing gum (I have the Collected Conan the Barbarian around here somewhere...). The sexiness of a work isn't a primary factor in whether or not I want to consume it. It's just another quality - another flavor, if you will, or perhaps a vitamin - that I enjoy.
It sounds like you've got a Madonna/whore complex about your fiction; sex is too beautiful to be degraded with actually reading about it and too degrading to expose your beautiful mind to. Well, hey... it's your life. Have fun. As long as you're not a book-banner, I don't care what you think about what's appropriate and what's not.
Before I continue, though, I'd like to point this out in bold:
You just flipped on what's old fashioned and what's new-fangled. You are neither rooted in a proud puritanical post nor reaching forward to a bold puritanical future. You're just you. That's ok - your points will stand fine on their own without making stuff up.I'm sorry. That kind of arguing really bothers me.
At least in part you make my point.
I beg to differ, as we will see below...
1984: sex scene mercifully short, and not really necessary, the story point was sufficiently made without it.
I disagree. By showing us that the characters have lost the capacity to enjoy sex, Orwell is driving the depravity of his dystopia home. The world of 1984 is a terrible place - the party has even stolen sex from them. The characters' dry, limp, humiliating fumbling is absolutely essential to understanding the future Orwell is trying to scare us away from.
Brave New World: Not so far back in time as not to be "modern" in its sensibilities. Never read it, so I don't know how explicit it is, but I did see the old movie, and have read about its place in literary history.
Eh.. modern's a pretty flexible term, so I'll let you slide on this one. I recall the scene as quite explicit, but I could be wrong.
Lader Chatterly's Lover: as you say the book was banned at a time when public standards were a little higher than today. Never read it, never wanted to...and from what I've read about it even if all the explicit sex were not in the book would not want to...romantic story stuff bores me. Not a flicker of interest.
I think it's interesting that sex appalls you and romance bores you... but that's none of my business. I also think that public standards being "higher" is a very subjective term, and not one I'm going to let you toss out without an argument. Certainly, public standards were stricter. Whether or not that was a good thing, though... well, I already stated my opinion above, as have you. I won't reiterate our points here.
Tess: Saw the movie I think, hard to recall...may have read some of the book a very long time ago...if I did my memory of it is so faint is probably because it bored me and I put it down. Given that it was written by Sir Thomas Hardy it is no wonder...the man could bore the bark off a tree. He's the only person I've ever read who literally caused me to weep his writing was so tediously boring. Had Return of the Native not been required reading for a class I would have returned his book to the soil so that it might at least do a little good as rich life giving humus.
I agree with you on Hardy, and
Tess is
awful. That doesn't change the fact that the explicit rape scene undermines your point about how prim the good old days were. I'll remind you of that and move on.
Women in Love: Never head of it.
Neither have I - my fiancée recommended it as evidence. She's smart.
Shakespeare: yes he got a trifle bawdy in his references, but mercifully spared the stage their acting out so far as I know...and if he didn't...well beyond being a little surprised such things would have been allowed then, I've primarily read his plays and have only had opportunity to see a very few of them performed.
A trifle bawdy. A trifle?
We have a fart joke in "The Tempest." In "Hamlet," two characters joke about being firmly ensconced in Lady Fortune's genitals. Speaking of "Hamlet," Hamlet himself tells Ophelia exactly where she can stick it, repeatedly, with instructions; it just sounds pretty because we don't understand it anymore. We have a half an hour tirade about a girlfriend's breasts in "Comedy of Errors." There's more, but I have to stop. The next point is my favorite:
Bible, yes, I've some familiarity with it, and with the Song of Soloman...as for the supposed intentional mistranslation assertion, I'll have to have more substantive authority on that. Still there's ample talk about kisses and breasts and the like, I'll grant you. But such talk as there is does not descend into to anything more than the language of admiration...no "action" beyond kissing.
Ok... *knuckle crack* my fiancée might have been an English major, but I was a Religion major, and this is going to be fun.
I'm not going to go over the Song of Songs line by line. I'm going to pick out two of my favorite parts.
First, here's the part I was referenceing before: Song of Songs 7:2-5. I'm not going to quote the whole text at you because the King James version is an awful translation of the original and it's all I can find online. I'm going to summarize it like this:
1. He praises her feet.
2. He praises her thighs.
3. He praises her navel.
4. He praises her belly.
5. He praises her breasts, neck, eyes, et...
Notice something weird? Feet, thights, belly button (?), belly, and up?
Hebrew poetry was very structured. When one started a pattern, one did not break from it. One didn't detour, and one certainly didn't repeat - even for the ancient Hebrews, "belly" and "navel" meant basically the same thing. What we're looking at here is a willing mistranslation of a word that I promise you is
not navel. And what does he say about her navel?
"Your "navel" is like a round goblet/let mixed wine not be lacking!"
Sounds a little like he... well... here's the other part: Song of Songs 4:6-7
"...I will betake me to the mount of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense. Every part of you is fair, my darling, there is no blemish in you."
"Navel" like a goblet filled with "wine." Going to the "mount of myrrh?"
Not at all explicitly sexy. Nope.
* * *
Deep breaths, Paladin. Deep breaths...
I'm going to stop now because I think I'm turning into a bit of an overzealous jerk. I'd like to close with a reiteration of my most important point:
It's ok for you to feel however you like about sex and literature - I feel differently, and that's ok - but don't try to pretend that your statements are based on absolute truths. There was no golden age of sexless literature. There will be no golden future of sexless literature. Sex and literature were and will always be an important part of art. You can avoid those kinds of art that offend your sensibilities - dirty up your living room - but you aren't "right" and you aren't "wrong." You're just you. That's all any of us are.