ROMA EROTICA

[tlclark]

I cant believe Im posting on this subject but it comes up all the time in examining the ancient world esepcially with the greeks. the porn of pompeii isnt suprising. a brothel didnt have video machines so painting was a logical decoration for such a place but inferring wholesale conclusions about sexuality in the ancient world isnt merited just like looking at amsterdam or bangkok isnt represtentative of the nation as a whole.

I get the same reaction when I tell people I grew up in Las Vegas. They think my dad was in the mafia and my mother was a showgirl. My dad was an endocrinologist and my mother was a school teacher. I know it's surprising but outside the strip and downtown areas, Las Vegas is about the most whitebread surburban place you can imagine. Think of Provo Utah, if Provo was next to LA, that's a lot what Las Vegas feels like.

I have serious doubts about the widespread 'gayness' of the greeks and even romans. In todays world you have a percentage of people who desire homosexual intercourse or something close to it and the majority dont. It isnt in their makeup to do or desire such a thing. I cant concieve that homosexual activity was anymore prevalent than today percentage wise. I could be very wrong but I doubt it.

Well that depends. If you mean 'homosexuality' meaning men having sex with each other then yes, there probably was a lot of it in both Greek and Roman cultures, probably more so in the Greek culture. If you mean 'homosexuality' to mean a lifestyle where people identify with a particular group because of their sexual orientation and pair off into committed pairs, then there wasn't a lot of homosexuality in Ancient cultures. There were committed pairings but they were rare. I doubt very much whether even the spartans, who had practically institutionalized homosexuality, considered themselves "gay". Rather they considered themselves straight but had no negative associations with male on male sex. That was just sexual activity and not indicative of your "identity" like it is suggested today.

In a way their sexuality is far more open and defies labeling. Now does that make them more liberal or less liberal than us? Who knows.

One more thing on erotica in general. Erotica - in a very weird way - a very intersting cultural indicator, a canary in a coal mine if you will. When I first began studying art history, and became axquainted with Greek pornography pottery (and there is a lot of it) I felt like it was an indication of cultural decline. In fact just the opposite is true. At exactly the time that Athens was at its cultural peak was the time it was producing the most pornography. Also, pornography varies from culture to culture. Romans and Athenians made lots of the stuff, Spartans hardly any. At first I thought that meant that Spartans were more virtuous but that doesn't really hold water. Porn is rather a reflection on the society. For example, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia had very little porn, we have tons, which would you rather live in?

(Someday I'm going to write a paper on this but that is ways off, here's the short version of my theory)

In reality porn is a reflection of the prosperity and individual freedom of a society. Societies with wealth and relative freedom will always produce a segment of society that will choose to use that extra cash and time to make pornography. It seems to be human nature. Interestingly, porn is one of the first "art forms" if you will - to be disbanded in times of economic stress and decline. Far from what you'd think porn is not a growth market in times of decline, just the opposite.

Now some sociologist will have to make sense of this, but if your society stops producing porn it says something about the direction your culture is heading. I suppose it's a fringe market and that the fringe markets suffer from any economic social decline. If times are hard, and you are making decisions about purchases, porn gets cut first, which seems entirely sensible.

So rather than looking at Romans and saying "What decadent Romans" you could say "Wow! Their society was so stinking wealthy and prosperous and free a significant minority of the population could afford to spend it on porn!" Just a thought. Interestingly enough, the same is true of souvenirs and kitsch! The percentage of kitsch or mass produced art items that have no functional purpose is a pretty good indication of the health of a culture. Porn is different for obvious reasons, but it kinda functions as a subset of kitsch, as a demonstration of what people do with their expendable income. Anyway, I'll bet you'll never look at plastic flamingoes the same way again!

BTW - This is not in any way an endorsement of porn, which I consider demeaning to women and damaging to families - it just seems to indicate the social and economic factors of it.