The French director Catherine Breillat who has featured real sex not simulated by actors or effects in films like Romance (1999) has been abrasively critiqued for making pornography disguised as true cinema. She once (probably more than once) replied to a question about the difference between art and pornography by saying that if you have to ask whether a work is true art or just pornography, it's probably art. That's a paraphrase, but I think of that statement sometimes when trying to differentiate between genre and literary fiction. Genre is used as a category — usually in the interest of marketing — and indeed, some genre fiction follows a pornographic pattern of putting the moment of titillation (action sequences, horror scenes, images of elves getting married) before the meaningful explorations of existence or truth. But to continue paraphrasing Breillat, if you have ask whether a film like Dune is art or whether a comic like The Incal is literature, your question alone is a strong enough suggestion that it is.
Well said! Thanks for providing such a great example of exactly the kind of philosophy I was flailing to paraphrase. XD I’ll have to read up on Breillat and her work!
The French director Catherine Breillat who has featured real sex not simulated by actors or effects in films like Romance (1999) has been abrasively critiqued for making pornography disguised as true cinema. She once (probably more than once) replied to a question about the difference between art and pornography by saying that if you have to ask whether a work is true art or just pornography, it's probably art. That's a paraphrase, but I think of that statement sometimes when trying to differentiate between genre and literary fiction. Genre is used as a category — usually in the interest of marketing — and indeed, some genre fiction follows a pornographic pattern of putting the moment of titillation (action sequences, horror scenes, images of elves getting married) before the meaningful explorations of existence or truth. But to continue paraphrasing Breillat, if you have ask whether a film like Dune is art or whether a comic like The Incal is literature, your question alone is a strong enough suggestion that it is.
Well said! Thanks for providing such a great example of exactly the kind of philosophy I was flailing to paraphrase. XD I’ll have to read up on Breillat and her work!