Pornography: The Secret History Of Civilization (1999)
Synopsis
A serious, non-titillating history of pornography, from the earliest days of erotic art right up to the present day's multimedia.
First Air Date: 1999-10-14
Last Air Date: 1999-11-18
Number of Seasons: 1
Number of Episodes: 6
Networks: Channel 4
Seasons
Season 1 (1999)
No overview available for this season.
Episodes:
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Ep. 1: The Road to Ruin
Opens with the science of archaeology. Sexual imagery has been at the heart of culture all over the world, from the Cerne Abbas man to the painted walls of Pompeii, from the carvings of Bourges Cathedral to the obscene pamphlets of the French Revolution.
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Ep. 2: The Sacred and Profane
Shows how printing was seen as something that turned hitherto acceptable sexual explicit expression into something far more dangerous. Indeed pornography was instrumental in fermenting the French Revolution, with shockingly explicit sexual satire directed at the monarchy. Photography was the greatest leap forward ever in the history of pornography. In the nineteenth century, to ask where pornographic photographs were sold is like asking where you can buy drugs today.
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Ep. 3: The Mechanical Eye
Examines the appeal of photographs, their development and their consumers, as well as the evolution of the porn magazine. This film also covers the birth of the mail order porn dealer; heralding arguments which have parallels today with debates on internet pornography.
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Ep. 4: Twentieth Century Foxy
Covers the rise of the porn film industry. But porn on film, and the porn cinema was an interstitial time. At the end of the 70s the new vehicle for porn was video.
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Ep. 5: Sex Lives and Videotape
Shows how the advent of video ended pornography's crossover dreams. Video re-made pornography in its own image, replacing the glamour and fantasy of the movies with a real documentary style. The most significant contribution of video was that it turned consumers into producers; the audience picked up cameras and started recording their sex lives on videotape!
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Ep. 6: Pornotopia
Looks at the new era of digital manipulation and asks how digital technology has affected the pornography that we produce, and the way we consume it. We talk to people who say that the Internet has dealt the biggest blow yet to the establishment. Pornography in physical forms - books, magazines, and videos - could always be seized and destroyed, but on the Net, pornography has shed its physical form and gone digital.
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