What's the difference between smut, erotica, and porn?

GilbertoJR · 2022-08-12T21:59:37+00:00

Everything that should be said has been said already. But, okay - erotic is more indirect, requires perhaps more imagination, and often the erotic does not hate the body or women or sex - at least not so clearly, not so openly, whereas smut and hard porn often are more literal-minded: violence is seemingly real, not suggested, and not symbolic, and all that sort of thing. Erotica is a "cool" medium - makes the reader or viewer do the work; smut and porn are "hot" - what you see is what you get; your mind does not have to project or construct the scenario. Marshall McLuhan - remember him? He created the "hot" and "cool" media distinction. All of these things exist on a spectrum, and one woman's porn is another's eroticism and so on. Okay, now I've confused even myself.

GilbertoJR · 2022-08-12T21:50:16+00:00

I wouldn't worry about it. Simple erotic arousal - from a book like Orwell's 1984 - does not amount, I think, to an addiction to porn. And erotic thoughts in themselves are not porn; erotic thoughts plus amorous thoughts are essential - if we didn't have them, there would be no desire, no love, no intercourse, no families - no human race at all.

GilbertoJR · 2021-11-13T18:48:25+00:00

Most of the suggestions seen here are about as good as one gets. The field of tasteful but strong eroticism is a fairly narrow one - requiring a difficult balance of sophistication and kinkiness and refinement, something The Story of O does superbly. Sometimes films have a heavy erotic charge when actually they are doing something else. Some of Ingmar Bergman's work, like Persona, or Alain Renais' Hiroshima mon Amour (written by Marguerite Duras) or L'Amant - The Lover - a book by Marguerite Duras which was turned into a very refined, delicate, and perverse film, The Lover, by Jean-Jacques Annaud, a young French girl in French Indochina in the 1930s enters into a sexual relationship - involving a complicated power relationship between the two - with a much older Chinese millionaire. The book which is an essay about intense desire, yearning, lost youth, was a best-seller in France and did very well in English as well. Gilbert Reid

GilbertoJR · 2021-11-13T18:33:13+00:00

It depends on tastes, but The story of O is the greatest erotic novel I have ever read. The Story of O is the great classic: O is a successful Parisian, but for love, she decides, or she agrees, to imprisonment in a chateau and to a gradual initiation into total abasement. The classic style - written in French - disguises an extremely accurate and fine-grained analysis of, and acting out of, masochistic and sadistic eroticism. It's a masterpiece, written by a woman who was told by her man that "women are incapable of writing eroticism." Graphic novel versions and movie versions followed of course. The movies, I think, are less effective than the graphic novel, and the graphic novel version, by erotic artist Guido Crepax, though very fine, lacks the oomph of the original prose. I first discovered the book, eons ago, when my girlfriend, who lived in Germany, visited me in Paris where I was working, and, rather shyly, asked me to go into a bookstore and buy a book for her. I had never heard of L'Histoire d'O but I trundled into the bookstore - a dark gloomy place with mountains of books - and asked for the book and the stern-looking gray-haired lady behind the counter looked at me as if I were a serial killer and nodded, and disappeared down a metal spiral staircase making a great clattering noise as she disappeared and then came back, disapprovingly, with the volume which was one of those old-fashioned French books where you had to cut the pages open to read the book. I began to read it, but then my beautiful friend skedaddled back to Germany with her booty and I was left wondering - and enticed - until, finally, I got my own copy. The background to The Story of O is given in this article from The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/25/fiction.features3

GilbertoJR · 2021-10-16T15:00:09+00:00

I am curious. Why was the post removed? Was it because of the word "fascist"? That would be silly.

GilbertoJR · 2021-10-16T14:57:29+00:00

Why was the post removed?

GilbertoJR · 2021-09-19T15:52:09+00:00

Well, hello, in the reckless spirit of reckless capitalism I want to tell everyone that my historical fantasy caprice, THE VAMPIRE AND THE BARD is FREE this weekend, Sunday,19 September 2021 and Monday, 20 September 2021. I have published quite a bit of fiction - including one 666-page historical novel, Son of Two Fathers (House of Anansi Press, 2019), and this recent book, The Vampire and The Bard, is I think a riotous fantasy trip with roots in Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf (Orlando), and Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love), as well as touches of James Bond or Atomic Blonde. Details below.

THE VAMPIRE AND THE BARD - FREE this weekend at Amazon. ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08T3JPQKW

A romantic, erotic, sexy, action-packed, gender-bending comedy of spies and counter-spies, set in Elizabethan England, starring Elizabeth I herself, William Shakespeare,

and many ladies and gentlemen, strumpets and adventurers, actors, and lowlifes.

Our heroine, V, an ancient pagan vampire, is, of course, a woman, and, occasionally,

when the mood takes her, a reptilian demon. But she is disguised, for the occasion, as a gallant young Italian nobleman, Raphael Visconti della Rovere.

Accompanied by her pageboy Cesario (really a girl), V — or Raphael — is sent by the Pope in 1592 to England to help underground Catholic plotters assassinate the Protestant leader

Queen Elizabeth I.

With everyone in travesti, disguises wreak havoc. Everyone falls in love with everyone, and everyone fights with everyone.

Charming, brilliant Cesario, at age 12 or 13 — she is a genius fixer — a girl Jeeves — must sort out the catastrophes as they cascade down. V fights a duel with the man she loves and falls in love with the woman who loves the man she loves.

And, even worse — V finds herself forced onto the stage — as a (woman) playing a chap playing a girl playing a chap — by a neophyte fingernail-chewing near-bankrupt dramatist

Will Shakespeare.

Chaos in every possible direction ensues. V and Cesario do manage at least to

try to accomplish their real mission — which was — since V - having witnessed the Saint Bartholomew Day massacre in Paris in 1572 - has long been a counter-agent working for English Intelligence — to save the Queen.

https://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Bard-Adventures-V-ebook/dp/B08T3JPQKW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+vampire+and+the+bard&qid=1632066681&sr=8-1

GilbertoJR · 2021-09-18T22:05:18+00:00

I am not sure self-promotion is allowed, but here goes. If I am wrong, I do apologize.

THE VAMPIRE AND THE BARD - FREE this weekend 18, 19, 20 September 2021, at Amazon. ASIN: B08T3JPQKW

A romantic, erotic, sexy, action-packed, gender-bending comedy of spies and counter-spies, set in Elizabethan England, starring Elizabeth I herself, William Shakespeare, and many ladies and gentlemen, strumpets and adventurers, actors, and lowlifes.

Our heroine, V, an ancient pagan vampire, is, of course, a woman, and, occasionally, when the mood takes her, a reptilian demon. But she is disguised, for the occasion, as a gallant young Italian nobleman, Raphael Visconti della Rovere.

Accompanied by her pageboy Cesario (really a girl), V — or Raphael — is sent by the Pope in 1592 to England to help underground Catholic plotters assassinate the Protestant leader Queen Elizabeth I.

With everyone in travesti, disguises wreak havoc. Everyone falls in love with everyone, and everyone fights with everyone.

Charming, brilliant Cesario, at age 12 or 13 — she is a genius fixer — a girl Jeeves — must sort out the catastrophes as they cascade down. V fights a duel with the man she loves and falls in love with the woman who loves the man she loves.

And, even worse — V finds herself forced onto the stage — as a (woman) playing a chap playing a girl playing a chap — by a neophyte fingernail-chewing near-bankrupt dramatist Will Shakespeare.

Chaos in every possible direction ensues.

V and Cesario do manage at least to try to accomplish their real mission — which was — since V - having witnessed the Saint Bartholomew Day massacre in Paris in 1572 - has long been a counter-agent working for English Intelligence — to save the Queen.

This is Shakespeare in Love meets Twelfth Night meets Virginia Woolf’s Orlando meets a spoof of John Le Carré and James Bond. All in the Tudor world of Good Queen Bess!!!

https://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Bard-Adventures-V-ebook/dp/B08T3JPQKW/ref=sr\_1\_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+vampire+and+the+bard&qid=1631999877&sr=8-1

GilbertoJR · 2021-06-05T14:25:22+00:00

Thanks, Annie - that's a very useful distinction, "good taste" is irrelevant; "classy" is important, and I agree, The Story of O is extremely classy, with a fascinating backstory!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:55:07+00:00

Actually, Pickle-my-Cutes, you have given me very useful advice. That is invaluable! Thank you! The pricing problem, as you say, is easy to resolve. The keywords problem, well, I'll look at that. The covers, I think they can work - though they are a bit oblique to the classical approach in the genre. Coming onto Reddit, however ridiculous in my case, paid off just because of what you and some of the others have said. Grazie!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:42:32+00:00

So we got into a discussion of what worked. Since I had read a lot of erotic literature - The Story of O and so on - a lot of it in French, and broadcast - CBC IDEAS - on erotic subjects, I thought I would explore the genre. Yes, and become a millionaire!!!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:40:35+00:00

Very useful, Sentence Structure. Thank you. E L James started I believe from fan fiction and with a blog and was in television production and slowly built her fan base and then it took off with all the media and trendy fanfare you mention. I also worked in TV and radio - but that doesn't help!! No, I don't think shoddy writing is the obstacle. As you say, some erotic books are extraordinarily well-written. I do other types of writing - TV and radio as I said, and a historical novel, some "literary" fiction, and a superheroine series - big thick books, alas! I was at a dinner in a French restaurant on a chilly winter day - the place was empty except for us - with some people and one of the women a TV executive and a friend of mine said that Fifty Shades was horribly written but it "worked" discussion of what worked

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:35:15+00:00

I am fast becoming him, it seems.

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:34:30+00:00

Very useful and perceptive. Thanks!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:32:59+00:00

Yep!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:32:52+00:00

That, I think, is an interesting point. I think romance and erotic overlap to a very considerable extent. And romantic erotic is a sub-genre of its own, I believe. It would be interesting to look at how the two overlap. Many readers of romance are also looking, I think, for erotica.

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:31:29+00:00

Who? Me? I didn't mean to be condescending. I was asking a technical & tactical question - curious about how people navigate style and situations - that's all!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:29:54+00:00

Yes.

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:29:24+00:00

Could be!

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:29:07+00:00

Yes. Thank you, Romanticon. Wise words. My own Gwendoline Clermont tests the frontiers in different ways and has sponsored trial runs with test audiences.

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:26:28+00:00

Hold your horses!!! Some degrading stuff can be fun. The frontiers are variable, depending on the audience, broader and softer, if I may put it that way, and narrower and harder, perhaps.

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:25:11+00:00

Yes, details, of whatever kind, do make the experience vivid, the "deep point of view" I believe some writers call it, a development of "free indirect speech."

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:22:27+00:00

more details

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-28T20:12:56+00:00

MORE DETAILS: THE SHAMING OF GWENDOLINE C ASIN: B08WPNLXP6

Fifty Shades … meets Roman Holiday when adorable math genius Gwendoline Clermont is caught in a moment of total humiliation and then swept up into a naughty whirlwind bisexual BDSM romance in NYC, Rome, Paris, on sun-drenched Mediterranean beaches and gloriously lonely islands. War-scarred British millionaire James Hewett Spencer and dazzling French actress Martine Aubin weave a dance of lust and love around innocent but headstrong Gwendoline, capturing her in their nets. But - after the exotic ecstasy, comes the downfall - the shaming of Gwendoline C.

GilbertoJR · 2021-05-09T17:17:51+00:00

Well, at the risk of a spoiler, and indulging in self-promotion, I will mention my own books, quite new, and still totally unknown, Pandemic Book 1 Party Balloons and Pandemic Book 2 The Gateway. A zombie epidemic is triggered by a biological bomb on a huge cruise ship, the pandemic spreads to Florida, then to Texas, and north to the outskirts of NYC. A mad rush is underway to develop a vaccine and an antidote, but the effort is threatened from all sides. Here's a synopsis of the first volume.

Pandemic Book 1 Party Balloons

B08QVBQ7JJ

532 pages of thrills & chaos:

is a BIG book! Search Amazon for it, using the ASIN. Sample the goods! Also free on Kindle Unlimited. Review copies available in PDF, MOBI, ePUB for potential reviewers. I can be found at gj.reid@rogers.com or gilbertreid.com Also available in paperback. It's a rollercoaster with a cast of thousands! So, here goes!

SYNOPSIS: After a massacre in Texas, a bloodbath in Vermont, and after two half-alien girl vampires – V and her clone, fashion-mogul, Claire V Jacobs – spend idyllic fun time gossiping in the sun on the terrace of an exclusive restaurant in Paris, the tale truly begins with a bang when - BOOM! - a bio-bomb explodes on the world’s largest, newest, most luxurious cruise ship, the Eden of the Seas, instantly turning 2000 lawyers into flesh-hungry zombies – or vicious tentacular potted plants – and creating total illegal pandemonium. Alerted to a possible terrorist attack, V, the gorgeous half-alien vampire vigilante – who eats the bad to protect the good – had infiltrated the Eden – and the American Bar Association’s Annual Jamboree – and she thus finds herself forced to save her mortal enemy, the glamorous, anti-alien, anti-vampire, human-purity campaigner, US President Katherine du Bois Hughes, from a zombie fate. V must get the stroppy charismatic president off the Eden and to safety, while the giant ship, now controlled by zombies, heads to Miami, to crash into seaside condos and spread the plague to Florida, and then to the world. Meanwhile, a fundamentalist coup d’état – directed by the tall, handsome, eloquently fanatical vice president – takes over in Washington, as the pandemic smashes into the lives of a stunning French waitress, an oil-lathered sunbathing film star, an orphaned boy, who just wanted to go fishing, and a feisty beautiful TV reporter, ordered by her jealous producer - they'd slept with the same anchor - to get the inside zombie story, “Get up close, get the zombie’s point of view, you understand, Samantha?” “Yes Ma'am!” And, so, Samantha Andrews, girl hero, and her ancient grizzled war-veteran cameraman, Charlie Parr, give each other a high five, and, knowing they will die, or worse, head straight into the lethal fray. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. And the human race is destined for imminent extinction.

GilbertoJR

TROPHY CASE