Pornographication or pornification is the absorption by mainstream culture of styles or content of the sex industry and the sexualisation of Western culture, sometimes referred to as raunch culture. Pornographication, particularly the use of sexualised images of women, is said to demonstrate "how patriarchal power operates in the field of gender representation". In Women in Popular Culture, Marion Meyers argues that the portrayal of women in modern society is primarily influenced by "the mainstreaming of pornography and its resultant hypersexualization of women and girls, and the commodification of those images for a global market". The phenomenon has been discussed by authors such as Marian Meyers and Kath Woodward. Pornographication also features in discussions of post-feminism by Ariel Levy, Natasha Walter, Feona Attwood, and Brian McNair.
History
Pornography and the modern sex culture have been around for many decades. In ancient Greece and Rome, there were many sexually charged images on walls. The invention of the printing press made it much easier and cheaper to distribute information to the masses. What most people think about Western pornography and the sex culture started with the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Many more people had access to pornographic material during the Enlightenment, and in England books such as Fanny Hill; or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure had commercial success as one of the earliest forms of erotica. During this time, people started thinking more freely, so pornography could challenge the norms of the time, as with Marquis de Sade's book Justine. While most pornographic images before the 19th century were images or books, when the motion picture was invented, it created a whole new medium for sexual imagery. At the start of the 1920s, it became popular throughout the West. Blue Movie, a 1969 American film written, produced, and directed by Andy Warhol, is the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, Blue Movie, a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn, helped inaugurate the "porno chic" phenomenon in modern American culture, and later, in many other countries throughout the world. According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was made. In 1970, Mona, the second adult erotic film, after Blue Movie, depicting explicit sex that received a wide theatrical release in the United States, was shown. Later, other adult films, such as Boys in the Sand, Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones were released, continuing the Golden Age of Porn begun with Blue Movie. In 1973, the phenomenon of porn being publicly discussed by celebrities and taken seriously by film critics. began, for the first time, in modern American culture. In 1976, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, and directed by Radley Metzger, was released theatrically and is considered, by award-winning author Toni Bentley, the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn. After the start of widespread adoption of internet in the 1990s, more people could express themselves sexually online, and anyone could post pictures or videos if they chose to. Pornography in the West is generally much more widely accepted, and "66% of men and 41% of women consume pornography on a monthly basis".
Effects of media
Movies
The real-life effects of watching film sex and violence have been heavily disputed. While some groups argue that media violence causes viewers to be more violent, there is no academic consensus on this and indeed large studies suggest that there is no causative link between images of violence and violence in spectators, nor between images of sex and sexual behavior. The links between films and spectator behavior are complex and while pornography undoubtedly plays a big role in how people view sex and relationships, we should always be wary of attributing a single source to a single action as human behavior is so much more complex than this. The only common correlations for violent behavior relate to dysfunctional or violent childhood environments and substance abuse, but neither of these can be seen simply as causal, only significant contributing factors to real-life violence.
Television
Teens who were exposed to highly sexual content on TV were more likely to "act older" than their age. If what was being shown on TV was educational, it could yield a positive result on teenagers. For example, on one specific episode of Friends, which had nearly 2 million viewers at the time, one of the characters had gotten pregnant even after using contraception. After the episode, teens were actually more likely to engage in safer sexual activity, and as much as 65% remembered what was in that episode.
Books
Literature which people read for sexual satisfaction is one of the earliest forms of media portraying sexuality. Now, there are various websites to satisfy most people's varied sexual preferences and tastes. As erotica was a form of social protest against the values of the culture at the time, as was with the famous book The Romance of Lust, written as a few volumes between 1873–1876. Described in the book are homosexuality, incest, and other socially unacceptable concepts. The values of the Victorian era perpetuated purity and innocence. So this book offered a new perspective. In recent years, erotica has become the new norm, and is extremely popular. The most recent commercial success was Fifty Shades of Grey, describing in detail scenes of sadomasochism and other forms of kink. It sold over "31 million worldwide", and has been adapted into a film starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
Magazines
Magazines often portray sex in a very indirect way. As seen in advertisements throughout, sex is portrayed without anyone needing to say a word. However, in a lot of ways, this can be devastating to people's psyches, especially women. Magazines feature women barely clothed in provocative positions, which can communicate that women are not good enough. One of the more unlikely effects is it affecting dieting patterns.
