BBC on erotica

Rants, Raves and Reviews, Scenology — By Adele on 30 October, 2007 11:03 pm

I’ve spent most of last night on the sofa, watching sexy things on BBC 4 and taking notes. (What? You mean *you* don’t take notes while watching erotica?)

First, there was the second episode of “Fanny Hill“, newly adapted by Andrew Davies. I loved it – it’s pretty, it isn’t even a little bit coy or shy of the sex or its selling, and there was even a birch present briefly. (I didn’t care for the fact that flogging was a particular speciality of the main bitch of the piece, but I may have been picky.) Best of all, it didn’t moralise in any way that John Cleland would have disapproved of. Now, Mr Davies, please adapt “Frank and I“.

Then the BBC chased their piece of costume bawdery with a documentary about porn in the 18th century. So, you think sex worker blogs are something new? Wrong, munchkins: one of the most popular genres of erotica – before erotic novels, before even novels were invented – used to be the so called “whore biographies”: the whence and wherefores of anyone from courtesans to street walkers. It appears, our friend Niki with her memoir is working in a fine, century-old tradition of erotic writing.

Finally, I caught a repeat of another Andrew Davies piece, “The Chatterley Affair“: a film about the “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” obscenity trial. This was also great; I’d never known that a courtroom scene could be so erotically charged. The prosecution and the defence argued whether a piece of writing that describes every sexual act most of them could imagine (though probably some of us could imagine more than that, particularly having watched Fanny Hill an hour before) – whether that piece of writing could be said to have artistic merit, and whether it has a tendency to “deprave and corrupt”.

Curiously, this is a charge that could conceivably be levelled at producers of spanking erotica, as well. We are none of us DH Lawrence, my friends, but I doubt that your friendly spanking pornographer – a film-maker, a writer or a model – has an aim of depraving or corrupting anybody. I personally don’t care whether you’re depraved… nor would I make a judgement on the subject, nor would I try to make you more or less so. Now, exciting, entertaining, making think, making feel, making feel alive – I could subscribe to goals like that.

Today’s piece of depraving and corrupting advice would be this: treat yourself to as many Andrew Davies adaptations as you can find. Start with “Tipping the Velvet“.