Hentai As An Art Form

[Norleas]

If you take a look into the dictionary you will see that art have more than 10 definitions, no one is the absolute truth, no one is absolute wrong, art is what you consider art, some people consider a mess of colors and lines art and give 5 millions to that and in the same way you have the right to think that hentai is art, but though implicit sex is a popular thing nowadays, explicit still to many people a taboo. If you consider a random cg from a vn art, it don't make much sense to not consider a h-cg from the same vn art.

Hint: Most of adolescents don't have maturity to talk about sex, so expose a explicit thing, it's obvious that they will laughter.

[Bolverk]

Those eyes of the octopus. Man. That is some kawaii stuff going on there, man. 10/10 art as well as made my jibbes go jibbery.

[Conjueror]

I was very vocal about my passion for visual novels and porn during my uni years too, so I'm actually impressed by the guts of the guy, and agree with him on the philosophical level at least. The only thing our society achieved by repressing sexuality for arbitrary reasons is more mental illness and stress. An according to Freud, all forms of art are just sublimation of our sexuality anyway, so I don't see why a drawing of sex couldn't be considered it.

...That said, you won't overturn thousands of years worth of societal imprinting with a single class, so the reaction was pretty much unavoidable. You probably could have tried to soften the presentation by obfuscating the image a little, or giving them some historical Japanese "pornographic" art like I linked earlier and introduce that as an evolution of that. Anyway, it's a complicated thing that will automatically make a lot of ppl upset if not presented well... and uh, I'm not sure if high school is the best place for it, given that our society arbitrarily restricts people your age from even consuming erotica yet... still better be a weirdo than live as a pretender!

Edited December 14, 2016 by Conjueror

[sanahtlig]

2 hours ago, Okarin said:

Hentai may be art, but if I'm not wrong, you use it as a form of escapism, and escapism is never as good as the real thing (in this context, "the real thing" is a full-blown relationship between two human beings).

Potentially false.  Pornography use in certain contexts has been implicated for reducing relationship satisfaction / increasing risk of breakup or divorce.  One potential explanation is that pornography encourages the development of unrealistic expectations of sexual encounters.  Another is that sex drive is often a "glue" that holds romantic relationships together, and pornography enjoyed alone can reduce that drive.

Edited December 14, 2016 by sanahtlig

[solidbatman]

 

[ittaku]

38 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

There's a law against viewing porn? I mean, you might get a serious discipline hit from the school, but it's not like there's a loli involved here.

Even animated porn is illegal for underage viewers in many countries, hence why some of us were surprised he'd do it while in HS.

31 minutes ago, God Of Hentai said:

Somehow this topic ended up being a roast to me, while I only wanted to know what u guys think of hentai.

Absolutely love it, not sick of it in bursts, even after viewing it for >20 years... but I do not think of it as an art form that can be discussed as art in class. Your passion got the better of you and you got carried away by it, not knowing when you were crossing social norms that are futile tackling in that way. There are some things the world is either not ready for, or - more accurately - does not want to ever be ready for.

[Benji Price]

It just takes one person to see something as art to make that so. Nobody can't deny someone elses point of view of a movie, vn, series, or hentai series... si whatever the rest of the world think about hentai, it would be art as long as there're people who see it that way.

And as for my opinion... I do like hentai, though not the tentacle stuff.

[atorq]

For a forum dedicated to Chinese slideshow porn games, people sure are conservative here. I don't see any reason to to why hentai couldn't be art just as any piece of shit can be considered art by some pretentious asshole, however, as pointed out here already, if you are going to present something as controversial as that you need to have a very good presentation with solid arguments. That aside, your teacher sounds like an asshole.  

Edited December 15, 2016 by atorq
I write no can

[Forgetful Frank]

Reading about how you presented that to your class gave my anxiety a huge spike.

I honestly couldn't care less about who considers what art is true 'art'. It all just sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me. Like, a lot of the stuff I see that people call 'art' looks like junk to me. Then I'll see some amazing piece of art that I think looks incredible, and it gets no where near as much recognition as some piece of garbage looked.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Dilan Omer]

I made this account solely to respond to you

 

I come from R Cringe anarchy

 

Do you not understand why this happend? You showed sexual content in class. Not only sexual content but uncoventional sexual content.

 

Surely you must understand why displaying hentai to your teachers and classmates gives a very bad impression of you.

[bigfatround0]

Goddamn, this thread gained traction.

[RedK]

You are the best ,fellow Rise lover.

Don't let that annoying teacher discourage you. They are the ones who are wrong, not you.

[Funnerific]

This thread has made me realize how good my social standing still is.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Funnerific

[Sovapex]

Wow. In class? I don't even know what to say about that. 

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and it's real cute you feel that way to the point of being shameless about it, but you should probably keep your head in reality next time. 

 

[TexasDice]

In my opinion (which is worth more than anyone else's, because none of you are real artists), art is defined by the motivation and intention behind the work. If something is created out of sheer passion and desire for creation, it's art. If it was created because you were hoping to get rich or famous, it's not art. 

So, depending on who the author/artist is, porn is factually art (in my logic). The human urge porn appeals to is irrelevant; If something was created for the purpose of creating something, it is art. If it was written/drawn in exchange for a nice paycheck, it's not art, it's a product.  

 

However, regardless of what your stance on art is, you have to be self-aware enough to know that just showing porn to a group of people and expecting them to listen to you is too blatant and uncomfortable. I wholeheartedly believe that it's very possible to make a presentation about the "is sex art?"-topic without falling with the door into the house. What I mean by that is, that you can't just show explicit images before even talking, at least ease the audience into it by explaining the point first and then presenting a censored example, just to be as precise as possible. Giving a warning about the explicit nature of the topic beforehand is also highly advised. 

And whenever a presentation goes into sensitive topics like violence, sex or racism, it is completely and utterly out of the question to throw it in everyone's faces before getting an okay from the teacher in charge. If a teacher says no, the answer is no. Schools are not a democracy. 

Edited December 15, 2016 by TexasDice

[Soulless Watcher]

(Peers into thread)..... yeah that is pretty much the shit show I was expecting. Well, I might as well take a healthy fiber induced dump into it as well. 

First off, I tip my hat to you good sir for comfortable enough with yourself to present something like that in a Highschool setting of all things. Jesus Christ, I'm imagining myself doing something like that and it is giving me the chills and this is with me already having occupied the lowest rung on the Highschool social cast. 

However, it probably wasn't appropriate in our current social climate to present something like that to the public or at least at the Highschool level. Something like this would have benefit more from being a college presentation as I know that things are taken a bit more seriously and campuses are by their very nature a bit more open minded. 

Now do I believe it should be considered art? Well, for me "art" is a complete bullshit and worthless term. I have had people try to explain it to me but I still can't understand why a plain canvas covered in a single shade of blue is considered art and worth a fuckton of money, but the drawings in a standard comic is still debated on whether or not it is art. There are thousands of other examples I can come up with, but my point is the concept of "art" is completely fucking arbitrary.

My sister who is in highschool is an incredibly, for lack of a better term, "art" savvy person. She sketches, paints, and draws various different works and have even won some small awards in local fairs. Recently she has taken to writing some amature manga/comics and claims that she has even drawn some explicit scenes, but for some reason refuses to show me. Now, she undoubtedly is using the same techniques and knowledge from her other stuff so I can't understand why that specifically would not be considered art. 

[JangJangJang]

6 hours ago, God Of Hentai said:

My intention with this was to show the unique art style of hentai, as you can see the image symbolizes the defloration of the heroine, the tear in her eye represents pain, the look on her face represents pleasure and if u add both u get in contrast the feeling of happiness, even the perspective of the image has a lot to say, sure i could have used a normal sprite from a vn but i wanted to bring the erotic out of my work.

And assuming that i go like on HH just to fap is wrong, I actually watch it for the simple fact that i find it beautiful.

I support you and your hobby, but I should not show sexual content to a group of people, people tend to agaisnt that in this case. People tend to like this kind of thing: http://prntscr.com/djlviy

In my opinion, Hentai is art, as it is drawed by artists. You are right when you point out the feeling of the character in the above image, that is the work of the artist, they/he/she put(s) their time, soul into their work so people can feel the soul of the image, the feeling of the character in the image.

Edited December 15, 2016 by JangJangJang

[Amuzie]

This thread sure has been something. 

But it got me thinking a bit, (suprisingly) I feel like the question isn't really "what is art?" but rather "what isn't art?". I agree with what Soulless Watcher says in that the word "art" is pretty pointless, because after thinking about stuff that isn't art I realized that literally anything can be considered art by someone. So in that case does art not refer to everything that exist? It might even refer to things that doesn't exist, as things that we say/think can be considered art. 

Does asking the question "what isn't art?" prove that everything can be art?

[Okarin]

There are some rules for considering something art, but they are quite vague.

Or if you prefer, you can go with the "art is subjective and varies from person to person" approach.

[Dergonu]

It's not strange that a random class full of teenagers and one confused teacher would react this way by seeing this image and the sudden introduction to hentai in your presentation. The truth is that a lot of people out there look at even just harmless stuff like anime with a judgmental look. I remember a day last year, when a friend of mine came to visit and my copy of K-on season 1 was lying on the table in plain view. (A comedy show about a band made up of high school girls, hardly pornographic.) Still, his reaction to this was instantaneous, and he commented and pointed towards the characters' skirts: "You watch this for the 'plot' I see."

It's not easy making people like something, especially if it's something they aren't used to seeing at all. Jumping straight into a full on pornographic picture and then trying to make people understand why you think it's art is bound to cause a very mixed reaction, even if the people watching your presentation are somewhat used to Japanese animation.

 

Personally I totally agree with the fact that certain types of hentai can be quite artsy, and I do like eroge because of its ability to incorporate H in the story. But, I would never try to explain this to someone by showing them a picture of an animated teenage girl having her virginity taken. You need to ease people into this kind of stuff.

Kudos to the OP though, for having the balls to actually do that. I was a bit scared of giving my presentation on evil twist endings, which included a large amount of refrences and pictures from anime. That had absolutely nothing to do with anything pornographic, but I was still nervous, simply because I knew not everyone "gets" anime and actually just sees it as totally weird.

[Okarin]

This is another discussion, but in the West, cartoons have always been considered "for kids". In fact, most animes of the early 80s were aimed at growing kids from the Baby Boom (and thus were pretty successful). Even now, there's a lot of stuff produced for kids of every age, but most of them don't come out of Japan, as there's no market.

These days it's another matter, as there are Western shows like Regular Show and Adventure Time that are multi-layered: they offer a layer for kids and a deeper layer for adults. So they're not only aimed at kids. They try what everyone tries these days: to appeal to the more the merrier.

But of course, some people are stuck years ago by their education or mindset and don't acknowledge that a cartoon can be for adults. That's where the "anime shock" settles in. Violence and porn (explicit or not) in a cartoon? Unacceptable! (right, Agnes?)

That doesn't mean that claiming you LOVE hentai openly for everyone to hear isn't wrong. Look, the rest of the people don't care. If anything, they'll use it to criticise you. And after all, I'm afraid it's a private thing. There is something such as "shame" and "embarrassment" when you reveal something private and personal to the public. It's like violating some taboo. People don't expect you to do that, and they are shocked.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Okarin

[spademan]

lol at the sad person that keeps making multi accounts to shit talk the op

[Dilan Omer]

2 hours ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Anyway, now that the argument here has settled down, here are my thoughts on the matter.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Hentai being an art form. In fact, it's seen with high regard by most VN enthusiasts because they offer something unique to the table. However admitting that you like hentai to the public and then showing a NSFW image just to back up your opinion is an entirely different matter, especially in a classroom. It's a subject that no one wants to talk about freely in public for obvious reasons so of course your teacher and classmates would react the way they did.

Another error that you did was that you confused the art of nudism with straight-up porn, which is the NSFW image you've shown. I've seen nude paintings before and they're mostly about expression of the male and female bodies without them engaging in intimate acts. There's actually a difference between nudism and hentai in how they express their images, so I think that you need to learn from this lesson just so that you don't make the same mistake again.

You tackle the difference between nudism and Hentai very well. For example in Your Lie in April in the opening Kaori was naked for some part but that was just nudism used to convey the message that she feels free when she listens/plays to Music

While Hentai or other revolting sexist anime scenes have a clear different message they want to convey with nude characters.

[irishdog]

I can't believe you shared that piece of Rise with the unwashed normie masses... Unforgivable.

Although, you do have great taste. So kudos, kudos.

[Benji Price]

4 hours ago, Palas said:

"Art" is a very idiotic concept anyway

Totally agree.

But you can't deny that many of those idiotic concepts are worth millions of (put the currency you like the most here).

4 hours ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Anyway, now that the argument here has settled down, here are my thoughts on the matter.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Hentai being an art form. In fact, it's seen with high regard by most VN enthusiasts because they offer something unique to the table. However admitting that you like hentai to the public and then showing a NSFW image just to back up your opinion is an entirely different matter, especially in a classroom. It's a subject that no one wants to talk about freely in public for obvious reasons so of course your teacher and classmates would react the way they did.

Another error that you did was that you confused the art of nudism with straight-up porn, which is the NSFW image you've shown. I've seen nude paintings before and they're mostly about expression of the male and female bodies without them engaging in intimate acts. There's actually a difference between nudism and hentai in how they express their images, so I think that you need to learn from this lesson just so that you don't make the same mistake again.

Could not agree more to those arguments, the best I've read.

There's a huge difference in how people reacts to that kind of stuff depending on the moment in which you express your opinion. Maybe with only your closer classmates and no teachers around your likings could've been better understood.