International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800-2000

There is nothing so obscure that it might not be the subject for serious academic exploration. This is a manifestation of the complexity of our world and the way humans deal with it; no matter how deep you go, there are still questions and mysteries. Some subjects are easier to study than others, but the academic who studies pornography is up against some particular problems. Lisa Z. Sigel should know. She is a professor of history who has previously written _Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England 1815 - 1914_. In the introduction to the current book for which she is editor, _International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography 1800 -2000_ (Rutgers University Press), she notes particular problems in the study of the subject. It is often hard to find complete collections from which to draw primary material; research on cinematic pornography might simply be illegal in some places; it is hard to get grants to do such studies; and "few other historical sources can so quickly get scholars arrested at customs." There are, however, intrepid academics who are slogging through for us, and _International Exposure_ brings together ten of them with diverse subject matter. Sigel justifies the endeavor: pornography is a vigorous commercial activity, it provides information about types of sexual behavior by time and place, and it indicates cultural attitudes toward sexuality. Nonetheless, most of the chapters here indicate the need for further resources and study about how pornography is produced and used. If you find detailed and academic examinations of aspects of the subject interesting, you will find much here to enjoy. The themes are a grab bag, as befits an edited volume. Initial chapters have to do with Germany, England, and France in the nineteenth century; there are chapters on early twentieth century England and France as well as contemporary Britain; three on post-communist Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary; and finally a chapter on the borderless cyber-world. In an examination of obscenity laws in the German states in the first half of the nineteenth century, it is disconcerting to find few German works on the wrong side of the law that we would consider anything close to pornographic now. Books that had sexual themes even without descriptions of physical intimacy were considered obscene if they depicted an unstable social world or women who were seductresses unworthy of a man's trust. One chapter traces how the image of the flogged slave was used by abolitionists, and since the image was sadder (or more arousing), the slave was generally a female. This sort of BDSM play is very common; that it might be directly related to the slave trade is something I doubt many participants acknowledge. Sigel's own chapter is on pornography that depicted incest in Edwardian England, and gives a brief history of incest laws and the philosophy behind them. Novels on the theme proved to be a charade about the fami