Erotic art is not new, not in any form. On a historical timeline, pornography is a relatively recent development in sexually explicit material, but the art of drawing, painting and writing about people getting it on has been around as long as we have. The Kama Sutra of ancient India included a detailed how-to section on sex. During the Edo era in Japan, amazingly accurate and detailed woodblock prints of explicit sex scenes were made. Ovid wrote extensively about the art of arousal, and later Rousseau wrote about reading some of his favourite "literature" with one hand. It seems that as soon as we started to create any form of art, we immediately found a way to display human sexuality, and before the age of pornography it was usually done in a reasonably artistic and intriguing way.

That intrigue is easy to understand: humping is one of our top-three existential urges (along with eating and pooping). And porn does serve a certain function—you can only watch it for so long before getting somewhat "inspired." But there’s the rub: how much inspiration can you get from something that lacks any of its own? It takes imagination to feed imagination, and fantasy to inspire fantasy. Porn may conveniently suit our culture of instant gratification, but, at the same time, it’s just not all that gratifying. It’s like eating fast food: your appetite may be momentarily fulfilled, but then you’re left with a mess to clean up, a vaguely gross feeling and some shame.

The porn of yore demonstrated artistic expression, which in turn elicited an element of engagement. The sexuality depicted was as much implicit as explicit, and required a level of interpretation and imagination. Before pornography, erotica invited the stimulation of both your higher faculties and your lower regions, but we seem to have forgotten about the function of our brain as a sexual organ. The original definition of the word "pornography" literally meant "the writing by or about whores." (Although other subjects involved schoolroom sodomy, nuns having sex in the convent and the burning desires of priests, rulers, etc.) It provided the average person an opportunity to explore the taboo through a safe medium. But it also functioned beyond that: much of it used the shock value of sex to criticize the Church, the State and the social norms of the time. It was ensconced in fantasy. It was deliberately subversive. And it deviated from what was socially acceptable and conventional.

So, part of the very definition of pornography is to be deviant—outside of what we consider to be the social norm. And perhaps it's important that it continues to exist there, to indulge fantasy and manifest desires we might not realize we have—and still may not ever want to actually fulfill. At the same time, however, the formula behind current mainstream porn is commercially motivated. The bodies and sex acts it depicts are just details in a larger money-making formula designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Therefore, there is no artistic merit or standard of quality, and as a result it becomes tacky, obvious and far too literal.

Beyond that, relegating porn to the periphery creates a schism—a division between real sex and all-too-real sex, an overly realistic depiction of unrealistic sexual experiences. The generic disclaimer that appears before any porn film says it all:

WARNING: The sexual activities depicted in this film may be medically harmful. In addition, they are not necessarily healthy, safe, or suggested.

But who reads disclaimers? And who can possibly maintain any suspension of disbelief when what they’re watching is so incredibly graphic? Most porn is made so quickly and so cheaply that the lack of production value puts you smack in the middle of the action, unable to disassociate and distinguish between what’s happening and the fantasy it’s supposed to represent.

On the same note, it’s possible that 21st century porn is the worst method of sexual education ever conceived. Manifesting fantasy in such plain terms is unfair to the uninitiated. If the images the sexually inexperienced are exposed to form their idea of what sex is supposed be like, they could easily become the source of acute anxiety when the real thing finally happens—especially if expectations include extended cirque du soleil routines that culminate in something akin to catholic communion with an entirely different type of host.

Even to the sexually initiated, porn runs the risk of subconsciously reaffirming negative body images, sexual insecurities and misguided notions of sex in general. It may also reinforce a subconscious differentiation between the people we love and the people we fuck—the old madonna/whore complex. This fragmented approach to sex compartmentalizes connections between partners, deprives them of the opportunity for personal fulfillment and destroys the experimental nature of the act that provides much of its excitement. It perpetuates the unfortunate assumption that making love and getting fucked have to be mutually exclusive events, that wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am never includes a cuddle, and that even a madonna doesn’t mind the occasional moneyshot.

Another glaring point is that porn is almost entirely male-driven and dominated. This contributes directly to the objectification of women by portraying them as sexual receptacles, a role that is made obvious by the ubiquitous slack-mouthed, dead-eyed stare and general submissiveness of female posers and performers. Even the lesbian sex in mainstream porn caters to a male audience. Although there are women who do enjoy it, and new trends in porn made by/for women are emerging, the vast majority is decidedly one-sided.

If porn is an accurate reflection of our contemporary ornery inclinations, then perhaps we’re willing to accept the simplification of our sexuality because it makes things manageable. It portrays a way for us to get our jollies without complicated lingering factors like intimacy or emotion—which are inconveniences in a world where we expect things to come easily and leave quietly. We’ve purposefully broken sex down into anatomical pieces to make it easier to swallow. But let’s face it, single-dose simulated sex is still no substitute for the real thing. In the end, the real thing just may not be as simple as we’d like it to be.

Anais Nin, the infamous French novelist, said it best in a letter, responding to a man who suggested she “leave out the poetry” in her erotica: "Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore.” She goes on to explain how wrong it is not to mix sex with “emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities…This," she claimed, "is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements.”

For better or worse, as a society we produce and consume pornography because we have some basic need for it. How else could we explain that it has become a multi-billion dollar industry, deeply embedded in every form of media? Pornography has become mainstream; it has moved beyond legitimization and is actually approaching glamourization. Take a look around: in recent years sexual attitudes have become more relaxed, the censorship noose has loosened, and the diminishing forbidden factor has made it less shameful. But while our attitudes towards both sex and pornography are progressing, the quality of the product is decidedly not. When you stop to think about it, the only thing wrong with porn anymore is that it just plain sucks.