Not taste and aesthetics, but class and power draw the line between porn and erotica. In the world of real-world sex, abuse happens everywhere—not just in porn.
Another F word illustration by Aakriti Sharma. Image courtesy Agent of Ishq. Follow him on Instagram @agentsofishq
What are we really talking about when we talk about the divide between porn and erotica? Why does this division keep returning to our conversations with slippery vanity?
Perhaps the most concise essay on the subject can be found in the film Ishqiya (2010). Babban, the character played by Arshad Warsi, says to Khalu, the character played by Naseeruddin Shah: “Yeh sahi hai Khalu. Tumhara ishq ishq huh, aur humara ishq sex?Because Khalu is imagining the waltz and eyeing Vidya Balan’s character, while Warsi is making whoopie in an actual bed with her. Babban asks what marks one as more sublime than the other? was it finished? One involved physical sex and the other just an erotic allegation? When it comes to desire, everything has a double meaning—sex and love, one clingy twin, are hard to keep apart. The elite have been trying for years, and in a way they do it through the division of erotica and porn. But it’s not just love and sex that they are trying to separate.
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