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November 07, 2005
Successful Art Arouses
Successful Art Arouses
by Kelly Rued
Arousal is inspiration, emotion, and a call to action- isn't that what we want games to be capable of achieving?
Art can move people. Sexual excitement is moving. Yet when a work
includes or focuses on arousing sexual desire all artistic credibility is lost. Why? What is the difference between erotic content and any other content inspiring emotional desire, mental thirst, or a palpable stirring in the belly for expression, release, or knowledge? Any non-erotic work is considered a smashing success if it seduces arousal of some kind from its audience. But erotic works are vilified for this ability to communicate well- to move people.
In his keynote speech at Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, Adam Singer promoted the idea that games will never be a full-fledged artistic medium *without* erotic content. He says, bluntly:
"So the definition of a medium is to be able to communicate three things: stories, truths, and eroticism, or as I would call it, the three F's. Fiction, Faction, and...?! You can work out the last one. If you can't do all three you are not a medium."
I have to agree. There is no justification for avoiding erotic content in games and interactive entertainment software. Erotic love, sex, lust, and our core identities (constructed as much on who we want to be as on who we want to attract as a mate) are passionately intertwined with our sexuality. Eroticism is part of our relationships, our lives, and our sense of self.
Erotic love between parents is the foundation of traditional family
life. In the most basic biological sense, sex has the crucial role of being the starting point for all human life. We are indebted to the wonderment of eroticism from birth and it's a damn shame we are raised to disavow sexuality, to belittle it, and push it into dark bedrooms (or worse, bedroom closets). That sex has become synonymous with "obscenity" in our culture is nothing short of criminal.
We are fast approaching a time of improved eroticism in virtual worlds, and this erotic content will bring mainstream non-gamers to the medium to play out self-actualizing fantasies that extend beyond FPS heroics and god-game power-trips into the realm of everyday living. People will gain historically-unprecedented, discreet, and safe access to erotic experiences and the video game medium will never again be mistaken as simply a time-squandering diversion of childhood. Interactive entertainment experiences have been hovering around puberty for decades in terms of content, and now finally we will see adult themes dealt with on a level that really does arouse interest from mainstream, adult players. Erotic content is not an end in this maturation but a means- possibly the most important and natural means for anything to reach adulthood.
Posted by BrendaBrathwaite at November 7, 2005 10:35 AM | Discuss this post on our forums