Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 2:13 pm
Not completely cultural.
Obscenity as a principle reveals inherent commonalities shared by specific instances of obscenity that are culturally different.
One aspect of obscenity is a juxtaposition of reality that reveals assumed permanence is actually temporary. This happens when witnessing body parts rearranged into new positions after an auto accident. It’s caused by inherent sensitivity that becomes dulled through repetition. Repetition of the same experience after the first time isn’t as shocking to notions of what should be.
Another aspect of obscenity as a principle is an assault upon empathy. In the movie Clockwork Orange, the droogs holding Alex’s head underwater, while clubbing his elbow and knee joints with police batons, while Alex is vomiting underwater because he is incapacitated by the thought of fighting back, is a direct assault upon the empathy of the viewer who gets to share the experience as more than a thought or inference. Because of the slow motion of the scene, and the glee of the droogs, a viewer has time to somewhat feel the obscene torture. Torture is obscene, although the details of torture may vary by culture.
Folks get used to the shape of the elephant they know, and if moved from the old familiar, reachable portions that they thought was elephant permanence (reality), that former portion of the elephant disappears from direct awareness, and its existence apart from awareness becomes merely an inference existing in malleable memory, and in reasoning based on what’s been experienced of causation in the past.
If nekked women on the beach are considered obscene, it’s because the assumed permanence of clothing that covers the unmentionables has been revealed to be in fact transitory, and the offended one has been involuntarily shifted to a new portion of the elephant (that would look silly if covered by a hippo-sized bikini). The intellect knows that clothing is not permanent, but the experience of nekked women where culturally inappropriate causes a non-intellectual (inherent) reaction ... not because they are nekked, but because the expectation of clothing has been assaulted through the senses.
If one needs to stay on such an obscene beach, perhaps through coercion, continued exposure to the obscene will dull sensibilities, and obscenity that isn’t sensed isn’t obscene … although permanence interrupted is a non-cultural commonality of biologically experienced obscenity.
Which isn't to say that all cross-cultural commonalities are obscene.
