I am still enjoying my yaoi phase and the more I read the more I know that my taste runs towards a special subgenre of yaoi - hardcore yaoi.
When I was younger I felt astounded and bewildered by the growing display of sexuality - some of it rather explicit. I saw Pasolinis "Salo or The 120 days of Sodom", a movie loosely based on the book by the Marquis de Sade with a group of friends when I was 19. I don't know if the other people in my group really were as untouched as they behaved. We were sharing a pack of Haribo Cola bottle-gums while the actors were displaying the various kinds of sexual perversions known to humankind - plus lots of violence and the joy of living under a fascit regime (you get it - this movie is kinda hard to swallow to say the least ...). Whenever I reached into my neighbors Haribo pack I was keenly aware of the fact that he was male and I was not and even more aware that I hardly knew him and couldn't even hazard a guess as to what he might be thinking. As the movie continued I tried to make out the outline of my shoepoints in the dark while the movie characters were moving on to the world of having fun with feces. I never quite enjoyed cola bottle-gums anymore after this. I tried to let my eyes wander but keep my head still, so that it wouldn't be apparent that I was looking anywhere but the big screen in front of us. I did not want to loose face to my pals - maybe they wondered why I behaved so cool and gut-hardened while they were secretly feeling just as sick as I was.
After the movie we were all moving to the only bar we could still find open for a drink and a chat and I was surprised that we actually discussed the movie. That must have been were I heard it the first time - a sentence which should feature again and again in my later life: "It's not porn - it's art!" Huh?!
The eighties and nineties (I guess other decades as well, but I wasn't as aware of it then) have served us lots of sex under the disguise of art. Mostly I think that is just an excuse for people to indulge in their primary instincts under the pretence of being cultured. This whole movement presented us with magazines like "MAX" which was solely bought to admire the newest starlets unclad bossom while pretending to be interested in the article about lifestyle, pop-music or whatever. Or the sex education shows by Annie Sprinkle. I remember a local TV broadcasting company making a life interview of the people lining up at the entrance to ask why they wanted to visit the show. Some people gave reasons like wanting to get rid of their own inhibitations or sex problems, but most people tried to hide their faces from the camera - they knew they were just in it to once compare if Annie Sprinkles organs looked the same live as they did on the videos.
Despite all that I do believe that the sex-art-movement is founded on truth.
With mangas and anime take hardcore mangas like "Under Grand Hotel" by Sadahiro Mika or "Junai Fetizm" by Kanzaki Takashi and compare that to real porn. In both you'll get to see lots of sex, including close ups, dirty language and body fluids. I like hardcore mangas. I don't like porn. The difference lies in the plot, because the plot in a porn is just a sorry excuse of stringing one explicit sex scene after the other.
Let's take "Under Grand Hotel" as an example. This is a story about two originally straight men who meet in an high-security prison in the US. Sword (he is the man candy on above pic) is a black drug dealer, convicted in three cases of murder and sentenced to 200 years of prison. He made it to shut call, which is something like the gang leader of the inmates. New in prison is Sen, a Japanese who went to University and is sentenced to 80 years of prison after killing the husband of his (female) professor with whom he had an affair. The two end up as cell mates. Sword offers Sen protection in exchange for sex. He has been in prison for a while and came to accept doing it with men because ... well, because there aren't any women around and he still wants to have sex. Sen is very reluctant, but eventually sees that there is not much choice about having your backside used for someone elses pleasure in prison - only with Sword he can at least chose who is having a go at it. And after getting to know their bodies really, really well the two eventually fall in love.
If you decide to read the manga, all of the 3 published volumes are scanlated and available for free at mangafox.com - don't get confused at the first chapter: the real story starts at chapter 2.
This manga is really explicit, it shows very graphic hard sex plus it has lots of violence as well. It's also hot - so hot, you should turn your heater down and keep a cold shower available when reading it. Still to me "
it isn't porn, it's art". Because in the end the manga is not about sex - it is about love. Plus the plot involves more (like prison life, drugs, social gaps) is well made and exciting and has excellent art work and intriguing characters (plus even the uke is cute and no 15-year old, chicken breasted wimp). I would definitely list this as one of my favourite yaoi mangas, but it is nothing for the faint hearted ones out there.
Of course between black and white there is also grey. To me the manga and anime "Sensitive Pornograph" was borderline - the anime even more so than the manga. It still has plot - sometimes it even has a plot with originality and potential. But (maybe because it is a collection of short stories) the plot doesn't develop much of that potential so that it gets lost in the abyss of too many all the same sex scenes. To me that is really borderline towards being merely porn, and not art.
As a final goodie I want to let you know of this 13-page-short manga story added as an omake to the manga "Shine" by Hoshino Masami. This short story called "H na kaze no yoru" (A night that should have been perverted) is about women who never saw any porn and want to try it out. It's a cute yet strange story and feels absolutely true to life. http://www.mangafox.com/page/manga/read/2364/shine/chapter.46661/page.3/
