Pornography is a fragmentation of sex. Any specialist approach to sex is pornographic, is obscene. Any fragmentary approach to any emotion at all is sentimental. Sentimentality consists in taking one aspect of any emotion and playing it up into a high key. Breaking it off from its total frame or its situation. Give sex a visual orientation, pull it out of context into a merely visual setting, and it’s pornographic. That’s why nudity is less pornographic than semi-nudity. Nudity is not fragmentary, it’s getting closer to the unified thing. Whereas any form of semi-clad condition is pornographic because it’s incomplete and fragmentary.
“Love,” Saturday Night, February, 1967, p 26
Year: 1967
Chapter:
Sex and Love
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan