Some people think that pornography is evil, immoral and wrong. I’m not one of those people. I believe that pornography is an acceptable form of art so long as it’s created within the bounds of the world’s various legal systems. Pornography: The Secret History of Civilisation did nothing to change my viewpoint on this topic. Of course, it didn’t try to change my view, which is fine by me. What it tried to do was open my eyes to the long history of erotic imagery. And in that quest, it certainly succeeded. This documentary mini-series is a sometimes fascinating look at the long and varied history of pornography.

Originally aired on British television in 1999, Pornography: The Secret History of Civilisation is a six-part series which examined many aspects of pornography, some things I had considered before and many in which I had not considered. Each of these six parts focused on a different aspect of the history of pornography. Unfortunately, the DVD provided by Koch Vision for review purposes only contains the first three parts. This is a real shame because I was genuinely intrigued by what I saw in the first three parts and, from what I can tell, the other three parts explore areas which I have more of a general interest in becoming better educated.

I’ll comment on each part that I was able to see.

Part 1, The Road to Ruin - The series opens with a look at examples of pornography dating back as far as 2,000 years. Numerous pornographic images, paintings and sculptures were discovered in the 1860s when excavations were done on the lost city of Pompeii, which had been buried by an eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Some truly stunning examples were found: graphic paintings depicting explicit sexual acts and a shockingly explicit sculpture of a man engaging in sexual intercourse with a goat. This is some really strange stuff.

The Road to Ruin also sheds light on societal attitudes during Victorian times when these artifacts were discovered. One person the filmmakers spoke with made a great point when he said that the people of Victorian England were not repressed, they simply wanted to repress all things related to pornographic imagery.

While the subject matter in this particular episode was not something that particularly piqued my curiosity, I found myself watching it with great interest. The filmmakers here do a great job of presenting information in a straightforward manner without forcing opinions on the viewer. I especially appreciate that when I’m watching documentaries.

Part 2, The Sacred and Profane - Here we get a look at the impact of the invention of the printing press on the pornographic world, which as you can imagine was tremendous. The printing press enabled books to be far more available to the common medieval man, not just the obscenely rich.

We also get a look at books prior to the printing press in The Sacred and Profane. In a time when books were prohibitively expensive for all but the richest of the rich, families would have been lucky to own just a single book. I was fascinated to find that necessitated and led to the combination of topics within a single book. For instance, it was very common for prayer books in the Middle Ages to contain sexually explicit images in the margins. This may seem more than a little odd today, but it’s pointed out that such a thing would have been quite normal then.

Also in Part 2, we see an examination of the graphic images carved in stone at the Bourge Cathedral in France, which was built in the Middle Ages. Apparently, sodomy was considered a far more heinous crime than murder in these times and it was not uncommon for churches to depict images of such acts in condemnation of those who would participate in these activities. Again, something I was not at all familiar with prior to seeing this program, and while it’s not something I would take a great interest in, it’s enlightening to learn about and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to see.

Part 3, The Mechanical Eye - This was by far the most interesting episode for me because it focused on the impact of photography on the world of pornography, which obviously is a medium I’ve had far more exposure to than what was looked at in the previous episodes. Of course, photographs revolutionized pornography, making it accessible to virtually everybody. And best of all, many would say, photographs added a great sense of realism to pornographic art. No longer would imagination be required if it wasn’t wanted.

Part 3 looks at one early form of photograph which was called a daguerreotype, a photograph which was formed on a silver-coated metallic plate. Copies of this type of photo were unable to be made so they were only available to those who had a lot of money. It’s pointed out that somewhere around 800 samples of daguerreotypes survive today and that one collector in Germany, Uwe Scheid, owns over 200 of them. 200! This guy is weird to say the least. He keeps his collection in a bank vault and visits them once a week. What a freak.

In addition to early photographs, The Mechanical Eye explores the rise of pornographic magazines from the early days when there were very few publications all the way to today, when we have over 500 different magazines published on a regular basis to service just about every single fetish known to man. Included are comments from Bob Guccione, founder and publisher of Penthouse Magazine. Not that he has much that’s insightful to add, but it’s nice that they spoke with one of the big names in the porn publishing world.

I can’t be certain of what’s included in the remaining three installments in this mini-series, but I did a little research for you, the reader, to see what is included. Part 4, creatively titled Twentieth Century Foxy, apparently looks at the rise of the porn film industry. Part 5, Sex Lives on Videotape, examines how video forever changed the look of pornography and allowed the common person to be not just the consumer of porn, but also a producer. Amateur porn! Part 6, Future Schlock, discusses how digital technology and the Internet have changed both the production and consumption of pornography and how it will continue to change. If these episodes are of the same quality as the first three, I’m certain that they’re worth viewing because the subject matter itself becomes more interesting as it progresses through the history of porn.

Video
It looks pretty good. Colors are bright and vivid. Despite being filmed for television, it looks and feels cinematic. Some of the source materials and photographs are not of the highest quality so it suffers in that respect, but don’t hold that against the DVD. These are nice transfers.

Audio
It sounds fine. All dialogue is crisp and easy to understand. No problems here at all.

I was severely disappointed by the lack of subtitles or closed captions. Either of these would be useful to help follow what is happening on screen, particularly because so much of the dialogue is spoken by off-screen narrators. It’s 2006 and deaf people want to learn about porn just as much as those who are able to hear. Come on, Koch Vision. It doesn’t cost that much to add subtitles to a DVD.

Extras
There are none unless you count things like menus and scene access as extra features, which I don’t. I can’t really blame Koch Vision here because the series is good enough to stand alone without additional material, but it would have been nice to perhaps see anything which was deleted from the program.

Parting Words
Pornography: The Secret History of Civilisation is a sometimes fascinating look at a fascinating but not often studied topic. Face it, people in this world like their porn and I don’t think that’s ever going to change (not that I’d want it to). If anything, what was most enlightening to me about this series was my discovery that people have always been a little bit on the freaky side when it comes to porn. That this societal trait goes back 2,000 years is somewhat affirming. So, if you’re in the least bit interested in the subject matter, I think you’ll find this series to be worth your time and money.