Who was that American judge who delivered that famous ruling between accusation of pornography on the one hand and defence of erotica on the other? He couldn't define the difference, he said, but "when I see it I know it." But at the Erotica 2007 show at London's Kensington Olympia last weekend, you'd have seen much at 250 or so stalls, and still not known. At least partly because the world of erotica has clearly moved into the world of gadgetry. Are rubber and metal erotic or pornographic, or something not quite either?
If what is now exhibited as erotica is anything to go by, the British, never celebrated for creative eroticism, have declined further into a rather bored quest for aids to sexual excitement. Erotica 2007 told more about Britain than it showed, and not just because thousands showed up at the three-day show, many in quite inventive shades of undress, or because it was featured all the way from television to the high-minded Guardian. The slew of reviews suggests the seriousness with which the event was taken. The interest, multiplied online, was a picture of the prevailing mood about where many think excitement in relationships lies.
In toys and swinging (swapping) mostly, though seen another way it offered also a purchasable commonality to ways that would seem creative to those who engage in them, and kinky to the outsider. The show sold the lot "stunning performances, steamy experiences, sexy seminars, lingerie, corsetry, fetish wear, art, toys, guys, girls..." It was a weekend to shop, as program editor Caol Milligan had said before the show, for "romance, seduction, divine torture—whatever you desire we can provide".
Not a bad idea, except that leather and pvc suits don't seem to do it. Or Russian whips that leave no marks—"allow the lashes to be very precise", or a "toy masterclass tricks for Christmas and beyond", designer underwear that "emphasises the male genital area", or bondage furniture ("we have a large selection of bondage, dungeon, restraint, obedience, torture, domination, punishment and spanking cages, racks and restraints").
Not everyone is excited by variably torturing electro-stimulation units where "the results speak for themselves", with safety promised first to the "unsure beginner". Or the luxury love-swings with their "unique split cushion design", "breakthrough lubricants", "pocket rockets" and the "technological breakthrough" in new deforestation devices. It was some relief that "Supreme Sausages" turned out to be just a plain catering company. Bindi Ltd, the lone Indian company to participate, offered traditional mehndi designs in unusual places. Some Indian restraint.
Just curious: The three-day show told more about Britain than it showed
You might think after a walkabout at Erotica 2007 that sex in the missionary position between loyal husband and wife is not sex at all; only some sort of enabling activity to set up brief passage for sperm to head out for their potentially procreative date. That kind of sex is not only unaided, but the numbers involved add up to no more than two. A more inclusive loyalty was on offer at the exhibition, as it is increasingly all over Britain at scores of new swinging centres that come up all the time. Swinging Heaven magazine set up stall, competing with online "local swingers" in your neighbourhood, and a swinging resort in France with a six-person Jacuzzi and a four-person massage table, all "away from the road and prying neighbours". And before you travel, if you like, instructions in making your own erotic film from the producer of Sexual Sushi and Female Fantasies with full directions for lighting up a partner and making sure that microphones don't get in the way.
Such supposedly adventurous possibilities are on offer all over Britain now for "freethinking adults who are comfortable with their sexuality". Most of the "free thinkers" who turned up were in their forties and fifties, some two-thirds of them women. Providing for sexual adventures among the middle-aged is now a billion pounds a year market in Britain. As Sam Espensen, who handled the show's PR, said, "We got a bigger footfall than the Ideal Home Exhibition. Attitudes are changing. People are spending more on their sex lives. We did a survey and 52 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds spend £25 or less a year, mainly on condoms, whereas the over-55s, well, that's a £1bn market. The average person coming here spends 250 pounds."
The show is set up at the start of the Christmas shopping season, though among those who set up stall was also a Christian group straining to guide visitors against the evils of pornography. Morality aside, the show might be diverting, perhaps. But erotic? Unlikely. A matter-of-factism in adventure, on display at the show, and more widely in Britain today, has killed eroticism that comes really from the mind. The French seem to have far better understanding of eroticism that works. Story of O, published in France back in 1954, became a celebrated masterpiece of erotic writing that drew both literary awards and police action. That tradition of excellence continues south of the English Channel, rather than silly-looking games that are not even quite pornographic. Sex, yes; but no eroticism please, we're British.
Which means that Indian writers of erotic text, such as the ever-popular Mast Ram, who have often looked West for inspiration, probably need to look away from Britain. And indeed, erotic (or pornographic) writer Mast Ram's work does have a continental flavour. A good deal of his writing appears to be plain translation, but much of it has been adapted rather well, as they say, to Indian conditions. The remarkably vivid Hindi prose is his own, or that of perhaps other writers under that name. And it's erotically un-British. It's service enough to be fed fantasies in our own language—for an Indian to have sex in English is to do it wearing a cultural condom. The world of erotica has long known what Amartya Sen in another context speaks of as the globalisation of ideas.
