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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 763985" data-attributes="member: 4937">JA: We are about to tread into deep waters.First, I see both a difference in style and in quality.  Royo's style is much darker, grainer, and often more abstract.   That cover is unusual for him in several ways, not the least which is that it features three people looking straight out at the viewer in relatively bright light.  However, despite this it is clearly of a different style than the exagerrated comic book 'action poses' and bright colors that inspire the Dragon cover.I don't at all think he is trying to sell 'cheesecake' - that is to say women as mere sexual objects.  And if you must accuse him of trying to sell cheesecake, let's not forget that one of those three figures is a scantily dressed man.In fact, I disagree with the basic premise.   I don't feel Royo's cover is using a 'sexy woman to get attention' [of a male audience].  Those women are not vulnerable or submissive looking, nor is thier assertiveness overt sexual aggression.   That clues me to the fact that this book/painting is being marketed primarily to a female audience - the presence of the attendent scantily clad male is a big clue thier.   And that shouldn't be all that surprising considering it is a female writer writing what I've have always assumed from the cover to be something of Anne McCaffery style fantasy gothic romance.   And if I am sterotyping the book without having read it, I excuse myself on the grounds that the person who put that cover on the book wanted me to judge the book by its cover.  (Besides which I have Anne McCaffery and several like her on my bookshelf.)I confess here to not having perfect understanding.   My opinion is not fully formed.   But here goes...To a certain extent, I do give the talented artist more leeway with regards to subject matter.   In part because the definition of pornography is so hard to pin down.   Human sexual mores are so readily morphable, that they can be remapped to respond to virtually any sort of stimulus.  There is almost nothing that can be represented which will not seem sexual to someone.  We see sex in everything.  Everything can be used as a sexual metaphor.  I'm reminded of Madonna's comment that she wore crucifixes because 'they are so sexy...they have a bound naked man on them.'   Should I ban the crucifix as pornography because one person with particularly broadly mapped sexual responces (or at least a understanding of how to market that) finds them stimulating in ways not intended by the artist?  For myself, I judge the obscenity of a thing by how clearly the artist intended to provoke a singularly sexual responce in the viewer.   If the artist clearly spent alot of time trying to create a response other than the sexual in the work, then I'm much more likely to cut the artist some slack.  That work of creating multilayered meaning is alot more clear when the artist is in fact talented.  When the artist isn't that talented, and the subject matter is overtly sexual, about all that can come across is the sexual intent.  No other aspect of the work will have any power.There is more to it than that, but that is basically what pornography means for me.</blockquote>

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