What are we really talking about when we talk about the division between porn and erotica? Why does this division keep returning to our conversations with slippery futility?
Perhaps the most succinct essay on the topic can be found in the film Ishqiya (2010). The character Babban, played by Arshad Warsi, says to Khalu, the character played by Naseeruddin Shah: “Yeh sahi hai Khalu. Tumhara ishq ishq huh, aur humara ishq sex?” Because Khalu has been imagining waltzes and making eyes at Vidya Balan’s character while Warsi has been making whoopee in an actual bed with her. What marks one as more lofty than the other, Babban asks? That one was consummated? That one involved physical sex and the other merely an erotic charge? When it comes to desire, everything has a double meaning—sex and love, a sticky twosome, are difficult to keep apart. The elites have been trying for years, and one way they do it is through a division of erotica and porn. But it is not only love and sex they are trying to separate.
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