The Past Is A Foreign Country...

Content Advisory: This post and some of the linked articles discuss adult themes that may be unsuitable for children. However, they do not contain any 'adults only' photographs. Except perhaps the picture of Madonna and Britney.

Nora's mum, avert your eyes - this is where Saucy Saturday goes hard core, though in terms only of the subject under discussion. The accompanying image has been suitably censored to salve the sensibilities of viewers, not to mention protect us from infringement of our good host Blogspot's terms and conditions.

The subject is Danish pornography publisher and film producer-distributor Color Climax Corporation which had only been legally in existence a mere six years before the pictured edition was published in 1975.

Prior to that, company founders Jens and Peter Theander, described by Wikipedia as 'brothers who shared a common interest in pornography and easy money' had operated from 1966 clandestinely printing a black and white magazine (would that have made it the Black and White Climax Corporation?) in the face of Danish anti-pornography laws. When Denmark legalised 'porn' in 1969, the brothers switched to colour and found an eager market in other European countries where their product was still illegal.

In its list of 'Pornographic Sub-Genres', Wikipedia defines vintage pornography as 'generally pre-1970s pornography, especially early twentieth-century black and white photographs and stag films'. In effect then, the illustrated edition is not vintage but it does find a place in the hearts of 'admirers of so-called "classic pornography"'.

However, if by 'classic pornography' one means substandard printing and male participants who look like Blakey from On The Buses, you can keep it.

The slim volume, with descriptive text in English and German for those lacking in imagination, features two photo sets: one a pair of young females doing what a pair of young females in such a magazine do and the other a bride dismayed by her husband's passed-out drunkenness on their wedding day accepting the 'commiserations' of two male members of the wedding party.

The former has, of course, been a staple of pornography for as long as it has existed; the latter is today a sub-sub genre that has dispensed with the flimsy pretext of a newlywed husband's inebriation to see a portion of the wedding party willingly adjourn straight from the reception to hotel room orgy.

Such are the mores of the day, which, after all, also see Madonna and Britney not within the pages of Colour Climax but live on stage in London. Ones disapproval of the current state of affairs is not so much behaviour as context.

What is genuinely shocking, however, was the discovery in researching this entry that:

Although generally not mentioned by the multi-national corporation of today, it is notable that Color Climax was one of the only large-scale commercial producers of child pornography in the modern history of erotica to openly advertise the fact. Though participation by such a mainstream studio was unique to Denmark, it generally did not reflect a wide-spread societal acceptance of child pornography in the country at the time.

Such participation was apparently made possible by legal definitions of the time that permitted sexualised images of children to be taken, distributed and possessed provided laws relating to the age of consent and sexual assault were not broken and that the children were not harmed.

Not harmed? Good grief!

How times and the law have changed - thank goodness - though this Wikipedia entry examines the can of worms opened by judicial efforts to expand present-day protection of children to cover 'pseudo-photography' made possible by digital technology, legal definitions of which could, at a stretch, render a snapshot of many classic works of art illegal.

Once again, it's all about context.

Postscript: Sincere apologies to actor Stephen 'Blakey' Lewis.