ABSTRACT
A piece of instrumental music might be described, metaphorically, as obscene, but only literally so if the music were 'programme' music, that is, representational of something in the world. A piece of music might conceivably mimic the rhythms or sounds of sexual intercourse and in an obscene way. Roger Scruton, no friend of liberalism in these matters, writes, 'Anything can be represented without obscenity, even the genitals'. This is obviously the case with the representations in, say, a medical textbook and, for many, equally obviously true of most representations of the genitals in the Western tradition of painting the nude. Pornographic magazines are constructed with the intention to cause arousal in some identifiable category of purchasers: foot fetishists, 'normal males', lesbian sado-masochists. A photograph of the crotch of the tree is obscene if it invites us to see in it a fragmented, depersonalized human crotch.
