Material that would otherwise be considered obscene may be redeemed by “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” In short, cinema is not pornography because it is art. What is it exactly that distinguishes sexually graphic cinema from obscenity? Legally, the difference is clear.

Most people have at some point come across Justice Stewart’s famous description of pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Well, I’m not sure I do. Years later, I am still left wondering whether there actually is such a difference between what we were watching and pornography. We shrunk in our seats, bristling, irritated that we had been accused of watching porn when clearly this was cinema. He gasped and quickly walked back out, and before the door closed, we could hear him shout to his friends, “Dude they’re watching porn in there!” We were mortified. At some point during the screening, someone walked in not realizing the classroom was in use. So, on this particular Monday at 7:00 p.m., eleven film majors and one middle-aged professor sat together and watched Anne Severson’s Near the Big Chakra, a film consisting entirely of close-up shots of thirty-eight different vulvas. For those readers who have never studied film before, most film classes come with a “screening” component, which means that once a week the class gathers in a lecture hall and watches whatever film or films will be discussed that week. The class was “Women and Film,” and we were studying feminist avant-garde cinema. When I was a sophomore in college, my class watched a film about vaginas. Do You Know It When You See It? Cinema, Pornography, and the First Amendment

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