Interesting points.BloatedGuppy said:
It's sort of funny that, in the past thirty years, even the things that everyone agrees are pornography have become something very different. I read with a sort of disbelief that at one time A-list celebrities were openly going to watch Deep Throat. With the VCR, pornography became cheaper and easier to view in private. Now, with the Internet, anyone who wants to make pornography can do so, and people who are in to nearly every niche and fetish can find something that appeals to them.
...And it's mostly free. And major porn companies are putting out PSAs saying "C'mon, guys! The tube sites don't love you like we do!" And Playboy is going PG-13.
Pornography is almost an open secret. One might sheepishly- or defiantly- state, "Yeah, I watch pornography. What of it?" And do so in some confidence that in many places there will be at least some people who will back you up, probably because they, too, watch pornography and don't want to be shamed for it.
But at the same time, viewing pornography remains a private and often embarrassing activity, one linked to masturbation. It often comes with an unspoken association that if the viewer was a more successful kind of person, they would be having actual sex rather than hunting through video clips. And given the broad array of fetishes available, it may also imply that the viewer privately has a kink or fetish that they aren't as quick to fess up to.
(Just as an aside, I'm also aware that some couples watch pornography together as part of their mutual sex lives. Regardless, the implications endure.)
I think when we mention "food porn" (...gun porn, ear porn, etc...) what we imply is that the subject of the term has an innate and visceral appeal, especially to devotees of the subject, that's difficult to deny. But even there, there's often a hint of embarrassment: "That looks so tasty, but I know it would be bad for me." "The action was so frenetic I was laughing and shaking in my seat in excitement...! Too bad I had to turn off my brain whenever anyone opened their mouth." "The rhythm and the hook were so insidious that the song was over before I was reminding myself that I was rocking out to one more over-produced manufactured hit machine." This isn't always the case, certainly, but I think that at best the descriptor "porn" implies that one area of sensual quality overwhelms all other considerations.
So, tying all this back in...
I will confess that I've never played one of the Dead or Alive volleyball games. I've never particularly loved the game of volleyball in real life, computer games, or as a spectator sport (like many sports, to me it seems like the occasional amazing play surrounded by a lot of rote patterns.) The reviews I've read have suggested to me that the game itself wasn't one I'd especially enjoy.
But I can still understand how one might, as an admirer of such a game, feel a certain resentment that something they admired was dismissed not merely as pornography, but ineffective pornography- that it had only a single area of merit and that it failed to deliver on it. Maybe I enjoy the light-heartedness of the enterprise. Maybe I'm really invested in these characters. Maybe I appreciate a setting that encourages me to ogle pretty girls without judgement.
...Or maybe I really am using the game as masturbatory fodder and simply don't like feeling like I'm being called out on it.
I guess I think the bottom line is that terming something "pornography", even in what appears to be a relatively sex-positive (or porn-positive) setting still carries with it certain implications, and even stigma.
