NemZ wrote:1) sex implied as an implied element
2) sex as an explicit plot element
3) sex as a serious narrative focus
4) sex as the entire reason for the work's existence
Re-take, for example, waffles between 2 and 3 from issue to issue.
4 is the point at which I would consider a work to be pornography, but that doesn't mean there still can't be artistic merit to such work.
True. Although 4 actually being a serious work of art is so far and few between that I'd suspect that it has been forgotten to be anything but the "whore-hole" for bad sex puns.
To the best of my knowledge, the last (and only) American "X"-rated film to win an Academy Award was
Midnight Cowboy in the 1960s. The artistic success of what was considered porn has yet to be repeated in American filmmaking.
(The MPAA has replaced the "X" rating category with "NC-17" since then, although what made a 60's film "X" is what makes a modern film "R" these days. We've become desensitized to things as a culture.)