MOKGORO J definitive test, setting three basic guidelines to determine when sexually explicit material may be subjected to state regulation: (a) the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest. (b) the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.61 The Court noted that the First Amendment demanded that statutes “designed to regulate obscene materials must be carefully limited”: the permissible scope of such regulation was restricted “to works which depict or describe sexual conduct”, which conduct “must be specifically designated by the applicable state law.”62 [40] Attempts to produce and apply a definitive, certain and satisfactory definition of obscenity have taxed the ingenuity of American judges. In Jacobellis v Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart famously declared: “I shall not today attempt further to define [obscenity] . . . and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”63 The Court has attempted to clarify the Miller test by defining a “prurient” interest in sex as a “shameful or morbid” interest, as opposed to a “normal and healthy” interest. 64 In my opinion, that elaboration does not, in itself, furnish a great deal of guidance. [41] The application of the third prong of the test, relating to “serious” artistic value, has proved 61 Miller, 413 U.S. at 24. 62 Miller, 413 U.S. at 23-24. 63 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (concurring). 64 Brockett v Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U.S. 491, 504-05 (1985). 22