ABSTRACT
Pornography is generic and predictable even in comparison with other popular genres. Familiar (stock) characters, phrases, scenarios, acts, expressions, shots and framings are repeated from one set of images or videos to another, from commercial to amateur productions and numerous things in between. All this tends to involve a low degree of surprise. To the degree that repetition, predictability and hyperbole can indeed be considered as generic features of pornography, their role begs for closer consideration that goes beyond stating the obvious – namely that such characteristics do exist. This chapter draws on a content analysis of a sample of 366 porn spam e-mail
messages in an attempt to chart some of the key generic features of commercial heteroporn and its gendered underpinnings, as made accessible through this particular set of material. The chapter both investigates the specific modality of pornography and argues for the need to resist literal readings of its meaning. In the first part, I address the sample of porn spam e-mail in order to map out some of the main generic features and dynamics of commercial pornography. The second part takes a broader look at online pornography and the ways in which the generic features and dynamics of porn (as mapped out in the first part) are played out in the case of viral videos displaying extreme porn, as well as what kinds of challenges are involved in making sense of such videos. All in all, the chapter suggests that feminist analyses should push beyond readings of pornography that are either literal (as in reading relations of control displayed in pornography as exemplary of social power relations, one-to-one) or symbolic (as in interpreting pornography as symptomatic of an ideology). Pornography relies on clear divisions based on identity categories such as age,
class, gender, ethnicity and ‘race’, and these categories are often tied to (explicit, exaggerated) hierarchies and relations of control. Rather than starting with a conflation of the notion of control with that of power, the chapter investigates the meanings of reiteration and recognizability within and for pornography. This analysis paves way to a discussion of the changing roles of pornography in the media landscape, namely its mainstreaming (Attwood 2009a). Little doubt exists as to the development of digital media technologies – cameras and image manipulation software, networked communications and online platforms of all
kinds – having, together with changes in media regulation and media economy, facilitated transformations in the cultural position, and perhaps even the status, of both soft-core and hard-core pornographies (see Paasonen et al. 2007a). In terms of such mainstreaming, it is important to enquire as to which kinds of pornographic texts or examples can gain broader fame or circulation across the media, as well as how the discussions concerning them work to frame pornography and its social implications. All in all, this chapter involves an attempt to articulate spaces for feminist critique sensitive to contexts and differences within the genre, its producers, consumers and platforms of distribution.
