Teaching Post-Pornography

This article introduces the term ‘post-pornography’, drawing on diverse texts from the last three decades. We propose that ‘post-pornography’ expands Porn Studies beyond its focus on explicit representations of sex. First, we outline the history of post-pornography as a concept that emerged in the sex-positive, anti-censorship and queer/feminist moment in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and has subsequently been taken up by a diverse group of artists, activists and scholars to describe practices that both reference and attempt to move beyond pornography. We define post-pornography as characterised by three aspects—the denaturalising of sex, the de-centring of the spectator and the recognition of media and technology as inseparable from sex. We examine the history of Porn Studies in the university, including in our own faculty at UNSW Art & Design, and the singular influence of Linda Williams in defining its place and setting out its pedagogical methods. We propose post-pornography as a framework that can confront prevailing assumptions about sex and sexuality that underpin Porn Studies and its critique of pornography, and outline a set of concepts that have emerged from the development of the second- and third-year art theory course Post-Pornographic Bodies

Effects of Porn: A Critical Analysis

The impacts of pornography are varied and complex. Performers are often thought to be victims of abuse and exploitation, while viewers are regularly accused of becoming desensitised to sexual violence. Further, porn is held by some to perpetuate damaging racial and gender stereotypes. I contend that these accusations, though not entirely baseless, are undermined for two reasons: they rest on questionable empirical evidence and ignore many of the positive consequences porn may have. In this article, I organise my analysis from the screen outward, critically examining the effects porn has on performers, viewers, and wider society, and finding that in each domain it may have both positive and negative outcomes. Following this, I evaluate porn as a form of Bakhtinian carnival and discuss how online porn may offer a mode of resisting hegemonic cultural norms. On the whole, therefore, I argue that the harms attributed to porn have often been overgeneralised and exaggerated, and that porn has a range of effects unable to be captured by a mere pro/anti dichotomy

Beyond Caligula : the reflection on adding pornographic scenes to nonpornographic films in post-production

The presented article analyses the reasons and results of adding pornographic scenes to nonpornographic films by the chosen Western directors. The authors, starting from the case of the of the dark legend of Luis Buñuel’s The Age of Gold (L’âge d ’or, 1930), summarize the history of the phenomenon and observe it using the methodologies of production studies. Furthermore, concerning on the films by Bo Arne Vibenius or Tinto Brass, the authors research on the implications of the directors’ decisions and the ways they reversed the meaning of changing the film in post-production. The examples of the films mentioned in this article come from different cinematographies, periods and genres, what underlines the unique character of the chosen cases

”Other” or “one of us”?: the porn user in public and academic discourse

The consumption of sexually explicit media has long been a matter of public and political concern. It has also been a topic of academic interest. In both these arenas a predominantly behaviourist model of effects and regulation has worked to cast the examination of sexually explicit texts and their consumption as a debate about harm. The broader area of investigation remains extraordinarily undeveloped. Sexually explicit media is a focus of interest for academics because of the way it ‘speaks’ sex and sexuality for its culture. In this paper I examine existing and emerging figures of the porn consumer, their relation to ways of thinking and speaking about pornography, and the implications of these for future work on porn consumption. </p

Pornography and accommodation

ABSTRACT In ‘Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game’, Rae Langton and Caroline West borrow ideas from David Lewis to attempt to explain how pornography might subordinate and silence women. Pornography is supposed to express certain misogynistic claims implicitly, through presupposition, and to convey them indirectly, through accommodation. I argue that the appeal to accommodation cannot do the sort of work Langton and West want it to do: Their case rests upon an overly simplified model of that phenomenon. I argue further that, once we are clear about why Langton and West's account fails, a different and more plausible account of pornography's influence emerges

How Not To Watch Feminist Pornography

This paper has three goals. The first is to defend Tristan Taromino and Erika Lust (or some of their films) from criticisms that Rebecca Whisnant and Hans Maes make of them. Toward that end, I will be arguing against the narrow conceptions that Whisnant and Maes have of what `feminist' pornography must be like. More generally, I hope to show by example why it is important to take pornographic films seriously as films if we're to understand their potential to shape, or mis-shape, socio-sexual norms

Putting Porn Studies (back) into Porn Literacy

This essay explores the idea of porn literacy and in particular its manifestations in popular documentary formats aimed at youth audiences. While education on pornography is increasingly seen as a means to inoculate young people against the supposed ‘messages’ of pornography, those proposed interventions seemingly have no intentions to take up any research insights offered by the discipline of porn studies. What, then, is the purpose of an educative practice that declines to understand the nuanced contours of pornographic histories, production and content? This article begins with an exploration of an example of popular mainstream education offered by youth documentary and argues that porn literacy has little relevance without drawing on porn scholarship