dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
Herecomesthe rain forwarded to me an interesting scholars view on pornography by Laura Kipnis. The link is at the end. Here are two excerpts:
Pornography's favorite terrain is the tender spots where the individual psyche collides with the historical process of molding social subjects. Of course, neither the culture nor the individual have had their particular borders for very long; these aren't timeless universals. The line between childhood and adulthood, standards of privacy, bodily aesthetics, and proprieties, our ideas about who we should have sex with, and how to do it -- all the motifs that obsess pornography -- shift from culture to culture and throughout history.
*****
And yes, pornography is a business -- as is all our popular entertainment -- which attains popularity because it finds ways of articulating things its audiences care about. When it doesn't, we turn it off. Pornography may indeed be the sexuality of a consumer society. It may have a certain emptiness, a lack of interior, a disconnectedness -- as does so much of our popular culture. And our high culture. (As does much of what passes for political discourse these days, too.) But that doesn't mean that pornography isn't thoroughly astute about its audience and who we are underneath the social veneer, astute about the costs of cultural conformity, and the discontent at the core of routinized and civilized lives. Its audience is drawn to it because it provides opportunities -- perhaps in coded, sexualized forms, but opportunities nonetheless -- for a range of affects, pleasures, and desires: for the experience of transgression, utopian aspirations, sadness, optimism, loss, and even the most primary longings for love and plenitude.
Referring to the first quote: Are you aware of working at the "tender spots" where the desires of the individual butt up against the demands of the culture? Do you know what they are?
I know that's where I work. I work in the area where people lose their autonomy and individual control of themselves to the forces of their desires. The dirty little secret I like to play with is that we're none of us really in control of ourselves. That at times we even long to lose ourselves in one another and give ourselves up to our lusts.
Here a link if you want to read the whole thing. Thanks again to Herecomestherain:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/eloquence.html
Pornography's favorite terrain is the tender spots where the individual psyche collides with the historical process of molding social subjects. Of course, neither the culture nor the individual have had their particular borders for very long; these aren't timeless universals. The line between childhood and adulthood, standards of privacy, bodily aesthetics, and proprieties, our ideas about who we should have sex with, and how to do it -- all the motifs that obsess pornography -- shift from culture to culture and throughout history.
*****
And yes, pornography is a business -- as is all our popular entertainment -- which attains popularity because it finds ways of articulating things its audiences care about. When it doesn't, we turn it off. Pornography may indeed be the sexuality of a consumer society. It may have a certain emptiness, a lack of interior, a disconnectedness -- as does so much of our popular culture. And our high culture. (As does much of what passes for political discourse these days, too.) But that doesn't mean that pornography isn't thoroughly astute about its audience and who we are underneath the social veneer, astute about the costs of cultural conformity, and the discontent at the core of routinized and civilized lives. Its audience is drawn to it because it provides opportunities -- perhaps in coded, sexualized forms, but opportunities nonetheless -- for a range of affects, pleasures, and desires: for the experience of transgression, utopian aspirations, sadness, optimism, loss, and even the most primary longings for love and plenitude.
Referring to the first quote: Are you aware of working at the "tender spots" where the desires of the individual butt up against the demands of the culture? Do you know what they are?
I know that's where I work. I work in the area where people lose their autonomy and individual control of themselves to the forces of their desires. The dirty little secret I like to play with is that we're none of us really in control of ourselves. That at times we even long to lose ourselves in one another and give ourselves up to our lusts.
Here a link if you want to read the whole thing. Thanks again to Herecomestherain:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/eloquence.html
