Pr0n - what is it good for?

Buick6 said:

Yeah you hit the head on the nail. Though Jenna Fine useta remind me of the chicks outta 'Bound' and wuz in alot of lezzo grind-action. But yeah the lack of sensulaity is a big reason that pr0n has turned to shit and the audience that watches and loves this stuff, as it is obviously a market driven thing, is a bigger worry. i mean, I find footage of a girls widened sphincter to be as erotic as the aftermath of a suicide bomber. My goodness, this is like a sick scenarion out of a JG Ballard novel! UUUURRRRCCCHHH!

Click to expand...

^ That has to be one of the more unappetising visuals in modern pornography. Yuck.

I think an option has been missed of the list of things porn is good for in the survey. There is no mention of porns use as a training toll for the abuse of women and children- or as a record of the abuse of women and children.

Not exactly related to any of the (very interesting) discussions people have been having here, but you might be interested in this discussion of the economics of the porn industry.

Also, k-punk's recent discussion of glamor photography in his post on Kate Moss seems relevant. The 'duped literalism' of porn is apparent both in the rise of the lads mag, as k-punk says, and also in the increase in both amateur and 'extreme' (and extremely gynacological) porn. The extreme in porn looks a lot like a desparate response to the fact that pornography, as image, is necessarily unreal - get closer to the (woman's) body, manipulate it in ways that make it ever more apparent that it is a body, and, the thought seems to be, perhaps the image produced will cease to be just an image.

Another link, while I remember it: a webcomic about attending a bukkake filming.

I ve been writing in a spanish porn forum about music and film stars for 9 months, and obviously I ve watched or being in contact with lots of porn movies or pictures.
One thing I want to ask is if porn is a industry that pays more to the women who works there, behind or in front of the cameras, where women direct movies, where women produce films, or are the photographers, why all those wonderful knights will never ask her opinion about the industry. Isn’t It ironic?

Other thing its about women watching porn. Seems like there are no girls watching or buying movies. Or that there it’s a proper lesbian industry (nor the girl vs girl when there is no man around). Or that the woman as consumer is one of the main points of the industry. Or to think that women only want to see “softer” or “emotional” scenes.

About the girls working there. There are a new generation of girls that are doing the roughest material you can think. Most of them have no problems about it or are looking for it. Probably its something to get hype and get big contracts very fast, but I doubt about it. Belladonna is a well known star and when she was going to have a baby made a pregnant film. Or taylor rain that day by day Is one of the main searchs in iafd its doing things like double anal. Or to read about a director talking about girls that want to break records, that can do that better. Maybe the mainstream industry its all about that: faster, louder, higher…

Another thing about the industry. Seems by some opinions that there are only straight porn. I guess that maybe that people didn’t know how big is that industry. From internet models that didn’t get naked, gay porn, alternative porn, fetishism, bondage, bukkake, etc. etc. also a very interesting thing about the industry it’s the way they make specific productions: feet, anal, double anal, creampie, double vaginal, only blowjob, only handjob, girls on latex, girls on girls, etc. etc. I think its important this codification of desire.

Also said the main new genres in the scene are 3 (I guess): gonzo (or the free improvisation of porn), POV (or point of view, the name says it all) and virtual sex. The latter is also very funny. I always thought that some of the options or the possibilities of dvd players will only get a full development in porn. Not only the loops, the multiangle, the change of speed, etc. it will be interesting to read something about porn and technology (one of the things you learn about the new playstation its that there are lots of pages where you could download porn. Also with phones. Virtual sex it’s a series of loops and options you (or at least the guy there) could do to the girl. You could select also if you want that the girl talks more obscene or not. I found it interesting because it brokes the usual duration of a scene or its logic (first she would do that, second that and at the end…). Also its possible the absence of penetration. Obviously, this also codifies sex and direct what you should do or not. Also a main way is the destruction of the film since the becoming of internet or the dvd. Now you can pick your favourite scene, so the film its more a directory than a story or a film. The “extras” section also brings more footage, or new scenes. In main internet pages you could also check to download your favourite pornstar and forget about the film. And also there are compilations about one girl. You don’t need to check the rest, go for what you really want.


and last but not least important, I want to ask what people think about the use of female ejaculation. For some people its just funny (or freak), sometimes I think its to make a girl make what a man “should” do, but obviously better and more times or its just some feminization of the genre. I’m not talking about female orgasm or its fiction. Just in the pyshical action, or the visual effect, and thinking in girls like cytherea or teana lynn. Sorry if I have offended someone with my language. But I prefer it to the trivialization of this discussion.

(i have to cut the message and i ll make a second post about the "real" in porn

About the “real” or the “seduction”, or his lack in porn, I agree with baudrillard in “seduction”. Check:





STEREO-PORNO
Take me to your room and fuck:
me. There is something indefinable in
your vocabulary; something left; to be
desired.
Philip Dick
The Schizos' Ball
71crning everything into reality ,
Jimmy Cliff
The trompe l'oeil removes a dimension from real space, and
this accounts for its seduction . Pornography by contrast adds
a dimension to the space of sex, it makes the latter more real
than the real - and this accounts for its absence of seduction.
There is no need to search for the phantasies that haunt pornography
(fetishisms, perversions, primal scenes, etc.,), for they
are barred by an excess of "reality." Perhaps pornography is only
an allegory, that is to say, a forcing of signs, a baroque enterprise
of over-signification touching on the "grotesque" (literally,
"grotesque" garden art added to a rocky nature as
pornography adds the vividness; of anatomical detail).
The obscenity itself burns and consumes its object . One sees
from up close what one has never seen before ; to one's good
fortune, one has never seen one's genitals function from so close,
nor for that matter, from so general a perspective. It is all too
true, too near to be true. And it is this that is fascinating, this
excess of reality, this hyperreality of things . The only phantasy
in pornography, if there is one, is thus not a phantasy of sex,
but of the real, and its absorption into something other than
the real, the hyperreal. Pornographic voyeurism is not a sexual
voyeurism, but a voyeurism of representation and its perdition,
a dizziness born of the loss of the scene and the irruption of
the obscene.
Consequent to the anatomical zoom, the dimension of the
real is abolished, the distance implied by the gaze gives way
to an instantaneous, exacerbated representation, that of sex in
its pure state, stripped not just of all seduction, but of its image's
very potentiality. Sex so close that it merges with its own
representation : the end of perspectival space, and therefore, that
of the imaginary and of phantasy - end of the scene, end of
an illusion.
Obscenity, however, is not pornography. Traditional obscenity
still contains an element of transgression, provocation, or perversion.
It plays on repression, with phantasies of violence. With
sexual liberation this obscenity disappears: Marcuse's "repressive
desublimation" goes this route (and even if it has not passed
into general mores, the mythical triumph of release today, like
that of repression yesterday, is total) . The new obscenity, like
the new philosophy (la nouvellephilosophy) arises on the burying
grounds of the old, and has another meaning. It does not
play with violent sex, sex with real stakes, but with sex neutralized
by tolerance. Sex here is outrageously "rendered," but
it is the rendering of something that has been removed . Pornography
is its artificial synthesis, its ceremony but not its
celebration. Something neo or retro, like those green spaces
that substitute their chlorophyl effects for a defunct nature, and
for this reason, partake of the same obscenity as pornography.
Modern unreality no longer implies the imaginary, it engages
more reference, more truth, more exactitude - it consists in having
everything pass into the absolute evidence of the real . As
in hyperrealist paintings (the paintings of the "magic realists")
where one can discern the grain of the face's skin, an unwonted
microscopics that lacks even the charm of the uncanny.
Hyperrealism is not surrealism, it is a vision that hunts down
seduction by means of visibility. One "gives you more." This
is already true of colour in film or television. One gives you
so much - colour, lustre, sex, all in high fidelity; and with all
the accents (that's life!) - that you have nothing to add, that
is to say, nothing to give in exchange. Absolute represssion: by
giving you a little too much one takes away everything. Beware
of what has been so well "rendered," when it is being returned
to you without you ever having; given it!
A bewildering, claustrophobic and obscene image, that of
Japanese quadrophonics: an ideally conditioned 'room, fantastic
technique, music in four dimensions, not just the three of
the environing space, but a fourth, visceral dimension of internal
space. The technical delirium of_ the perfect restitution of
music (Bach, Monteverdi, Mozart!) that has never existed , that
no one has ever heard, and that was not meant to be heard like
this. Moreover, one does not "hear" it, for the distance that allows
one to hear music, at a concert or somewhere else, is
abolished. Instead it permeates one from all side's ; there is no
longer any musical space; it is the simulation of a total environment
that dispossesses one of even the minimal analytic perception
constitutive of music's charm. The Japanese have
simple-mindedly, and in complete good faith, confused the real
with the greatest number of dimensions possible.'If they could
construct hexaphonics, they would do it. Now, it is by this fourth
dimension.which they have added to music, that they castrate
you of all musical pleasure. Something else fascinates (but no
longer seduces) you: technical perfection, "high fidelity," which
is just as obsessive and puritanical as the other, conjugal fidelity
This time, however, one no longer even knows what object
it is faithful to, for no one knows where the real begins or ends,
nor understands, therefore, the fever of perfectibility that persists
in the real's reproduction .
Technique in this sense digs its own grave. For at the same
time that it perfects the means of synthesis, it deepens the criteria
of analysis and definition to such an extent that total faithfulness,
exhaustiveness as regards the real becomes forever
impossible. The real becomes a vertiginous phantasy of exactitude
lost in the infinitismal .
In comparison with, for example, the trompe-l beil, which
saves on one dimension, "normal" three-dimensional space is
already debased and impoverished by virtue ofan excess ofmeans
(all that is real, or wants to be real, constitutes a debasement
of this type). Quadrophonics, hyperstereo, or hifi
constitute a conclusive debasement.
Pornography is the quadrophonics of sex. It adds a third and
fourth track to the sexual act. It is the hallucination of detail
that rules. Science has already habituated us to this microscopics,
this excess of the real in its microscopic detail, this voyeurism
of exactitude - a close-up of the invisible structures of the cell
- to this notion of an inexorable truth that can no longer be
measured with reference to the play of appearances, and that
can only be revealed by a sophisticated technical apparatus. End
of the secret .
What else does pornography do, in its sham vision, than reveal
the inexorable, microscopic truth of sex? It is directly descended
from a metaphysics that supposes the phantasy ofa hidden truth
and its revelation, the phantasy of "repressed" energy and its
production - on the obscene scene of the real. Thus the impasse
of enlightened thought when asked, should one censure
pornography and choose a well-tempered repression? There can
be no definitive response in the affirmative, for pornography
has reason on its side; it is part of the devastation of the real,
of the insane illusion of the real and its objective "liberation ."
One cannot liberate the productive forces without wanting to
"liberate" sex in its brute function ; they are both equally obscene.
The realist corruption of sex, the productivist corruption
of labour - same symptoms, same combat.
The equivalent of the conveyor belt here, is the Japanese vaginal
cyclorama - it outdoes any strip-tease. Prostitutes, their thighs
open, sitting on the edge of a platform, Japanese workers in
their shirt-sleeves (it is a popular spectacle), permitted to shove
their noses up to their eyeballs within the woman's vagina in
order to see, to see better - but what? They clamber over each
other in order to gain access, and all the while the prostitutes
speak to them gently, or rebuke them sharply for the sake of
form. The rest of the spectacle, the flagellations, the reciprocal
masturbation and traditional strip-tease, pales before this moment
of absolute obscenity, this moment of visual voracity that goes far beyond sexual possession.
.

(continues...)

]A sublime pornography: if
they could do it, these guys would be swallowed up whole within
the prostitute. An exaltation with death? Perhaps, but at
the same time they are comparing and commenting on the
respective vaginas in mortal seriousness, without ever smiling
or breaking out in laughter, and without ever trying to touch
- except when playing by the rules. No lewdness, but an extremely
serious, infantile act borne of an undivided fascination
with the mirror of the female organ, like Narcissus' fascination
with his own image. Beyond the conventional idealism of the
strip-tease (perhaps there might even be some seduction here),
pornography at its most sublime reverses itself into a purified
obscenity, an obscenity that is purer, deeper, more visceral. But
why stop with nudity, or the genitalia? If the obscene is a matter
of representation and not of sex, it must explore the very
interior of the body and the viscera. Who knows what profound
pleasure is to be found in the visual dismemberment of mucous
membranes and smooth muscles? Our pornography still
retains a restricted definition. Obscenity has an unlimited future .
But take heed, it is not a matter of the deepening of a drive ;
what is involved is an orgy of realism, an orgy ofproduction .
A rage (perhaps also a drive, but one that substitutes itself for
all the others) to summon everything before the jurisdiction
of signs. Let everything be rendered in the light of the sign,
in the light of a visible energy. Let all speech be liberated and
proclaim desire . We are reveling, in this liberalization, which,
in fact, simply marks the growing; progress of obscenity. All that
is hidden and still enjoys a forbidden status, will be unearthed,
rendered to speech and made to bow before the facts. The real
is growing ever larger, some day the entire universe will be real,
and when the real is universal, there will be death.
Pornographic simulation : nudity is never anything but an extra
sign . Nudity veiled by clothing functions as a secret, ambivalent
referent. Unveiled, it surfaces as a sign and returns to
the circulation of signs: nudity de-sign. The same occurs with
hard core and blue porn : the sexual organ, whether erect or
open wide is just another sign in the hypersexual panoply.
Phallus-design . The more one advances willy-nilly in sex's veracity,
in the exposure of its workings, the more immersed one
becomes in the accumulation of signs, and the more enclosed
one becomes in the endless over-signification of a real that no
longer exists, and of a body that never existed. Our entire body
culture, with its concern for the "expression" of the body's
"desires," for the stereophonics of desire, is a culture of irredeemable
monstrosity and obscenity.Hegel: "Just as when speaking of the exteriority of the human
body, we said that its entire surface, in contrast to that of
the animal world, reveals the presence and pulsation of the
heart, we say of art that it has as its task to create in such a way
that at all points of its surface the phenomenal, the appearance
becomes an eye, the seat of the soul, rendering itself visible
to the spirit ." There is, therefore, never any nudity, never any
nude body that is simply nude; there is never just a body. It
is like the Indian said when the white man asked him why he
ran around naked: "For me, it is all face." In a non-fetishistic
culture (one that does not fetishize nudity as objective truth)
the body is not, as in our own, opposed to the face, conceived
as alone rich in expression and endowed with "eyes" : it is itself
a face, and looks at you. It is therefore not obscene, that
is to say, made to be seen nude. It cannot be seen nude, no
more than the face can for us, for the body is - and is only
- a symbolic veil; and it is by way of this play of veils, which,
literally, abolishes the body "as such," that seduction occurs .
This is where seduction is at play and not in the tearing away
of the veil in the name of some manifestation of truth or desire .
The indistinction of face and body in a total culture of appearances
- the distinction between face and body in a culture
of meaning (the body here becomes monstrously visible,
it becomes the sign of a monster called desire) - then the total
triumph in pornography of the obscene body, to the point
where the face is effaced. The erotic models are faceless, the
actors are neither beautiful, ugly, or expressive; functional nudity
effaces everything in the "spectacularity" of sex. Certain
films are no more than visceral sound-effects of a coital closeup;
even the body disappears, dispersed amongst oversize, partial objects.
Whatever the face, it remains inappropriate, for it
breaks the obscenity and reintroduces meaning where everything
aspires to abolish it in sexual excess and a nihilistic vertigo.
At the end of this terrorist debasement, where the body (and
its "desire") are made to yield to the evidence, appearances no
longer have any secret . A culture of the desublimation of appearances:
everything is materialized in accord with the most
objective categories. Apornographic cultureparexcellence; one
that pursues the workings of the real at all times and in all places.
A pornographic culture with its ideology of the concrete, of
facticity and use, and its concern with the preeminence of use
value, the material infrastructure of things, and the body as the
material infrastructure of desire. Aone-dimensional culture that
exalts everything in the "concreteness of production" or of
pleasure - unlimited mechanical labour or copulation. What
is obscene about this world is that nothing is left to appearances,
or to chance. Everything is avisible, necessary sign. Like
those dolls, adorned with genitalia, that talk, pee; and will one
day make love. Andthe little girl's reaction : "My little sister, she
knows how to do that too. Can't you give me a real one?"
From the discourse of labour to the discourse of sex, from
the discourse of productive forces to that of drives, one finds
the same ultimatum, that ofpro-duction in the literal sense of
the term . Its original meaning, in . fact, was not to fabricate, but
to render visible or make appear. Sex is produced like one
produces a document, or as one says of an actor that he performs
(se produit) on stage.
To produce is to materialize by force what belongs to another
order, that of the secret and of seduction. Seduction is, at all
times and in all places, opposed to production. Seduction removes
something from the order of the visible, while production
constructs everything in full view, be it an object, anumber
or concept .
Everything is to be produced, everything is to be legible,
everything is to become real, visible, accountable; everything
is to be transcribed in relations of force, systems of concepts
or measurable energy ; everything is to be said, accumulated,
indexed and recorded . This is sex as it exists in pornography,
but more generally, this is the enterprise of our entire culture,
whose natural condition is obscene: a culture of monstration,
of demonstration, of productive monstrosity.
No seduction here, nor in pornography, given the abrupt
production of sexual acts, and the ferocity of pleasure in its
immediacy. There is nothing seductive about bodies traversed
by a gaze literally sucked in by a vacuum of transparency ; nor
can there be even a hint of seduction within the universe of
production, where a principle of transparency governs the
forces belonging to the world of visible, calculable phenomena
- objects, machines, sexual acts, or the gross national
product.
The insoluble equivocalness of pornography: it puts an end to
all seduction via sex, but at the same time it puts an end to
sex via the accumulation of the signs of sex. Both triumphant
parody and simulated agony - there lies its ambiguity. In a sense,
pornography is true: it owes its truth to a system of sexual dissuasion
by hallucination, dissuasion of the real by the hyperreal,
and of the body by its forced materialization .
Pornography is usually faulted for two reasons - for
manipulating sex in order to defuse the class struggle (always
the old "mystified consciousness") and for corrupting sex (the
good, true sex, the sex to be liberated, the sex to be considered
amongst our natural rights) by its commodification. Pornography,
then, is said to mask either the truth of capital and the infrastructure,
or that of sex and desire. But in fact pornography
does not mask anything (yes, that is indeed the case). It is not
an ideology, i.e., it does not hide some truth; it is a simulacrum,
i .e., it is a truth effect that hides the truth's non-existence.
Pornography says: there must be good sex somewhere, for
I am its caricature. In its grotesque obscenity, it attempts to save
sex's truth and provide the faltering sexual model with some
credibility. Now, the whole question is whether good sex exists,
or whether, quite simply, sex exists, somewhere - sex as
the body's ideal use value, sex as possible pleasures which can
and must be "liberated ." It is the same question demanded of
political economy: is there "good" value, an ideal use value beyond
exchange value understood as the inhuman abstraction
of capital - an ideal value of goods or social relations which
can and must be "liberated"?

^Um, that looks interesting but the formatting is horrible - no way I'm going ot be reading that. Could you edit it to make it more readable or just post an link to something external?

If we're gonna do French philosophers on porn, then here is Badiou, from an essay called 'Philosophy and Cinema':

'Sexual activity, filmed directly on bodies, forms a major part of what is authorized by dominant contemporary imagery. It is opposed to the metonymy of desire, which was one of the key characteristics of classic cinematographic art, and which aimed at avoiding the censor by sexualizing tiny details. The artistic problem is thus: what usage can be made of sexualized nudity in its tendentiously full exposition?'

Badiou also discusses the failure of the porn-ish director Benazeraf to 'live up to his promises' as a <i>mass auteur</i> (presumably of 'revolutionary porn')...but if anyone knows anything more about Benazeraf...

re, gonzo porn - I assume there must be <i>some</i> that involves faintly attractive people doing things in a way that would indicate they were actually into it (btw, sex lies and videotape is on C4 at midnight tonight, tee hee)......

I've not heard of POV porn before but I guess I know someone who makes it, or used to (filming facials whilst, er, simultaneously, er, providing them)...but that close-up thing has a deliberate fish-eye effect, no? It's more graphic than graphic...'make it feel like real'....the sorta logical conclusion of the shaved/massively-overlit/pinkish/garish/pneumatic contemporary porn thing - pussies are bullshit! double-anal as bare (heh)minimum....is it any wonder that watching Garbo in a long-sleeve dress is like sex beyond sex, i.e. impossible...?

infinite thought said:

re, gonzo porn - I assume there must be <i>some</i> that involves faintly attractive people doing things in a way that would indicate they were actually into it (btw, sex lies and videotape is on C4 at midnight tonight, tee hee)......

Click to expand...

i read that the vast majority of porn on the net is now gonzo - partly because of the cheapness of production costs, but also because a lot of people find mainstream porn models intimidating - easier to put themselves in an actors place when its just normal human beings.

bassnation said:

easier to put themselves in an actors place when its just normal human beings

Click to expand...

the question of identification is an interesting one - so most people on the (admittedly limited) thread poll have voted in favour of the idea that porn is nothing more than a 'wanking tool'. But 'tool' in what sense? As basic animal stimulant, in which the 'act' is a reminder of basic physical capacity? Or that one 'identifies' in one way or another with the bloke or the gal, or the bloke/bloke, or the girl/girl....or do people actually get off on the idea of <i>being filmed</i>, such that porn is the paranoic desire for representation made manifest ('make love to the camera')....and that wanking to porn is like being faintly smiled at by the big other.

First of all: sorry if i sounded very optimistic about porn. I also find it boring. But the same way I could find boring to watch films by, lets say, dreyer or Angelopoulos. With them I usually end sleeping, and its not because they are boring (at least to me) rather than being very excessive in the way they show things, very pure in the way they work the images. I know porn don’t have the structure that support art cinema, but its funny how (at least in gonzo) its also the unique place where people can find a take that longs 3 to 5 minutes or more. Maybe its also to try to get a “real” feeling or a “documental” style. I forget to mention that option where a pornstar go to a sexshop an elect one of the consumers to be her partner. Maybe the thing about porn is what many people think about repetition in music “wait if something happens”. About the representation of sex in artsy films or in “commercial” productions ( or at least with better distribution) I also tried to watch those scenes and see if the treatment was the same or not. In films like “nine songs”, “intimacy” or those by larry clark, I think it’s the same. It matters for the narration et al, but they are just trying to look it in a more “natural” way, more like a documental. Only to look more tasteful. In “the brown bunny” at least, the brutality of the scene try to affect in a different way that “porn? here? oh and its not my imagination, there are more people”. About artsy films I watched “fuses” by carole scheeman (its on ubu web, the same copy I downloaded in p2p systems. Rippers are proud to get to the academy) and that woman john zorn made a soundtrack for her films. If there is interest about those films you can download “fuses” from ubuweb and I suppose I could send a yousendit link to the people who are talking in this thread and wanted to see the other one.

Sorry also for the long quote. I think the text touch thing in tangential ways and better to read them all. About the links that wrong posted here I started to read that thesis about the economics of porn and its very useful (at least those first pages answers me about the specialization in pornstars). So thanks for the links.

A funny thing about double anal. Lads found it “gay”. Maybe its because the guy somehow gets passive or in touch with other guy. Also about the pneumatic, I guess you are referring to a king of girl that is the “Vivid” pornstar (jenna jameson et all the cru). Other studios had other images for their stars, so, let’s say taylor rain it’s the opposite, common, drug-addict and dark hair. Or jenna haze, that also didn’t fit with the classic pornstar. about bukkake. Its just “transgression”, that is, to use your genitals in a no reproductive way (stupid but that is all the transgresive that its porn, using them in wrong ways). So bukkake, doesn’t mean anything except a multiplication of the number of participants. Also if the bukkake you have seen its occidental, it’s softer than the Japanese. At least here the subject can close their eyes.


About the question of what kind of tool? It’s a great question because how people relate themselves to porn is what I always wanted to know, and I suppose there are multiple answers. I’m going to make pretentious crap now: I suppose that this its related to how people get excited when they are doing it. If they come to the orgasm for something in particular, a movement, a rhythm, a look, a hand over the skin, or whatever. So when you are outside this environment you only have the option to have this by your own senses, to write your own narration to (re)create a fantasy landscape. So porn its like a compilation of those impulses (visual, sonics, language). In photos involving the sex act its easy to see that. They are abstracting one moment and let you to make your “own” film. There is a visual narration but you can abstract that and get a fixation with only an image. It happens also with people getting excited by a scene in a tv series, an ad or a film. In the forums about film stars or famous people, you can watch the use of gifs like that in avatars. Catching a moment, capturing a moment, when that all looked perfect. But also people get fixations with body parts (“it’s all ok if there are big…”) or with models, or looks, or to dream that they are there, or that they should try that with his/her partner (remembering now an advice in one webpage something about don’t try to recreate this at home because you can get damaged, our actors are specialists) or just with the freak side of this (the questions about “did anybody have a video involving 300 women doing…?) or with people stretching or with the biological side (use of speculums, or creampie where you’ll never forget how your muscles work), or with situations (bondage, fetichism, etc.)… sorry, I didn’t get an answer for that question and I’ve read lots and lots of answers, petitions or posts… I never did it in that forum, but I was going to do a poll about if people since they are using porn get their fantasies with the stars instead of anybody else existing or not.

what of late 60s brechtian semiporn though? (ha i am courting self parody here, no, wait!)

films like sjoman's 'i am curious yellow' or makavejev's 'switchboard operator', or even wexler's 'medium cool' are kindof interesting, cos they combine all the godardian props- parallel political commentary, verfremdungseffekt and so on- with sex scenes that are very explicit but also very nervous and unsure of themselves, a kind of attempt at an interruption of the 'real'- in a similar way to the sex in 'don't look now'. this does get a bit schimindie if you pursue it too far- ie some things are better left un-demystified

Reminds me of Zizek's remarks on porn in Looking Awry, where he asks what would happen if, say, a mainstream film like The River Runs Through It included an explicit sex scene. Zizek says that the film couldn't incorporate the real of the sex... any such scene would fatally destabilize it, make the rest of the film only watchable as porn...

infinite thought said:

Am intrigued by the idea of porn with political overtones - no, not the Nazi stuff, too obvious vis-a-vis power-relations - but Communist/Anarchist = egalitarian porn! Plus the uniforms, obv.

Click to expand...

Speaking of which, I've just discovered this, from The Idea of Prose

Agamben said:

In pornography, the utopia of a classless society displays itself through gross caricatures of those traits that distinguish classes and their transfiguration in the sexual act. Nowhere else, not even in a carnival's masquerade, does on find such a stubborn insistence on class markers in dress at the very moment ithat the situation both transgresses and nullifies them in the most incongruous of ways. The starched caps and aprons of maids, the worker's overalls, the butler's white gloves and striped waistcoat, and more recently, even the smocks and half-masks of nurses, all celebrate their apotheosis at the moment in which, set like strange amulets on intextricably tangled naked bodies, they seem to trumpet forth that last day on which they are to appear as the emblems of a community we can still barely glimpse.

Click to expand...

Am totally impressed that this thread has managed to refer to Baudrillard, Zizek, Badiou and Agamben on porn - and no smutty comments either - it's like the Enlightenment or something!

Reckon Agamben might be a little optimistic in the idea that folk dressing up in class markers and screwing heralds the dawn of an emancipated age and a coming community (coming community - ha ha! That's brilliant), but it's not an uninteresting point.

Still not found any anarchist/communist porn tho....

communist porn

well it is a little tooo arty for your purposes but this film might fit the bill

owen said:

well it is a little tooo arty for your purposes but this film might fit the bill

Click to expand...

oh cheers - cos all I'm after is cheap commie smut..?! I can do arty!

german dealer sent me this with a record i bought:

infinite thought said:

Still not found any anarchist/communist porn tho....

Click to expand...

I've often had Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" described to me as "anarchist porn", but not in the sense we're talking about here...