“PORNIFICATION: Pornography and identification in the modern media age.”

Review by: Edward St.Boniface

‘Okay, so we’ve got five or six real hot girly vamps sitting around in the dungeon talking about their warlocks (who just ain’t giving them the Satisfaction; doombabe). And one goth-chick with legs a mile long called Oblivia takes out this massive black spiked battery dildo and the others start to go all horny, and then this party of gimps from downstairs turn up all in chains and it starts to get real hot and heavy in the cauldron-hot tub, and…’

Most pornography is essentially infantile ‘let’s shock the grownups’ (see above) stuff with little actual connection to identity politics, largely being the fantasies of the makers themselves, and this is the message that comes a little reluctantly out of this serious and well-written book from a group of Finnish social and media professors examining the role of ‘porno chic’ and internet sex-blogging (cyberbating?) on sites as diverse as the British homosexual-aimed ‘Gaydar’ site to the rather more mainstream COSMOPOLITAN online magazine and its forums.

We live in an age where the idea of ‘forbidden’ or ‘illicit’ passion, the essential aspect of rebellion and moral transgression pornography goes forward from, is increasingly hard to isolate or define. In a society genuinely sexually permissive, at least in much of the Western world, the average individual is no longer restrained in an actual sense by class or propriety or stigmatism in finding (or looking for) sexual satisfaction. So how does pornography, depending on that element of secrecy and potential censure, respond when even pole dancing classes are openly advertised as a leisure pursuit? PORNIFICATION tries to explore how this once secretive industry has now become corporatized and come into the mass media.

It covers the history of filmed pornography from the 1970s when the idea of ‘Porn As Art’ emerged with various film-makers like David Hamilton (‘BILITUS’, ‘TENDER COUSINS’) and even Larry Flynt the creator of HUSTLER magazine and of course the commodified soft porn films first sponsored and then made directly by the PLAYBOY corporation, which in the late 1970s marked for the first time publicly quoted companies with other corporate investors becoming makers and distributors of pornography.

Through the 1980s with video availability, production values and budgets soared from the sordid ‘stag movies’ in circulation from the earliest days of film, and pornography as an industry grew to such a giant enterprise in America that it now rivals Hollywood in profitability and far outstrips it in output volume. The DVD revolution has simply accelerated the process although free availability of hardcore porn on the internet is a strong rival for sales, meaning that a strong corporate branding element has now entered the porno movie trade.

What is so fascinating about the book is how our collective experience of pornography and fetishistic porno-chic, now an established part of mainstream culture through advertising, has been originally shaped by a noticeably small overall number of pornographic films and genres, mostly American but with some European influence, up until the ‘porno chic’ era of the 1990s.

Movies like ‘DEEP THROAT’, ‘DEBBIE DOES DALLAS’, ‘LET ME TELL YA ‘BOUT BLACK CHICKS’, ‘BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR’, ‘THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES’, made purely for the ‘grindhouse’ porno sleaze-cinemas of the 1970s are now ironically seen as forming part of the sexual revolution so much talked about at the time and that era even now celebrated nostalgically by such modern mainstream movies as ‘BOOGIE NIGHTS’ and ‘THE PEOPLE VERSUS LARRY FLYNT’, although a darker and more grimly realistic view of the diehard ‘pornoholic’ falling into the extremes of their addiction can be seen in the remarkable ‘AUTOFOCUS’.

One of the most telling aspects about sexual fantasy is the portrayed dynamic of power and submission whether racially or class-motivated and an especially interesting part of several articles details how the symbols of fetishism and sado-masochism have been progressively drawn into consumer culture so that a lot of pornography now depicts not genuine sexual fantasy but ownership fantasy in exactly the same manner that cars and home furnishings are marketed. The assumption now in advertising is that with wealth also comes sexual dominance and willing submission on the part of a good-looking partner or male/female harem.

The music promo is also a significant element of the porn-chic tendency going straight into mainstream media. Once an edgy, political and often highly subversive medium in the early days of MTV alongside obvious corporate product, today’s promos at the highest end of the music industry are being made by top directors with full commercial-level budgets and have come inevitably to resemble extended commercials – but often incorporating far more gratuitous and graphic displays of sexual ownership and submissive relationships, particularly in the case of hip hop and rap promos. There are now various DVD porn series which are specifically a direct transference of rap ‘bitch’ dancers and choruses into a pornographic context, heavily reinforcing these aesthetic and consumer-specific relationships.

Unfortunately the tone of a lot of the book is pretty dry and academic. There is no subject more ripe for satire than the juvenile excesses of porn which is made by and for people who often have a distinctly unpleasant agenda. The egos and vanity of porn stars themselves has become a kind of documentary genre. Although some attention is given to the scandals of the industry like Linda Lovelace’s subsequent campaigning against the industry (and its determined intention to demonize her which has had some success in the mainstream media) and the 1980s saga of Traci Lords (who acted in most of her films underage), there is not enough exploration of the victimization and exploitation inherent in the industry, or the predatory nature of its producers and procurers, and this compromises the book.

These issues were pointed out very effectively in ‘HARDCORE’ a documentary made by Stephen Walker for the BBC a few years ago about a young English woman who went out to LA to work in the porn industry for a year or two to make money for a house and followed her through casting, signing her contract, performing, attempts by her minder (‘Dick Nasty’ I promise I’m not making the names up; check it out on IMDB.com) to repeatedly get off with her and finally a truly frightening attempt by her producer employer ‘Max Hardcore’ to asphyxiate her during a bizarre filmed oral sex act. The filming crew decides she is effectively threatened with rape and takes her out of the huge LA mansion where the filming is taking place. This is a far more authentic and revealing picture of the porn industry than most of the articles in PORNIFICATION.

So where does pornography come into modern identity politics and our society? This isn’t quite clear. Identity is not necessarily intimately linked to sexual fantasies unless a person is unable to distinguish their reality from their yearnings, and we tend to class that as neurotic or obsessive, even damaged behaviour. Pornography is about titillation and entertainment although it does reflect the desire for greater physical perfection and sexual magnetism that most of us aspire to one way or the other. Pornography has always been prominent in our culture as both an aspect of art and a business, and intimately linked to prostitution where much of its themes are acted out.

So…

‘And when the gimps just can’t take any more the fangs come out…’