Porn Studies

Porn Studies

  • Author: Williams, Linda
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822333005
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822385844
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2004
  • Month: July
  • Pages: 528
  • DDC: 363.4/7
  • Language: English
In her pioneering book Hard Core, Linda Williams put moving-image pornography on the map of contemporary scholarship with her analysis of the most popular and enduring of all film and video genres. Now, fifteen years later, she showcases the next generation of critical thinking about pornography and signals new directions for study and teaching. Porn Studies resists the tendency to situate pornography as the outer limit of what can be studied and discussed. With revenues totaling between ten and fourteen billion dollars annually—more than the combined revenues of professional football, basketball, and baseball—visual, hard-core pornography is a central feature of American popular culture. It is time, Williams contends, for scholars to recognize this and give pornography a serious and extended analysis.

The essays in this volume move beyond feminist debates and distinctions between a “good” erotica and a “bad” hard core. Contributors examine varieties of pornography from the tradition of the soft-core pin-up through the contemporary hard-core tradition of straight, gay, and lesbian videos and dvds to the burgeoning phenomenon of pornography on the Internet. They explore, as examples of the genre, individual works as divergent as The Starr Report, the pirated Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson honeymoon video, and explicit Japanese “ladies’ comics” consumed by women. They also probe difficult issues such as the sexualization of race and class and the relationship of pornography to the avant-garde. To take pornography seriously as an object of analysis also means teaching it. Porn Studies thus includes a useful annotated bibliography of readings and archival sources important to the study of pornography as a cultural form.

Contributors. Heather Butler, Rich Cante, Jake Gerli, Minette Hillyer, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Despina Kakoudaki, Franklin Melendez, Ara Osterweil, Zabet Patterson, Constance Penley, Angelo Restivo, Eric Schaefer, Michael Sicinski, Deborah Shamoon, Maria St. John, Tom Waugh, Linda Williams

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Porn Studies: Proliferating Pornographies On/Scene: An Introduction - Linda Williams
  • Part 1: Contemporary Pornographies
    • How to Do Things with the Starr Report: Pornography, Performance, and the President’s Penis - Maria St. John
    • Sex in the Suburban: Porn, Home Movies, and the Live Action Performance of Love in Pam and Tommy Lee: Hardcore and Uncensored - Minette Hillyer
    • Office Sluts and Rebel Flowers: The Pleasures of Japanese Pornographic Comics for Women - Deborah Shamoon
    • Going On-line: Consuming Pornography in the Digital Era - Zabet Patterson
  • Part 2: Gay, Lesbian, and Homosocial Pornographies
    • Homosociality in the Classical American Stag Film: Off-Screen, On-Screen - Thomas Waugh
    • The Cultural-Aesthetic Specificities of All-male Moving-Image Pornography - Rich Cante and Angelo Restivo
    • What Do You Call a Lesbian with Long Fingers? The Development of Lesbian and Dyke Pornography - Heather Butler
    • The Gay Sex Clerk: Chuck Vincent’s Straight Pornography - Jake Gerli
  • Part 3: Pornography, Race, and Class
    • The Resurrection of Brandon Lee: The Making of a Gay Asian American Porn Star - Nguyen Tan Hoang
    • Skin Flicks on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation, and Interracial Lust - Linda Williams
    • Crackers and Whackers: The White Trashing of Porn - Constance Penley
  • Part 4: Soft Core, Hard Core, and the Pornographic Sublime
    • Pinup: The American Secret Weapon in World War II - Despina Kakoudaki
    • Gauging a Revolution: 16 mm Film and the Rise of the Pornographic Feature - Eric Schaefer
    • Video Pornography, Visual Pleasure, and the Return of the Sublime - Franklin Melendez
  • Part 5: Pornography and/as Avant-Garde
    • Andy Warhol’s Blow Job: Toward the Recognition of a Pornographic Avant-garde - Ara Osterweil
    • Unbracketing Motion Study: Scott Stark’s Noema - Michael Sicinski
  • Suggested Reading: An Annotated Bibliography
  • Pornographic Film and Video: A Select List of Archives and Commercial Sites
  • List of Contributors
  • Index

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