Porn studies:

a feminist project
Andrea B. Braidt (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
 Introduction
Literary Pornography and Enlightenment (Cf.
Lynn Hunt, ed., The Invention of
Pornography, 15001800. Obscenity and
the Origins of Modernity, MIT 1996. Also in
German available: Die Erfindung der
Pornografie.)

Why feminist debate?

Film porn (as opposed to literature,

magazine, etc.)
Genre definitions
syntactic/semantic (containing certain elements which are
arranged in a certain way)

aesthetic (canonical genre films defining the aesthetic

norm)

pragmatic/functional (a Western is a film that most people

would call a Western)

Effect/ audience reaction (comedy seeks to amuse; porn

seeks to arouse)

Porn as functional genre (Gebrauchsgenre), like

advertisments, industrial films, promo docus etc.

my working definition: films that seek to arouse the viewer

sexually
 http://www.youporn.com/categories/
Amateur
Anal
Asian
BBW
Big Butt
Big Tits
Bisexual
Blonde
Blowjob
Brunette
Casting
College
Compilation
Cosplay
Couples
Creampie
Cumshots
Cunnilingus
Dildos/Toys
DP
Ebony
European
Facial
Fantasy
Female Friendly
Fetish
Fingering
Funny
Gay
German
Gonzo
Hairy
Handjob
HD
Hentai
Homemade
Instructional
Interracial
Japanese
Kissing
Latina
Lesbian
Massage
Masturbation
Mature
MILF
Orgy
Panties
Pantyhose
POV
Public
Redhead
Rimming
Romantic
Shaved
Shemale
Solo girl
Solo Male
Squirting
Straight Sex
Swallow
Teen
Threesome
Verified Amateurs
Vintage
Virtual RealityNEW
Voyeur
Webcam
Young/Old
3D
Linda Williams,
Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and
Excess,
Film Quarterly 44.4 (1991), 2-13
Founding text feminist approach to porn

Structuralist approach: form, function, and

system of seemingly gratuitous excesses in
horror, melo, porn

gratuitous: not serving a narrative function,

i.e. porn is non-narrative (weak narrative) =
point of departure Williams

horror, melo, porn = low social esteem

because of non-narrativity; gross genres
excursus: Narration in the Fiction Film
(David Bordwell, Madison Wisconsin,
1985)
Hollywood narrative system (Hollywood
realist style): action oriented, nothing is
superfluous, every details has an end of its
own (Bordwell, Thompson)

Narration is the process whereby the films

syuzhet and style interact in the course of
cueing and channeling the spectators
construction of the fabula. (Bordwell 1985,
53)
 Systems: syuzhet fabula
Narratio
n
style

Excess

David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 1985

following Russian formalism, Prague School (Jan Mukarovsky)
 film viewing = active process (the viewers
activity)

narrative comprehension functions through

protocols or schemata through which
spectators are cued by the film to construct a
story based on an inferential process.

prototype schemata, template schemata,

procedural schemata

Bordwell
 Horror, Melo (Weepie), Porn: body caught
(manipulated) in the grip of excessive
emotion which is imitated by spectator
(unlike in comedy): tear jerker, fear jerker

PA-approaches describe the pleasures of

viewing as perversions (sadism, voyeurism,
fetishism, masochism), feminist PA asking:
status of woman in this system (Mulvey,
1975)

Williams: ambiguity of perversion

Williams
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen, 1975
Structures of fantasy (Jean Laplanche, J.B.
Pontalis 1968):

fantasy is not a narrative that enacts the quest

for the desired object, but a place where
desubjectivied subjectivities oscillate
between self and other, occupying no fixed
space in the scenario.
Body-genres are connected to the fantastic
(not to the real):

they do not solve problems but cover the

discrepancy between two moments connected
to the myths of origin: the actual historical
event (e.g. the primal scene) and the
uncertainty of its hallucinatory revival
(Williams)
This in-between temporality (too late, too
early) generates desire, crucial for subject
formation: original fantasies (Freud) offer
repetitions of and solutions to three major
enigmas:

1. enigma of origin of sexual desire solved by

fantasy of seduction; (porn)

2. enigma of sexual difference solved by

fantasy of castration; (horror)

3. enigma of origin of the self solved by

fantasy of family romance. (melo)
Porn as endless repetition of the fantasy of
primal seduction,

a pornotopia where it is always bedtime.

(Steven Marcus in Linda Williams)

 Temporali
Ecstasy
Audience Perversion Excess Fantasy ty of
shown by fantasy

adolesce
sado-
nt boys blood, castrati
Horror masochis violence too early!
(active/p shudder on
t
assive)

woe,
female masochis
Melo emotion sob, origin too late!
(passive) t
tears

orgasm,
male seducti
Porn sadistic sex ejaculati on time!
(active) on
on
Historical context of Williams text:
1980s/early 1990s
The pornography debate portrays its contestants
within sex and gender stereotypes, its contending
figures drawn in the broad outlines of a Harlequin
romance. Rapacious men with libidos of mythological
proportions heartlessly brutalise innocent women as the
hopeless victims of their lust, while the anti-pornogrphy
feminist poses herself as the sacrificial victim, the
barrier to a tide of male sexuality that threatens
violence. Bold freedom fighters ride out, drawing their
lances against the oppressive feminists, the purported
enemy of these brave warriors.

Drucilla Cornell, The Imaginary Domain. Abortion,

Pornography and Sexual Harassment, Routledge 1995,
p.95.
1988
Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano, US 1972)

https://www.vielerporno.co
m/filme/kompletter-deep-th
roat/
these gross body genres which may seem so violent
an inimical to women cannot be dismissed as evidence of
a monolithic and unchangin misogyny, as either pure
sadism for male viewers or masochism for females. Their
very existence and popularity hinges upon rapid changes
taking place in relations between the sexes and by
rapidly changing notions of genderof what it means to
be a man or a woman.

To dismiss them as bad excess whether of explicit sex,

violence, or emotion, or as bad perversions, whether of
masochism or sadism, is not to address their function as
cultural problem-solving. Genres thrive, after all, on the
persistence of the problems they address; but genres
thrive also in their ability to recast the nature of these
problems.
Linda Williams
 Imaginary vs.
Narrative
Porn has been discussed as non-narrative genre, criticism focusing
solely on the showing - following the PA paradigm of the gaze.

Different thesis: arousal must be told in order to be imitated

emphatically by the recipients. Sexual arousal is organized by
suspense-relieve mechanisms, and suspense is a narrative and not
visual device. These narratives follow dramaturges of beginning,
middle and end and present a solving scheme to the problem of
How can arousal be satisfied.

Leaving behind the construction of the subject (the recipient) as a

stimulus-response machine, according to the drive theory
described by Sigmund Freud and resting upon the paradigm of the
visual. Rather trying to come up with answers to the question of
why we are aroused by different films.

How does porn achieve to tell the story of arousal-satisfaction in

such a way that it turns us on?
two crucial dimensions in porn
narrative (Cf. Andrea Braidt, Erregung
erzhlen, in Montage AV, 2009)
1. The porn-narrative must present sexual
arousal as a problem that needs to be
solved. This presentation makes the actions
of the characters plausible. And the extent
to which the viewer empathises with the
arrousal (of the characters) relies on this
presentation.

2. The solution of the problem (how is arousal

satisfied?) must be presented in such a way
that the viewers can empathise.
what do we gain from a
narrative approach
differentiation

non-reliance on psychoanalytic paradigm

which has been much criticised for its
homogeneity

looking closely at porn films, analysing their

construction of gender through e.g. character
presentation, possible because in a narrative
paradigm it matters how the characters are
presented
Marc Dorcels Russian Institute. Lesson 1, Herv Bodilis, F 2004.
Marc Dorcels Russian Institute. Lesson 1, Herv Bodilis, F 2004.
 Final Discussion
What to look for when analyzing porn?

Is porn dangerous? (Youth debate)

Is porn-sexism different to other sexism?

Production context / sex work

Women's porn/ Annie Sprinkle et al?

Educative and emancipatory aspects?