The Quality Porn Project
I bet you clicked on this first. I've been trying to think of a new manifesto for a while now, but
nothing has been coming into my mind. For thousands of years of people having sex, and thinking
about sex, and writing poetry (mostly bad) about sex (even if they pretend it is about love) so there
really isn't a lot that I need to add here. There isn't anything I can add that hasn't been added
already to the canon of human lust.
I will say this, though, pornography is, as far as I'm concerned, a manifestation of consumer
culture. Certainly there were erotic images before the industrial age, and often these images were
intended for no other purpose than the firing up of the loins. Yet, because of the nature of
production in those times, the images took time to create, were probably unique, and would not
have been discarded easily.
Although I do not intend to develop the though here (at least for the time being), I personally
suspect that the concept of erotica (as opposed to pornography) probably still retains some of this
original concept—the erotic image is titillating, but it is also something that can be openly
appreciated for its intrinsic beauty.
Pornography, however, is marked by its disposability; the object is to have a brief and one sided
relationship with an image that can be disposed of a soon as the necessary orgasm has been
achieved. The internet hasn't help this situation get any better.
As soon as the task at hand has been completed, the pornographic object can be navigated away
from, or shoved back into the bottom of a drawer, or pulled out of the DVD/VHS and forgotten. It
is not meant to linger in our consciousness or haunt us. Pornography is a tool of efficiency, for it
takes our mind off the bodily aspects of existence as quickly as possible and returns us to whatever
productive task we ought to be trying to achieve.
One of the key complaints about pornography is the manner in which it objectifies its subjects.
Countless women and men peel out of their clothes before cameras all over the world and stand
there naked being clicked. In some cases these images use the idea of power over the subject as a
means of providing an extra sexual jolt. Sometimes they don't. I think the main thing, though, is
that the viewer can taken in the image without any responsibility to the subject. The subject gives
pleasure to the viewer and the viewer needs to give nothing in return (except maybe a lot of money).
I also think that the pornographic concept: this is to say the demand for an instantaneous graphic
payoff, without having any responsibility to the subject providing this payoff, extends itself to
realms beyond sexuality. For example, I would argue that graphic depictions of delicious food being
displayed on the Food Network are constructed in a similar manner and have much the same effect
on the salivary glands and digestion as pornography does on the sexual centres. In this sense, the
Food Network is a kind of pornography, too.
Not only this, but the think plotlines that porn films usually have; essentially placed there to
provided a minimum amount of continuity between scenes of sexual encounter between different
individuals, are not all that different from the think plot constructions between set pieces in action
movies. This is especially true with the current batch of CGI spectaculars. The object in these
films is to move the viewer from one spectacular sequence to another and to keep the sense
stimulated the entire time. The construct of an action movie is, all in all, not so different from that
of a porn movie. And so on and so on.
I still don't know what I'm going to do with my revamped quality porn project, but I wanted to say
what I just said anyhow as a preamble.