Porn Studies
by Linda Williams
Duke University Press | July 2004 | ISBN-10: 0822333120 | PDF | 528 pages | 58.3 mb
http://www.amazon.com/Porn-Studies-Linda-Williams/dp/0822333120
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
About the Author
Linda Williams is Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric and Director of the Program in Film Studies and of the Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson; Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”; and Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film.
CONTENTS
vii Acknowledgments
Porn Studies: Proliferating Pornographies On/Scene:
An Introduction " Linda Williams
Part 1 Contemporary Pornographies
27 How to Do Things with the Starr Report: Pornography,
Performance, and the President's Penis" Maria St.John
50 Sex in the Suburban: Porn, Home Movies, and the Live
Action Performance of Love in Pam and Tommy Lee: Hardacore
and Uncensored " Minette Hillyer
77 Office Sluts and Rebel Flowers: The Pleasures of Japanese
Pornographic Comics for Women " Deborah Shamoon
104 Going On·line: Consuming Pornography in the Digital Era *
Zabet Patterson
Part 2 Gay, Lesbian, and Homosocial Pornographies
127 Homosociality in the Classical American Stag Film:
Off· Screen, On·Screen * Thomas Waugh
141 The Cultural·Aesthetic Specificities of All-male Moving·
Image Pornography * Rich Cante and Angelo Restivo
167 What do you call a lesbian with long fingers?
The develppment of lesbian and dyke pornography .
Heather Burler
198 The Gay Sex Clerk: Chuck Vincent's Straight Pornography
Jake Cerli
Part 3 Pornography, Race, and Class
223 The Resurrection of Brandon Lee: The Making of a Gay
Asian American Porn Star • Nguyen Tan Hoang
271 Skin FIic1cs on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation,
and Interracial Lust • Linda Williams
309 Crackers and Whackers: The White Trashing of Porn *
Constance Penley
Part 4 Soft Core, Hard Core, and the Pornographic Sublime
335 Pinup: The American Secret Weapon in World War II •
Despina Kakoudaki
370 Gauging a Revolution: 16 mm Film and the Rise of the
Pornographic Feature • Eric Schaefer
401 Video Pornography, Visual Pleasure, and the Return of
the Sublime • Franklin Melendez
Part 5 Pornography and/as Avant-Garde
431 Andy Warhol's Blow Job: Toward the Recognition of a
Pornographic Avant-garde • Ara Osterweil
461 Unbracketing Motion Study: Scott Stark's NOEMA •
Michael Sicinski
479 Suggested Reading: An Annotated Bibliography
49' Pornographic Film and Video: A Select List of Archives
and Commercial Sites
495 list of Contributors
497 Index
