Sex Media by Feona Attwood

Author:Feona Attwood [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509516919
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2017-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Porno-chic and Mainstream Entertainment

In considering the many styles, forms and genres of particular kinds of sex media we should also take into account the range of representations that have been referred to as forms of ‘pornochic’, or as ‘pornified’ or ‘sexualized’ media materials. These are mainstream media texts that are said to ‘borrow from, refer to, or pastiche the styles and iconography of the pornographic’. For example, ‘open, moist and lipstick-red lips, half-closed eyelids or hands suggestively placed on a bare bosom or stomach are staple elements in pornography, but also in music videos, cosmetics ads and fashion photography’.109 However, unlike hardcore porn which tends to be understood as anonymous, ‘real’, intense, ‘dirty’ and unrefined, porno-chic texts may also feature celebrities, often in an ironic, sophisticated, glossy format.110

Madonna is ‘the figure who more than any other can plausibly be said to have made porno “chic”’,111 particularly in the works she produced between 1989 and 1992. These included ‘Justify My Love’ (1990), a black-and-white music video set in a series of hotel rooms where dancers and actors dressed in fetish gear perform in a range of romantic and sexual scenarios, and Sex (1992), a book which contained scenes of ‘masturbation, group sex, sadomasochism, lesbianism, and even simulated rape, all framed as the product of the star’s sexual fantasies’. Both worked to ‘appropriate the transgressive qualities of porn in a mass market context’.112

Porno-chic has continued to be associated with a range of music performers and especially with music video.113 Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirrty’ (2002) features table dancing and furries; Rihanna performs in ‘S&M’ (2011) as a dominatrix; and in ‘Wrecking Ball’ (2013) Miley Cyrus, naked except for a pair of boots, swings on a wrecking ball and licks a sledgehammer seductively.

Porno-chic texts like these are often playful and seductive, working with the language of pastiche, parody and humour. But they can also be pedagogic: ‘about’ rather than ‘in the style’ of porn. For example, some mainstream films are about the business of adult entertainment, such as Boogie Nights (1997), The People Versus Larry Flynt (1996) and The Look of Love (2013). Others are metaphorical, rather than playful or pedagogical, using explicit sex and pornography to represent something else. For example, in A Serbian Film (2010), which features scenes that show the decapitation of a restrained woman during sex and a man raping his unconscious wife and son, the world of pornography is used to represent horror. The film’s director Srdjan Spasojević said that ‘pornography was the only possible metaphor’ he could use to depict the ‘almost indescribable and exploitative chaos’ that had defined his life.114

Figure 4.9 Madonna, ‘Justify My Love’, 1990. The music video was banned from a number of TV networks.

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