The Space of Sex by Shelton Waldrep

Author:Shelton Waldrep
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Part Three

The Space of Sex in Contemporary Film and Television

5

Porn as Form and Content

Semipublic Intellectuals

Working with contemporary material means writing about it as it happens. Much of the film and television analysis here can be traced back to a blog I kept or, after I shut down the blog, to a journal that I started, writing in longhand, and occasionally on the computer. I worked inductively rather than deductively. That is, I looked closely at the influence of pornography on film and TV, and vice versa, but held off on defining exactly what the parameters of that relationship might be until I got closer to the end of the writing. I attempted to see the viewing and experiencing of television and film as a process not much different from going to a site—a location—and experiencing it on foot. I have done this type of direct experience as a researcher since the 1990s—whenever I have worked on theme parks, architecture, landscapes, and other built environments. I have tried in this part of the book to capture some of my impressions as they have happened—thoughts about TV shows and film soon after experiencing them. I think this technique is important because consumers of cultural production, even if they are critics, are also a part of the fan network. They are within the loop of reaction, a part of the community of viewers who can now, these days, comment on the cultural production or consume the reactions of other fans as a part of the original text itself. I wanted to capture what I thought, but what other critics did as well as well as some fans. To some extent, it is impossible to think about writing now—especially about pop culture—without thinking about what the role is that the critic plays in an era in which either everyone is a critic or no one is. That is, directors, producers, and writers are no longer the sole “authors” of their work. The internet and social media allow fans to react immediately to the content of popular culture. Authors of works of art become, in a sense, content providers whose work is adapted, commented upon, and reprocessed by fans. The relation between subject and object gets redefined as the aesthetic dimensions of film and television become porous and fragmented in the media-drenched environment of the early twenty-first century.

As Lili Loofburow and Phillip Maciak discuss in a section of the PMLA they edited on the rise of the internet, there is a new kind of “semipublic intellectual.” To some extent, any academic who writes for a blog, Tweets, or is on Facebook is doing a kind of intellectual work that used to be reserved for journalists. Writing something in a timely manner is easier than ever because of internet technology but raises questions about the difference between academic writing and writing meant to be consumed by a larger audience. Questions include, but are not limited to, the complexity of jargon and assumed knowledge of the two

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