Pornography by Sullivan Rebecca; McKee Alan; & Alan McKee

Author:Sullivan, Rebecca; McKee, Alan; & Alan McKee [Sullivan, Rebecca; McKee, Alan;]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2015-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

The pornification framework

The sexualization thesis relies heavily upon an insistence that pornography has become more ubiquitous, easier to access, more explicit, more kinky, more violent, and more influential upon the generic and formal elements of other non-pornographic media – especially music videos and advertising. It is sometimes difficult to tease out the differences between sexualization and pornification, as the former quickly slides into the latter. Pornification is offered as self-evidently reliable proof that the media is more sexualized than ever before because of, well, porn. The UK’s report places pornography at the centre of its connection of sexualization to violence, devoting a full chapter to it and naming ‘the mainstreaming of pornography’ as the lynchpin to the whole problem of sexualized media and its violent effects on women and girls (2010, 33). Australia’s report notes that parents in particular express their concerns about media standards by connecting them to pornography. This unproblematized causal relationship between sexualization and pornography has resulted in an equally fervent concern over the ‘pornification’ of culture and its dire effects on otherwise ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ sexual development in individuals, especially children.

Writers who decry a ‘pornified’ culture commonly take a heteronormative approach, bemoaning the loss of traditional gender roles in relation to sex. Pamela Paul was among the first to claim pornification was a dangerous trend ‘fundamentally changing the lives of more Americans, in more ways, than ever before’ (2005, 11). As with the writers on sexualization, of greatest concern to Paul is that porn may cause its viewers to become more ‘sexually active and adventurous’ outside the confines of matrimony (2005, 78). She sees sexuality as something to be curtailed, controlled, and redirected into other, more socially useful bodily activities like reproduction and dyadic love relationships. Porn is seen to obstruct that social good by its own inner logic that sex is something desirable and pleasurable in itself. The UK report’s chapter on pornography similarly worries that pornography is ‘increasingly normalizing aggressive sexual behaviour, blurring the lines between consent, pleasure and violence’, but it is also ‘normalizing what until very recently would have been seen as niche practices such as the removal of female pubic hair’ (Papadopoulos 2010, 46). Here BDSM and genital grooming are linked as practices that are – the writer believes – self-evidently bad.

As with the concept of ‘sexualization’, ‘pornification’ is discussed by writers as though its definition is straightforward and agreed-upon. Clarissa Smith makes clear that this is not, in fact, the case as she offers an extensive catalogue of instances that have been claimed as examples of pornification in the media and popular culture:

When pornographication links together Bratz dolls, pornstar t-shirts, playboy key rings, pole dancing, lads mags, push-up bras for teenagers, breast enlargement, breast reduction, vaginaplasty, Viagra, the sexual self-representation of sexblogs, sexting, Beautiful Agony and SuicideGirls, anime and hentai, burlesque, Cosmo, Miley Cyrus, Abu Ghraib, Max Hardcore, Girls Gone Wild, Sex and the City, etc. we should be ringing alarm bells at the conflation and supposed obviousness of the connections, not wringing our hands and looking to government for solutions.

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