----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Hi again, everyone:
I am late to the game! Sorry for the delay. I should have some more directed responses Murat's previous messages that I'll try to write up later today, but I wanted to respond to Ben's post first. Also, I don't want to derail our discussion into just being about pornography, as boredom is our object this month. That said, I think we need to be careful not to essentialize pornography. I would not want to declare all pornography as boring or lacking complexity or interest, but at the same time, I am still compelled by boredom's relationship to pornography. It's important to note that pornography's address, function, and reception has changed over time, and is contingent on numerous factors. In the era of porno chic that I first mentioned, the act of going to see pornography required going to a theater and was actually done with a social function in mind. This was a water-cooler event. Johnny Carson was talking about it on TV. Famous stars were seen going to see "Deep Throa. The film was also stirring controversy, too, so it was walking a fine line between popular entertainment and scandal. Within a gay milieu at this time, going to see a gay pornographic film was often also tied to cruising for sex (you may not end up seeing much of the film in question), and it also served as a kind of social and indeed an identity-forming function, but for a more marginalized audience. So in some of these instances, boredom becomes a less vital force than other consideration. I mention all of this to say simply that when we're talking about what the intentions are of the porn-maker and the intentions of the porn-viewer, that that's a really hard question to answer (and likely there as many answers as there are people who make and watch pornography), and one that will vary over time based not just on historical and cultural conditions, but also on things like how technology changes its production and distribution. When we're talking about the attention of the porn-viewer waning during the act of watching, a scholar like Magnus Ullen would want us to be more overt in recognizing that the act of watching pornography is tied to the masturbatory act. Ullen locates this as very much related to pornography's proliferation online and a return to viewing pornography in private spaces. See his article at Jump Cut here: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/UllenPorn/ For Ullen, this perhaps tacitly understood feature requires more consideration, and it might explain why some viewers of pornography are willing to allow the representation in question to get away with non-verisimilitude, bad acting, repetition, or other boring features, and that is because the representation itself is not the whole point. But it also could be that fantasy takes over, where the pornographic film falls short, and for many the fantasy was spurred by a much earlier (and at that point novel) viewing of pornography that was once fresh, new, not boring. It would be interesting to think about this aspect more in relation to other "body genres" like horror, comedy, and tear jerkers, all of which are read in relationship to their ability to affect a bodily response. For instance, do we come to pornography with a certain cultural bias that we don't anymore to these other body genres, each of which in the past have been disparaged or treated as un-interesting, too? Ben, you write: > Pleasure is a positive arousal, and thus requires a ground of boredom to > occur. For the same reason, fear as a negative arousal requires a > baseline of boredom. I'm not sure I am on board with treating pleasure as always a positive arousal, or I suppose I need to hear more on what you mean by positive. The way pleasure is policed and often tied to shame and transgression makes me wary of this designation. I think pleasure is complicated, and part of what pornography does is provide an insight into that complexity, so I would want to think more about what is foreclosed if we only position pleasure as positive arousal, in the same way that I'm questioning of boredom as only a negative valence. More later! best, John _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
