Sanna Härmä

Department of Media Studies, 

School of Art, Literature and Music

University of Turku (Åbo)

Finland

& 

Joakim Stolpe

Department of Philosophy

Åbo Akademi University, Åbo (Turku)

Finland

Funny as Fuck: Behind the Scenes of Straight Pleasure It is far from easy to provide any consistent or easily sustainable definition of pornography. This notion has becomes even more tangible with the ever-shifting and expanding meanings created by the cast field of internet pornography and the increasingly varied contexts where pornography are consumed. Although online pornography has attracted a great deal of public attention and is frequently the focus of moral, political and legal debates comparatively little attention has been paid to it by academics.

This is a glaring knowledge gap, particularly given the central role of pornography in the development of new technologies and the rapid expansion and development of new technologies and the rapid expansion and development of online pornography. This paper strives to bring pornographic online representations into the interdisciplinary field of feminist cultural and media studies as well as queer studies and feminist theory. 

We focus on the elements of comedy and parody in online straight pornography as routes to understanding and representing heterosexuality, focusing on the so-called blooper reels and behind the scenes shots that are offered by both free and commercial porn sites as ‘side dishes’ to ‘the real thing’. In particular, we examine how the depiction of boredom, not usually associated with pornography serves to open up unconventional perspectives that defy the function of porn actors in enacting sexual fantasies. 

These representations of heterosexuality shed new light on the ways in which online porn attempts to depict sexuality as a stable and unwavering monolith but also reveal cracks in the picture of a cohesive and pleasure-hungry heterosexuality. The research attitude and methodology we have adopted when examining the above mentioned pornographic texts owes much to the concept of the oppositional gaze coined and theorized by bell hooks (1992), as well as the insights on shameful looking and desiring by Linda Williams (1989; 2004), Elizabeth Cowie (1993) and Annette Kuhn (1985). 

Teresa de Lauretis also speaks about an attitude of research that takes distance from cultural meanings which are taken for granted and instead moves towards such ways of understanding which might not yet be possible or even understandable (1984; 1987). By adopting a research attitude that aims at queering online representations of straight pleasure we distance ourselves from the idea of promoting or producing “better representations”. 

In the same way, we are not interested in critique of pornography as representations solely in the service of the pleasure-hungry male gaze. By making this choice in advance we aim at underlining that neither all cultural friction nor subversive elements are born by occupying the opposite – in this case the quest for different representations or other audiences. Instead we aim to consider pornography in general and online representations in particular as highly hyperbolic representations of heterosexuality, gender and class. That is, populated solely by fantasy characters and scenarios. 

References: Cowie, Elizabeth 1993, "Pornography and Fantasy: Psychoanalytic Perspectives". Sex Exposed. Sexuality and the Pornography Debate. Eds. Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. hooks, bell 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA : South End Press. Kuhn, Annette 1985. The Power of the Image. Essays on representation and sexuality. London, Boston, Melbourne, and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lauretis, Teresa de 1984. Alice Doesn't. Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. London: Macmillan Press. Lauretis, Teresa de 1987. Technologies of Gender. Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indianapolis University Press. Williams, Linda 1989. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy of the Visible". Los Angeles: University of California Press. Williams, Linda 2004, "Porn Studies: Proliferating Pornographies On/Scene: An Introduction". Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

About Sanna Harma

Sanna Härmä, MA.  Härmä is a media studies postgraduate student. Her dissertation examines mainstream pornography within the context of cultural and media studies as well as feminist theory. The dissertation also explores recent popular discussions and academic approaches surrounding the so-called pornification of popular culture. Through studying examples the dissertation examines what is meant by pornification in these different discussions. Her recent publications include an article discussing rap porn in the book Pornoakatemia (2007), a revised English version of which is forthcoming. She has also published an article on the roles given to music in porn and how these roles are connected to issues of class and taste.

About Joakim Stolpe