The Vernacular of Pornography Part I: The Metaphysics of Porn

Pornography is everywhere.

By this, I do not simply mean that we are awash with images of sexualisation of men, women, and now even children, although there is ample evidence of this too. By this I mean that, even when such images are not pressing up against our retinas, we still find ourselves steeped in the logic of pornography, moving in what the Germans call the “lifeworld” that fuels the consumption of pornography. Simon Smith, in a September 2017 article, spoke with David Simon, the director of the acclaimed crime television show The Wire and now director of The Deuce, a period drama covering the rise of the porn industry in 1970s New York. A keen observer of cultural practices, Simon spoke about a “vernacular of pornography” that has filled the social and cultural gaps not taken up by the explicit acts of consuming porn. Smith’s article is interesting in looking at one specific case study in which pre-existing attitudes concerning race, gender relations and capitalism come to converge in the emergence of an industry intensifying and sexualising those attitudes and desires in film format.

What Smith’s article brings out is that there is more to porn than sex. There are…

(Read the full article at Truth and Love by Courage International)