STUDIES
Sexuality and Transgression: Subversive Power of Pornographic Films
From the very beginnings of the film industry,
sexuality and film have been inseparable. Although at first
sight pornography development seems to be related to the
mid 70s of the 20th century, when the first commercialized
production and distribution of pornographic films appeared,
more or less free sexual act scenes can be found in the early
stages of cinematography, although most frequently in the
form of lascivious scenes that only metaphorically suggest
a sexual act.
What became one of the most lucrative industries
of the second half of the 20th century had always been
present in the form of film recordings. This text deals
with the relationship between visual presentation of sexuality
and transgression on the example of the film as a modern
phenomenon. The basic intention was to find out which way
pornographic films create a perception of sexuality different
from the one that has been present in the forms of literature,
drawings and photography, and how was the discourse on
sexuality that we know of from the end of the 18th century
changed with the appearance of film. In the first part
the emphasis is given to different discourses on sexuality
that were produced by the enlightenment ideology and techniques
applied in the discourse subject production. In the second
part the importance of the film and the picture as mediators
in the processes of sexuality’s visual construction was
examined. In the third part, using classical and contemporary
understandings of the term sexuality, the text deals with
pornographic films in more detail, and explore the reasons
why they have a stronger transgression potential than classical
art forms such as novel or photography. There is a lot
of literature on pornography as a media and on discourses
about sexuality, but little has been said on the transgression
potential of this genre.
The key words are transgression,
male view dominance, scopophilia, and liminal experience
offered by the ontological status of photographic and film
images.
The text comes up with several conclusions:
1)
although the pornography’s charm is often based on twisting
the order and power, nonetheless, it always keeps the order
because every sexual theatre is staged and organized by
following strict and previously defined rules;
2) the second
pornography feature is the transgression of time, since
it leaves out narration, which creates an illusion of absolute
power of sex based on unlimited pleasure repeating;
3)
pornography is often related to the liminal death experience:
death and sex equally posses the power of transgression
because they insert potentially dangerous dynamism and
transgression to the existing order.
The attracting power
of pornography stems precisely from this transgression
potential which has not been tamed by modern art despite
all inventive strategies.
Tonči Valentić |
