[lbo-talk] From failed, surreal dreams to a plague of fantasies

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Fri May 6 14:39:12 PDT 2005


Justin:

Now this is a brave and original analysis!

Here's a more interesting suggestion: read Laura Kipnis' Bound & Gagged

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Kipnis' central argument, as I recall (and I'm certain I'll be ruthlessly corrected, jks full clip unloaded gangsta style, if wrong), is that porn is best read as fantasy -- a self contained end within itself -- and should be viewed, more or less, the way we see *Star Trek* or Tolkien's works.

Just as no sensible person would declare the sky to be falling because folks watched *Star Trek* or read *The Fellowship of the Ring*, we should be similarly calm about porn's impact.

Essentially, this is what Paul Thomas Anderson was saying during the NPR part of his *Boogie Nights* PR tour when he declared his sympathy, as a film maker, for the efforts of porn directors who he saw as striving to create a fantasy world for adults.

That's interesting and maybe even true. But what fascinates me -- just at this moment -- is not the moral element of the biz we could endlessly discuss but the arc of events, market and technological factors leading from ambitiously odd concept films like *Cafe Flesh* to the latest iteration of the Blacks on Blondes series or purely web generated, digital material.

There was a time when it seemed both possible and logical to make elaborate sets ,write framing stories and attempt to clearly create a lavish fantasy world of freely available sex.

This once prominent sub genre all but completely disappeared as the *amateur* age began several years ago.

That's the story I'm curious about right now.

.d.



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