Sabo's new vision of new porn

Professor Anne Sabo’s article “A vision of new porn” brings together many of the themes we have been discussing over the past couple of weeks. She begins by introducing the anti-porn/pro-sex division in feminism that continues to manifest itself in texts such as Levy’s book and Gallagher and Kramer’s CAKE guide. In her introduction, Sabo acknowledges the “growing popularity and legitimacy of porn” (222) alongside a culture that still holds onto “lingering experiences of gender inequality and oppressive gender roles” (222). In light of these two cultural elements, Sabo proposes that we examine porn for what it can offer young people as they explore and discover their gendered identities.

Sabo presents and analyzes porn made by women in the United States and Europe, explaining how plot lines, artistic expression and other filmic elements contribute to an overall aesthetic and sexual message. She begins the section “Porn as discourse and film: the predicaments of language and pleasure” with Simon Hardy’s claim that porn might be a way of “transforming the traditional balance and pattern of heterosexual eroticism” (qtd. in Sabo, 223), contrary to what anti-porn feminists such as Brownmiller, Dworkin, Morgan and MacKinnon may have argued. Although Hardy advocated an anti-censorship view in his article, Sabo draws our attention Hardy’s caution against being blind to power. As Sabo says, Hardy “advises us to be attentive to the formation of new power formations” in erotic expression (223). This point—the fact that we have the power to configure new kinds of power in erotic expression and not just adhere to the active/passive dichotomy—was, to me, one of the most poignant in Hardy’s article. As we see later from Sabo’s descriptions of pornography, filmmakers are using various techniques to demonstrate equality (among other things) in erotic expression. This is something I don’t think CAKE does very well—I think Gallagher and Kramer may still be stuck in the dichotomous view of heterosexual erotic expression. While they could have expanded this definition of power like some of the porn producers in this article, they chose to adhere to a dichotomous view of power in which one partner is dominant, be it male or female.

Sabo also draws attention to the power of porn to elicit bodily sensations and therefore its power to “speak to a new generation of women,” to “move its viewer,” and to simultaneously keep “a critical eye on its appropriation of language” (224). She then launches into description and analysis of porn films from the United States and from Europe.

In her analysis of porn in the United States, Sabo highlights the work of porn producer Candida Royalle, who co-founded an erotic film company called Femme Productions in 1984. Sabo chronicles Royalle’s Eyes of Desire (1998), drawing attention to its complex plot and Lisa’s (the main character’s) desire and pleasure. She also highlights Royalle’s unique use of the gaze in Eyes of Desire, stating that the film “capture[s] a gaze that is mutual and democratically exchanged between two individuals” (226). Sabo says that “Royalle legitimizes both the activity of looking at sex, and the pleasure of being the object of someone’s gaze” (226), and I believe this democratic exchange has more implications than the mere reversal of power suggested in CAKE. Although I have never seen Eyes of Desire and may have a different or more complex opinion after I do, this gaze seems to propose a new kind of power, an erotic, sensual power that is founded in equality.

Sabo also engages Hardy’s analysis in her argument about Royalle’s film, saying that Royalle’s response to the hegemonic heterosexual erotic discourse is to “engage it reflectively and ironically” (226). This can be seen, Sabo says, in the ways Royalle’s characters overcome shame, fear and inhibition, and in the emphasis the characters have on playing their parts, not being their parts. Sabo also notes that all sex in the film is consensual, warm and loving in addition to being playful.

Next, Sabo analyzes Royalle’s Under the Covers, an erotic film that highlights the paradox of a sexual consumer culture in the United States paired with a conservative government that emphasizes abstinence-only education. Although Sabo says that some of the aesthetic quality of the film is lost, it emphasizes the message of sex education (through the character of a sex therapist) and the notion that “sexual repression is defeated by pleasure” (228). Sabo states that the film has potential to give voice to a young generation of sexual men and women in the United States.

In her section titled “Shagging in Europe: A different kind of porn,” Sabo highlights the work of British porn producer Anna Span, whose work is currently widespread in Scandinavia. Span’s work and popularity reflect a cultural comfort with sex in Scandinavia, according to Sabo. Span’s work de-emphasizes the seriousness of Royalle’s films and instead concentrates on “frolicking in some jolly good sex mainly for the fine fun of it” (231). Sabo notes that this difference in the two women reflects cultural and generational trends (Royalle was born in 1950 and lives in the United States; Span was born in 1972 and lives in England). Although the two producers use humor differently as a result, neither uses humor to rise above the plot of the film, says Sabo in a footnote. They both engage the viewer fully, using the bodily experience that Sabo mentioned earlier to do so.

Thirdly, Sabo highlights the work of Swedish porn-maker Erika Lust, who produces porn with a “revamped look” similar to a music video. Lust’s porn, according to Sabo, “reflects the range of real twenty- and thirty-something women and men today across Europe and the westernized world” (233). She sees this reflection as a potential voice in the “gap between the ideal and the practice of gender” (Hardy qtd. in Sabo 234). Sabo sees this as “one of the most intriguing aspects of re-visioned porn” (234).

In her conclusion, Sabo re-emphasizes the power of porn alongside women’s consumption of porn as a force for social change. While I agree with Sabo’s claim that “commercialization is easily dismissed as the enemy, but in a commercialized age, denying access is tantamount to denying a voice” (235), something about the female consumption of porn still retains a classist quality to it that male consumption of porn doesn’t seem to. Although I’ll need to research this claim further, porn that favors male pleasure and desire seems widespread and available to people of all classes (in other words, free on the internet), whereas porn that highlights mutuality or female desire seems only available to “classy, well-heeled, middle-class professionals” (Attwood paraphrased in Sabo 234). If we accept the commercialization of porn, do we also need to accept the corruptions of porn that involve distribution without rights? I’m not sure if I’m well enough versed in the process of distribution to argue this point, but I pose it as a discussion question.

I'm also curious about whether these middle-class women deserve to be the only consumers of female-made porn. When one is revising the system to account for new visions and identities concerning power and gender and equality, does it seem classist (and a little ironic) to be posing this equality only for a certain class of people?