Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Courting Consumers And Legitimating Exploitation

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14680770701824894

1471-5902

Karen Boyle,

Privacy, Security, and Data Protection

Abstract The explosion of sexually explicit imagery in popular culture in recent years has been widely noted. On television, this has led to the birth of a new genre, a pornography-documentary hybrid. This article examines the kind of stories about sex that have emerged in this new generic space at the beginning of the twenty-first century and makes the case for retaining a central focus on gender as a relational matrix in feminist responses to both television and pornography. The article begins by sketching the classic feminist positions on pornography and considering how recent shifts in pornography research have limited the nature of feminist enquiry in a way that is broadly consistent with the normalising of pornography in mainstream culture. This provides the context for an analysis of docuporn that examines the stories the genre tells about commercial sex, arguing that, in the absence of an on-screen “john,” these programmes court the viewer as a present and future consumer, negating the gendered inequalities and exploitation that make commercial sex, in its currently dominant forms, possible. Keywords: pornographyprostitutiondocumentarytelevisionbuying sex Notes 1. Although Channel 5 (now known simply as “five”) attracted considerable controversy for its sex-scheduling in its early years, Arthurs' study identifies Channel 4 as the most prolific sex-scheduler with 101 sex documentaries in 1999, compared to 9 on BBC1, 57 on BBC2, 27 on ITV, and 36 on five. Arthurs also provides statistics on some of the more popular digital channels: in 1999 Bravo screened 222 sex documentaries; Living had 164; and Sky One had 26 (Arthurs 2004 Arthurs, Jane. 2004. Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the Politics of Taste, Maidenhead: Open University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 156). 2. Although this article draws on my viewing of a wide range of materials gathered from 1999 to 2005—including series, documentary seasons, and one-off programmes—my main examples are drawn from a more extensive analysis of three docuporn series: Family Business (also known as Porn: A Family Business; Showtime 2003–2006, screened in the UK on Channel 4), Porno Valley (Sky One 2004), Personal Services (ITV 2003 ITV. 2003. Personal Services, Press-release for television series [Google Scholar]), and the one-off docuporn Cathouse (HBO 2002 Cathouse (documentary) (2002) HBO [Google Scholar], screened in the UK on Channel 4), which later spawned a series. 3. The anti-pornography position is most commonly associated with the work of US feminists MacKinnon and Dworkin (e.g., Dworkin 1981 Dworkin, Andrea. 1981. Pornography: Men Possessing Women, London: Women's Press. [Google Scholar]; MacKinnon 1993 Mackinnon, Catharine. 1993. Only Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard. [Google Scholar]; MacKinnon & Dworkin 1997 Mackinnon, Catharine and Dworkin, Andrea, eds. 1997. In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings, Cambridge, MA: Harvard. [Google Scholar]). For a sense of the diversity of anti-pornography and sexual exploitation feminist work, see also Cole (1989 Cole, Susan. 1989. Pornography and the Sex Crisis, Toronto: Amanita Publications. [Google Scholar]), Dines, Jensen and Russo (1998 Dines, Gail, Jensen, Robert and Russo, Ann. 1998. Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), Jeffreys (1997 Jeffreys, Sheila. 1997. The Idea of Prostitution, North Melbourne: Spinifex. [Google Scholar]), Hughes and Roche (1999 Donna, Hughes and Claire, Roche, eds. Making the Harm Visible: Global Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls: Speaking Out and Providing Services, Rhode Island: Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. [Google Scholar]), and Whisnant (2004 Whisnant, Rebecca. 2004. “Confronting pornography: Some conceptual basics”. In Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, Edited by: Stark, Christine and Whisnant, Rebecca. 15–27. Spinifex: North Melbourne. [Google Scholar]). 4. Key anthologies here include Vance (1984 Vance, Carole s., ed. 1984. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. [Google Scholar]), Segal and McIntosh (1992 Segal, Lynne and Mcintosh, Mary, eds. 1992. Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, London: Virago. [Google Scholar]), Assiter and Carol (1993 Assiter, Alison and Carol, Avedon, eds. 1993. Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures: The Challenge to Reclaim Feminism, London: Pluto. [Google Scholar]), and Gibson and Gibson (1993 Gibson, Pamela Church and Gibson, Roma, eds. 1993. Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, BFI. [Google Scholar]). 5. The two camps are not necessarily as opposed—or as internally monolithic—as this binarism would suggest: it is, after all, possible to be both anti-pornography and anti-censorship. 6. Levy provides many examples of this crossover in her Female Chauvinist Pigs (2006 Levy, Ariel. 2006. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, London: Pocket Books. [Google Scholar]). 7. This phrase is used to describe pornography magazines in an article in Front's “Porn Issue” entitled “Beat the Porn Snatcher” (Darling 2005 Darling, Kevin. 2005. Beat the porn snatcher. Front, 82: 62–63. May [Google Scholar]) which suggests a variety of places for male teens to hide their pornography collection. 8. Hardcore, written and directed by Stephen Walker, is an interesting exception. The documentary screened on Channel 4 in 2001 after having been rejected for transmission by its original commissioners, ITV, who were clearly looking for something rather more light-hearted than the story of Felicity—an Englishwoman pursuing a career in LA—turned out to be. Notably, however, it has never been repeated on Channel 4 though more light-hearted acquisitions (such as Cathouse) have made a number of appearances. 9. Perhaps the most explicit example of this is Channel 5's Sex and Shopping (1998–2001) which is discussed in some detail by Arthurs (2004 Arthurs, Jane. 2004. Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the Politics of Taste, Maidenhead: Open University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 47–48). 10. See Kilborn (2003 Kilborn, Richard. 2003. Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of Big Brother, Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 89–121) for a discussion of the characteristics of docu-soap. 11. Arthurs (2004 Arthurs, Jane. 2004. Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the Politics of Taste, Maidenhead: Open University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 97) notes that the British scheduling of such programmes—particularly on Channel 4 where docuporn took the place of more overtly political and broadly pro-feminist series about sex and sexuality in the latter half of the 1990s—provides a further association with a feminist discourse of empowerment and a legitimation for their often sexist sexualised displays of female flesh. Levy (2006 Levy, Ariel. 2006. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, London: Pocket Books. [Google Scholar]) discusses the implications of this framing of sexual objectification as “feminist” empowerment in more detail. 12. Porn Shutdown, screened on Channel 4, April 25, 2005. 13. Similarly, porn stars and “glamour models” make frequent appearances in documentaries about cosmetic surgery. For example, “glamour model” Jodie Marsh made a guest appearance on five's All New Cosmetic Surgery Live in April 200 All New Cosmetic Surgery Live (television series) (2005) Channel 5 [Google Scholar]5 and E!'s reality show Doctor 90210 Doctor 90210 (television series) (2004–2007) E! [Google Scholar] regularly features porn actresses, “lingerie models” and topless dancers seeking surgery, and, in one case, “anal bleaching.”