Living & Arts
Film series talks normalcy of porn
Austin Dike | Phoenix Staff
Kevin Kim '11 runs the "Moving Image Pornography" series on Tuesday night at the Women's Resouce Center.
BY MAKI SOMOSOT
In print | April 9, 2009
How does someone attempt to contextualize and historicize something like porn? This happens to be the big overhanging question that accompanies “Moving Image Pornography,” the contentious three-part film and lecture series currently being featured during open hours at the Women’s Resource Center. More importantly, how do we, as an audience, respond to a cultural taboo like pornography with open minds when it is being shown in a public setting?
Featured for three Tuesday nights in a row from 9:30 p.m. to 12:00 am (the last screening is next Tuesday, April 14), “Moving Image Pornography” is an upfront investigation of the early historiography, the various evolutions involved and the polemic stemming from the porn industry. More than a documentation of its intricacies and special context, the series also explores the numerous modes of public distribution of pornography, and how they have shifted over time. From a timeline of stag films, vintage erotica (namely “Emmanuelle,” “Polissons et Galipettes,” “Suburbia Confidential”), to more contemporary video-graphic representations of sex (“Pornotopia,” “American Porn,” “Deep Throat,” “Midnight Cowboy”), “Moving Image Pornography” tracks how the tastes of the mainstream audience have changed toward pornography.
“Porn started out as an underground genre which was illegally produced and viewed,” said Kevin Kim ’11, the creative mind behind the series. “There was initially this idea of homosociality in the early stag films of the 1900s, where porn was only shown in elk clubs, fraternities and male civic groups. Then there was ‘porn chic’ in the 1970s, a point when everyone was watching it in movie theaters.”
“Porn chic” refers to a specific time period in the early 1970s when it was considered fashionable to watch and discuss pornographic films such as “Deep Throat,” “Behind the Green Door” and “Boys in the Sand” in mainstream moviehouses. For instance, the soft-core erotic French film “Emmanuelle,” which was featured this past Tuesday, became a definitive symbol of the porn chic phenomenon when it was taken up by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. for massive public distribution. This begs the questions as to when and how pornography was originially integrated into the mainstream cinema experience as a legitimate genre. Through public film screenings, “Moving Image Pornography” attempts to channel this mode of public consumption, which is an approach to porn-watching that modern audiences would recoil at.
“I’m not going to pretend it’s not terribly awkward to watch porn with a bunch of people you know, but as we learned at the first session, that’s just getting back to its historical roots,” Lauren Stokes ’09 said. “So the very idea and experience of the porn film series is a weird way to transport yourself into the pre-Internet era of pornography, which is neat.”
After taking Marjorie Murphy’s history class “Engendering Culture” his freshman year, Kim became interested in the academic and social discourse of pornography, especially in its resulting impact on how norms and stereotypes have been engendered. “There has been a transformation in perceptions of masculinity in American pop culture — men have been making use of domestic spaces to express their masculinity, through the bachelor pad and the office, and to some extent, even through women to serve as their accessories,” Kim said. He also emphasized the importance of looking beyond the superficial associations that are part of the mainstream porn label to probe deeper social issues. “It’s an important discussion to have, how to move beyond the porn vs. anti-porn debate. How should we study porn?”
The Women’s Resource Center board had their own reasons for sponsoring and publicizing Kim’s event for the Swarthmore student community at large. “I think this is the sort of thing we need more of at Swarthmore: interested students coming together to listen to interested students speak about their passions,” said Jessica Holler ’10, a board member. “I hope that the WRC open hours continue to be used for events of this sort: interactive, contemporary talks on the intersection between lived sexualities and academic discourse on sexuality.”
Feminist Majority member Katie Seville ’12 spoke for the possibly more skeptical members of the Swarthmore movie-going audience. “We’ll never know how this’ll go at Swat until we try it, so we might as well,” she said.
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