XXX: Porn under a Bad Sign, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the thumbnail

As pornography continues to be consumed by increasing numbers of people, in a multitude of

different mediums, and through various technologies, the general outlook on pornography,
propagated by the media, tends to remain that of the male gaze objectifying the female
performer. However, new formats, such as Interactive and Point of View porn, increasingly
being consumed in the privacy of one’s home and accessed free of charge on the multitude of
YouTube-style pornography websites, means that a new approach needs to be formulated
that can attempt to suggest, first, what drives the consumption of pornography, and second,
what effect do these new formats have upon the subject. I intend to employ the psychoanalytic
theories of Jacques Lacan in an attempt to formulate the subject’s relationship with the Gaze
and the notion of desire in the consumption of ‘Point of View’ pornography, while taking into
account the new mediums of technology, i.e., short-length online videos watched through a
computer or mobile phone screen, and the level of control that this affords the spectator as
opposed to the reception of feature length films in cinemas. From this I suggest that the
consumption of online POV pornography paradoxically objectifies the spectator and
functions as a form of relief from the superegoic injunction to ‘Enjoy!’ within contemporary
‘hedonistic’ Late Capitalist society, and proves more informative seen as a symptom of
contemporary society rather than as a causal agent.

Instead of asking, or theorising, what effect the viewing of pornography may have on the
spectator, one must first ask what causes, or drives, the spectator to consume pornography,
and thus examine the main forms that popular pornography takes. One must not forget that
pornography is an entertainment industry and thus must meet the demands of its clients, as
opposed to creating those demands, and, as many people seem to believe, forcing or
encouraging specific sexual practices and attitudes onto its consumers. Pornography is one of
the largest entertainment industries in the world; whereas Hollywood makes around 400 films
a year, the porn industry produces around 13,000, in the US alone (Hedges 2009:58). And
although the industry has declined somewhat in recent years, this does not reflect the
popularity of online, free-to-access videos; five YouTube style pornography websites appear
in the 100 most visited websites in the UK 1. In fact, Playboy have axed their DVD division in
order to focus solely on online content. The ease of access of internet pornography, and rising
numbers of porn users amongst young people 2, means that a generation is coming of age in a

1
Alexa.com, as of August 2010; these include Pornhub.com (#37) and Xhamster.com (#51).
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;4/GB
2
According to a YouGov survey conducted in July 2008 58% of children aged 14-17 had viewed
pornography (10% of those surveyed preferred not to say), 14% of whom consumed pornography at least once
a week. A more recent survey suggests that almost 9 out of 10 teenagers aged 14-17 have viewed graphic
images, and one in five viewed them more than once a week (‘Internet turning teens into porn copycats:
Survey’, 1/4/2009, mid-day.com).
completely unprecedented sexual and technological context, and are therefore representative
of a largely unformulated subjectivity.

Rather than accepting the traditional (and typically critical feminist) view of pornography
as the objectification of women, I intend to posit the theory that pornography is potentially
something even more dangerous, or, more accurately, is symptomatic of a dangerous trend in
society. Pornography objectifies not the actors (both male and female), but the spectators; the
viewing of pornography functions as a decentring of the subject and thus as a relief from the
underlying anxiety of contemporary society and the superego injunction of enjoyment. The
rise of pornography spectatorship is testament to the instability of the subject within late
capitalist society and the ever expanding means with which one can ‘escape’ one’s
subjectivity through the medium of technology. The ubiquity of simulated experiences,
resulting in the blurring of public and private (think webcams, video blogs, reality TV etc.),
and the manipulation of time and space through representational technologies (Friedberg
1995:60-61), has led to relief being sought within the representational technologies
themselves. I chose to use a psychoanalytic approach as opposed to, for example, an
existential phenomenological one, because I believe that Lacan’s theories, and in particular
his concepts of the desiring subject and the Real, go further in allowing us to understand the
subject’s position as consumer of pornography, and go some way in explaining the attraction
of pornography as a means of relief from the superego injunction to ‘Enjoy!’ that permeates
our ‘hedonistic’ society as a means of maintaining the symbolic order. After outlining these
concepts I shall proceed to analyse a typical Point of View pornography video, and establish
the principle aspects of spectatorship that affect the subject, before finally looking at the
structure of YouTube style pornography websites, and how this structure is inherent in
establishing desire.

Psychoanalysis, in its claim that culture can be interpreted symptomatically, allows us to

unearth how a specific culture, acting as a screen on which fantasy, anxiety and fear are
projected, finds ways to obscure, or distort the traumatic aspects of our lived experience
(Mulvey 1993). If cinema, as a technological representation, can be read as a ‘symptom’ of a
culture (Lebeau 2001:7), then the rise in consumption of a specific cinema (in this instance
pornography) can be read as the emergence or expression of a certain symptom within a
particular society. The normalisation of porn is not a sign of the growth of liberal attitudes in
society, it is a result of the institutionalisation of representation, part of what Debord termed

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the society of the spectacle. But there still remains a degree of wariness, or reluctance, in
public discussion surrounding pornography, the most recent Communications Market Report
published in the UK (19th August 2010)3, fails even to mention pornography, despite
dedicating a large section to UGC, or User Generated Content, websites. It is true that stories
about pornography appear regularly in the newspapers, but these tend to focus on what are
presumed to be the traditional risks of porn consumption; objectification of women, sexual
violence, and pornography obsessions. What these reports neglect is the conditions for, and
motivations behind, porn consumption. In other words, what does it mean, not what does it
do. What I intend here, is to offer, not a definitive answer, but a new way to approach how
we think about pornography, that goes beyond the traditional objections. Porn is not innocent,
but it is only a part of something much greater than itself. In fact, regarding sexual equality
(one of the main spectres of porn), the real worry is not pornography. Everyone knows when
they’re watching porn, and what to expect. Instead, it is Hollywood that continues to
reinforce sexual difference, but in such a way that is accepted without question by its
audience.

However, let us begin to look at the role of pornography in our society. The largest users
of internet pornography are between the ages of twelve and seventeen, according to Chris
Hedges (2009:58), and, when one takes into account that 12% (over 4 million) of the total
number of websites online contain pornography, and that a quarter of all daily searches are
for pornographic material (Hedges 2009:79-80), then it is easy to see how big a role
pornography consumption plays in our society. Pornographic film production companies
openly admit that their target audience includes teenagers, in the words of Steve Honest,
European director of production for Bluebird Films, ‘porn is the new rock and roll’ (Hedges
2009:58). In the last two decades porn has broken free of its traditional demographic, finding
consumers amongst all ages, ethnicities and sexes (Williams 2004:2), yet very little research
has addressed what motivates pornography consumption, with the exception of studies such
as that by Bryant Paul and J.W. Shim (2008). Even if one takes into account the huge rise in
the accessibility of porn, does this mean that millions of people were just waiting for an
opportunity to access pornographic material? This seems highly unlikely. Instead, we should
look to the dynamics which surround the function of desire and fantasy in contemporary
society, and the role that new technologies play in the development of the subject. The
theories of Lacan allow us to explore the concept of desire and its relation to anxiety and to
3
Source: Ofcom.org.uk

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suggest how an analysis of developments in pornography can point the way to understanding
how a generation of young people who have grown up knowing nothing but the ubiquity of
screens and virtual communication can make sense of the fragmentation they are faced with.
Franklin Melendez goes some way to exploring this relationship, examining pornography
‘not only as an illustration of postmodernism’s greatest anxieties but also as the “complex
intersection of visuality, sexuality, commodity, and technology”’ (2004:401). As Shoshana
Felman points out, psychoanalysis can only lead to implication, rather than application
(1987:11), but this is why I believe that it is the most useful tool for suggesting a new
approach to pornography, one that grasps the cognitive aspects of interacting with such
material and provides a means of understanding the motivations behind its popularity, or,
more accurately, what it is that causes the almost pathological behaviour surrounding
pornography consumption.

One of the main errors in the general perception of pornography is the isolation of the
visual image, and with this the understanding that the mise-en-scène and narrative of
pornographic film positions the female in such a way as to reduce her to the status of a
passive object, while the (typically male) spectator assumes the more active, voyeuristic
position of the ‘gazing’ subject. This view can be said to find its initial elaboration in Laura
Mulvey’s seminal essay, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975), which drew largely,
following Jean-Louis Baudry, on the Lacanian notion of the Imaginary 4, which sparked the
initial wave of Lacanian film theory. The ‘male gaze’ consisted of the spectator identifying
with three positions, firstly, the gaze of the camera, which is always necessarily a voyeuristic
gaze, secondly, the look of the male protagonist, and finally, the gaze of the spectator, as
facilitated by the first two positions (Homer 2006:30). In turn, the consumption of
pornography was mapped onto a similar structure, perhaps not least because it seemed even
more applicable, even obviously so, to pornographic film. The viewer of pornography,
inevitably male, would identify with the male performer on screen, who, conveniently, shows
absolutely no emotion whatsoever so that the viewer can project themselves into the role, in
effect, take his place within their imagination (see Dines, Jensen, Russo 1998:77-78). This
seems pretty straightforward, and of course, as a number of critical feminists have instructed
us, most notably Andrea Dworkin and Catharine Mackinnon, this leads to spectators of

4
As a rule, to avoid any confusion, I shall capitalise the main Lacanian concepts, e.g., Real, Symbolic,
Imaginary, Gaze. When used in their normal context I shall leave them uncapitalised, but the meaning I am
trying to convey should be clear through the text.

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pornography maintaining this ‘filmic gaze’ in real life and reducing women to the level of
objects, or sexual animals. And this line has, in fact, been appropriated by much of the
traditional pornography industry in its self-presentation. But, alas, this view, ironically shared
by both the porn industry and its most fervent opponents, rests on a misunderstanding, one
which is slowly beginning to be appreciated by the contemporary porn industry, not least due
to the explosion of its market, and means of consumption. Traditional theory applied to
pornography mirrors that of Mulvey’s misreading of Lacan; of a desiring subject actively
taking possession of a passive object, with the male as the active spectator/subject, and the
female as the passive object. According to Mulvey, ‘the film experience is an experience of
power over the object, and when we desire in the cinema, we desire to dominate’ (cited in
McGowan 2007:9). But what this misunderstanding rests upon is the sense of mastery
involved in cinema spectatorship, the conception that the gaze is on the side of the spectator.
Recent Lacanian film analysis, led by Joan Copjec, and followed by Slavoj Žižek and Todd
McGowan, allows us to approach film spectatorship using Lacan’s concept of the Gaze,
which had been completely ignored by the pioneers of Lacanian film theory, such as Baudry,
Mulvey, and Christian Metz (McGowan 2007:6), who relied primarily on Lacan’s early work
on the Mirror Stage, and the emergence of the realm of the Imaginary.

This popular view of pornography, that views the female performer as objectified, also
fails to take into account the technological aspects of contemporary porn consumption, by
this I mean online, YouTube style consumption. In an insightful article, Zabet Patterson
attempts to grasp pornography’s appeal through a reading of the ‘material specificity’ of
technology, its appeal to the body of the spectator. He argues that an understanding of what
Vivian Sobchack calls technologic and the ‘physical apparatus through which pornographic
images are encountered’ are essential to analysing the relationship between viewer and image
in internet pornography (2004:108). What Sobchack means by technologic is the dual way in
which representational technologies convey their logic; ‘through the representations they
display... [and] through the manner in which they latently engage our bodies’ (Patterson
2004:107). Any analysis of technologic must involve the material perception of what is
represented, in other words, the effect upon our senses and our body of the relationship
between spectator and image through technological media. Sobchack defines this process as
microperception, as opposed to macroperception in which we ‘engage our senses textually at
the hermeneutic level’, concepts which she borrows from Don Ihde. For Sobchack any
analysis must take into account both microperception, in which the materiality and

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representations ‘find their fulfilment’, and macroperception; the cultural context which
informs the representations themselves (2000:138-9). Film theory cannot divorce the filmic
text from spectatorship if it wishes to remain interpretive, no matter what type of cinema, a
film’s spectatorship is always inherent in its production (McGowan & Kunkle 2004: xxi).

Apparatus Theory, as developed by Baudry, recognises that it is the entire set-up of

cinema spectatorship that must take precedence over a film’s content in order to comprehend
the significance of any particular film (Homer 2006:27). However, his analogy of the cinema
to Lacan’s Mirror Stage, in which the ego is formed through the child’s recognition of its
own mirror image; the completeness of the image in opposition to the body of the child
whose motor skills are yet to develop leading to a constant tension between the subject and its
complete image, or ego-ideal, that marks the subject as irrevocably split and signifies its entry
into the realm of the Imaginary, fails to take into account the elements of desire and fantasy
that Lacan develops alongside his notion of the Gaze and the Real. In order to understand
exactly how Lacanian film theory is applicable for analysing the social aspects of
pornography, it is useful if we are aware of the development of Lacanian theory as applied to
film, and cultural, studies. At this point, however, I shall briefly note that I do not intend to
look at POV porn as a cultural phenomenon in itself, rather, I believe it is more accurate, as
shall hopefully become clear, to paint it as a final throw of the dice, alongside interactive
porn DVDs, of an industry that, despite constantly being at the forefront of technological
developments in entertainment, is failing to keep up with desire (both the subject’s, and the
object of) in an age in which a huge amount of human interaction is conducted through the
medium of technology. What looking in detail at POV porn allows us, is the chance to
explore, to a certain degree, the shift in the subject’s desire as he/she interacts with, and
becomes subject to, the development of technology and, what Anna Ward describes as
intimatics; the ‘relation of intimacy generated from, not in spite of, the accessibility and
transmissibility afforded by contemporary technologies’ (2010).

Firstly, let us look at the development of the function of the screen in relation to the
spectator. In ‘The Mirror Stage’ (1949) Lacan describes the movement from insufficiency to
anticipation as the subject is caught up in the ‘succession of phantasies that extend from a
fragmented body-image to a form of its totality’, and which leads ‘to the assumption of the
armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire
mental development’ (1977 [1949]:5). Baudry applied this notion to the cinema in the sense

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that the spectator identifies with the image on screen, both through the representation of
events, and through the camera itself. As with the child before the mirror, the cinema
spectator’s mobility is restricted (within the theatre) and they are necessarily receptive to the
images which are ‘reflected’ back to him/her from the screen. The obvious weakness of
Baudry’s theory in terms of analysing online video is the heightened control of, and level of
intimacy with, the technology itself, which is denied the cinema spectator. But there are a
number of other weaknesses in Baudry’s work, despite his insight into the importance of the
apparatus itself.

For Christian Metz, although there is a relationship between the cinema and the Mirror
Stage, the ‘unreality’ of the cinema, the fact that the object on screen is not really the object
that is perceived, instead it is its ‘shade, its phantom, its double, its replica in a new kind of
mirror’, creates a presence where, in reality, there is an absence (Metz 1982:44-45). The
spectator can never fully identify with the object on screen and so the subject’s ego can never
be properly located. Its relationship with the signifier on screen is always one marked by
absence, the absence of the spectator from the perceived representation, but at the same time
a presence as voyeur; ‘At the cinema it is always the other who is on screen’ (1982:47-48).
This leads us to an interesting conception of Point of View pornography in which the male
performer is absent, with the exception of, normally, the hands and penis. In Metz’s reading
of the cinema, the spectator has only a relationship with what is ‘seeing’, rather than what is
seen, which raises the question of a primary identification with the camera, without the
secondary identification with the perceived objects on screen, and how the process of
projection functions through the mediums of, first, the computer, and second, the camera. I
shall take up this question a little later on when we see how Lacan’s concept of the Gaze
positions the spectator as looked upon, but always from a point which they cannot see. This
refutes Metz’s notion of the spectator as all-seeing and allows us to reformulate how the
Symbolic order, the big Other, functions in representational technology.

From here we can begin to see how Joan Copjec begins to reconceptualise the idea of the
screen as mirror. For Copjec, beginning a shift in Lacanian film theory in which the Gaze
takes precedence, the cinema screen functions as a defence, or buffer, against the void
beyond the field of representation; the screen is a ‘façade on which the formations of fantasy
are elaborated against nothing’ (Lebeau 2001:58). This allows us to understand the gap that
always exists between viewer and viewed, the impossibility of the cinema to ever escape

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from the Symbolic and Imaginary realms, in other words, to be anything but representation,
and always inevitably recognised as such. Only in the emergence of the medium itself, at the
close of the 19th century, could the barrier of cinema as representation be overcome (largely
because it was yet to be erected), as in the famous example of the crowd’s terrified reaction to
a train pulling into a station in an early showing by the Lumière brothers. At that point the
lines were blurred between reality and representation, but the ubiquity of screens and
technological representation, from mobile phones to 3D TV and film, in contemporary
society has made any blurring impossible. This is the great paradox of the spectacle as
represented today; the greater the efforts to engage the viewer, to make them feel part of the
action, whether in 3D Hollywood blockbusters or in pornography, the more the spectator is
reminded of the technological medium that is positioning them5. I don’t mean to suggest that
this remains at the forefront of the viewers’ minds, they are of course engaged in their
‘formations of fantasy’, but it is nevertheless constantly present.

This leads us to the question of why there is a desire to go ever deeper into the realms of
representation, to get closer and closer, and yet, at the same time, to never get close enough.
What I hope to suggest is that what modern technology allows us is a sense of relief from our
own subjectivity. POV pornography allows us the opportunity to explore electronic media’s
modification of film spectatorship alongside an ever-growing phenomenon that engages the
entire corporeality of the subject, and which also reflects the nature of internet desire and
consumption in what is still largely an intensely private sphere. Sobchack sets out the effect
of electronic space on the viewing subject thus;

‘All surface, electronic space cannot be inhabited. It denies or prosthetically transfers

the spectator’s physical human body so that subjectivity and affect free-float or free-fall
or free-flow across a horizontal/vertical grid. Subjectivity is at once decentred and
completely extroverted – again erasing the modernist (and cinematic) dialectic between
inside and outside and its synthesis of discontinuous time and discontiguous space as
conscious and embodied experience’ (2000:152).

So the intimacy of pornography consumption coupled with the transformation of the subject’s
body through technology, in other words, the embodied nature of visual pleasure that
combines how are sexual desires are mediated through technology, a technology which we
5
Think, for example, of the stupid glasses needed to watch 3D films at the cinema.

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control, and the physical response of the subject’s body to the images on screen, which we do
not necessarily control, takes us far from the subject simply observing the ‘object’ on screen.
It is this complex convergence that is ‘constitutive of the image’s seductiveness’ (Melendez
2004:402). As discussed earlier, the importance of analysing the microperceptions of the
subject are essential to understanding the way in which desire and fantasy invest the subject
in internet pornography.

The Lacanian subject is always already a desiring subject, characterised by a lack around
which the Symbolic order, which determines the subject’s conception of reality, is structured.
What Lacan terms as the objet petit a is the object cause of desire, it is itself this void, or
lack, that instigates the subject’s desire. It is not to be confused with the object of desire,
which can only stand in for the objet petit a, which is characterised by its unrealisable, and
unrepresentable, nature. It is in this sense that desire can never be satisfied, and the role of
fantasy is, in a sense, to protect us from coming to close to our real desires, to function as a
screen that bars us from the onset of the Real. Fantasy is a way out for the subject. It is an
escape from the ‘dissatisfaction produced by the demands of social existence’ (McGowan
2007:23). What emerges in contemporary society is the conflict between fantasy and the
Real. We attempt to get as close as we can to what is ‘real’ while we misrecognise the fact
that the closer we get, the more we become enmeshed in fantasy, hence the popularity of
‘reality’ TV and amateur pornography. The trauma that emerges is not the true trauma of the
Real in the Lacanian sense, it is a fantastical trauma that has become part of our reality, its
place is firmly within the realms of the Imaginary and the Symbolic, from which we can
never fully escape, and only serves to heighten our sense of a fragmented, decentred
subjectivity. The resulting lack is reaffirmed by the ungraspable nature of our desire, that
always ‘out-of-reachness’ that resembles the unquenchable nature of a hangover and the
always inadequate attempts to satisfy it.

As McGowan & Kunkle explore, much of contemporary cinema, outside of the

Hollywood mainstream, involves a relationship with the traumatic Real, often employing
fantasy as a vehicle ‘through which the real manifests itself’ (2004: xviii). But the porn
industry does not have the same freedom. It must be careful, while assuring the customer that
what they see is the ‘real’ thing, that the films do not come too close to the Lacanian Real,
protective buffers must be constantly employed, both on the part of producers and consumers.
Previously, these included background music and careful editing, but today, much more

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intricate methods are needed, which I shall explore in greater depth during my analysis of a
POV scene. But it is for this reason that it is a lot more uncomfortable watching films such as
David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) or Tsai Ming-Liang’s The Wayward Cloud (2005), than it
is to watch hardcore pornography. These films ‘flirt’ with the Real in a manner that
pornography, as a commercially driven form of entertainment, cannot allow itself to do.

The concepts of the Gaze, the Real, and desire, are intricately related in the
psychoanalytical theory of Lacan, and I shall take this opportunity to sketch out their
relationship in a little more detail, so that what I have covered so far will allow us to grasp the
analytical process that I shall soon undertake. The algebraic sign which Lacan applies to the
Real is X, hence the ironic use of XXX in the porn industry, and possibly even more so in the
almost obsessional contemporary practice amongst young people to write an x (originally
symbolising a kiss) at the end of every text message. The Real is the point at which the
Symbolic order ceases to function, the point over which it stumbles, at which cracks appear.
It can be roughly equated to our biological needs (though this is an oversimplification) before
we are consumed by the Imaginary realm through the Mirror Stage and subjected to the
Symbolic order through the acceptance of castration and the imposition of the law of the
Name-of-the-Father6. In other words, it is the Imaginary which marks the subject as
decentred, and causes the formation of the ego in constant tension with the ego-ideal, and it is
the Symbolic which we can equate with language; the constant flow of signifiers that can
never be attached to a signified, condemning the subject to never be able to fully express
exactly what he or she means. The Symbolic and Imaginary are therefore marked by an
absence, but, to quote Lacan, ‘there is no absence in the real’ (Evans 2006:162). Whereas
within the Symbolic there is always the possibility of something missing, the Real is always
in place, it is the gaps in the Symbolic order through which the Real emerges. In relation to
the scopic drive, that of the visual, the Real emerges as the Gaze; ‘In our relation to things, in
so far as this relation is constituted by the way of vision, and ordered in the figures of
representation, something slips, passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to
some degree eluded in it – that is what we call the gaze’ (Lacan 1981 [1973]:73). The Gaze is
not something that can be seen by the spectator, ‘by its very nature it is that which escapes
the visual field’ (Homer 2006: 125-6), it is the point from which the subject, the spectator, is
gazed at;

6
For a more detailed description of Lacan’s terminology and theories see Dylan Evans, An Introductory
Dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis (2006).

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 ‘Far from assuring the self-presence of the subject and his vision, the gaze functions
thus as a stain, a spot in the picture disturbing its transparent visibility and introducing
an irreducible split in my relation to the picture: I can never see the picture at the point
from which it is gazing at me’ (Žižek 1992:125).

This creates a process by which the viewing subject and viewed object formulation cannot
stand, something which Sobchack refers to in her phenomenological reading of the cinema.
She claims that the film itself must be seen as a viewing subject, that it transcends ‘its
existence as a merely visible object reducible to its technology and mechanisms’ (1995:51).
Although Sobchack does not adopt Lacan’s notion of the Gaze, she hits upon the main point
that the spectator, in the act of viewing, is always already looked upon. This has important
repercussions for the effect of spectatorship on the subject, and how fantasy and desire
function in the subject’s relationship with the screen.

The Gaze can be represented by what we alluded to earlier as the objet petit a, the object
cause of desire, and from this point we can begin to understand the nature of fantasy in film.
It is the gaze which triggers our desire by representing a gap in the visual field, a gap within
the apparent omnipotent look of the spectator, and as such the point at which desire manifests
itself. This gap in the spectator’s visual field is what signifies the impossibility of the subject
ever coinciding with the real, or complete, being, from which representation cuts him or her
off (Copjec 1989). Our look is always compelled towards the Gaze, whose only presence is a
point of absence. For the spectator it promises the subject the ‘secret of the Other’ by
seemingly offering access to what is beyond the visible, but this ‘secret’ can only exist if it
remains hidden. The only satisfaction, in terms of desire, that the spectator can hope for, is to
follow this path which can only ever circle the privileged object, never possess it (McGowan
2007:6-7). In this sense film provides the spectator with a sense of enjoyment, but a warped
sense of enjoyment that always falls short. The spectator is forced to settle for the path of the
object, rather than the thing in itself. In opposition to early Lacanian film theory, and its
derivatives, the draw of cinema is enjoyment, not a sense of mastery (McGowan 2007:12). It
is in fact the opposite of mastery that the cinema provides, it is the loss of subjectivity, but
paradoxically it is this loss which allows the subject (if they can still be termed as such)
enjoyment, or perhaps relief is another way of putting it. We can compare this loss of mastery
to that of a dream, it is in this way that dream and film can be linked. In a dream, as Lacan

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points out, there always exists an inability to apprehend oneself, the dream is that which
shows, and so one must always follow in a dream (1981 [1973]:75). As in a dream, one gives
oneself up to the film. The submission of the spectator lends itself to an understanding of
desire as fundamentally masochistic; the subject’s enjoyment stems from not attaining its
object of desire, and in turn, the subject sustains itself as desiring (McGowan 2007:9-10).
This then allows us to begin to pursue the notion that the subject’s enjoyment is in fact the
Other’s enjoyment. The anxiety which erupts at our proximity to the object is relieved
through a mode of transference in which the other, in this case the character(s) on screen,
enjoys in our place. The spectator as subject begins to fade, what Lacan refers to as
aphanisis, as he or she becomes enmeshed in the processes of desire and the transference of
the superegoic injunction to enjoy. This injunction is characteristic of, and conducive to, the
anxiety of contemporary society and the hedonistic drive by which we are induced to
consume ever more products in an effort to sustain our desire in ignorance of the
unattainability of its object. In film it is the Gaze as objet petit a that serves to instigate
desire, and thus the aphanisis of the subject. So any analysis of film must take into account
the role played by the Gaze, and the film’s relationship to the trauma of the Real. In his
extremely insightful book, The Real Gaze (2007), Todd McGowan points out the necessary
approaches to film analysis concerning Lacan’s notion of the Gaze; ‘Does a particular film
obscure the gaze throughout? Does it sustain the gaze as an unapproachable absence? Does it
domesticate the trauma of the gaze through a fantasmatic scenario so far as to undermine it
from within? And perhaps most importantly, does it allow us to encounter the gaze in its full
traumatic import?’, he goes on, ‘In answering these questions, the point is not to assemble a
set of categories that will allow us to praise or condemn films but to establish a way of
understanding the psychic and political part that particular films have’ (2007:17-18).

Pornography, as all film genres, has a specific relationship to the Gaze. While promising
the ‘real’ and ‘showing it all’, it must, at the same time, remain ‘stain free’. In pornography
this term carries a double meaning which amounts to the same process. Pornography must
obscure the Gaze, it must ensure that the traumatic Real does not erupt on screen, that the
‘stain’, the gap in the visual field does not interrupt the action. One way of doing this is to
literally keep the visual field stain free, hence the almost clinical nature of porn films, the
brightly lit scenes, the hairless (or nearly hairless) bodies of both performers, the bare
narrative which never allows a character to develop personality. These are just a few of a
number of methods used in the porn industry, which I shall go into in more detail later on.

12
Obviously, the enormous variety of pornography and the range of ‘fetishes’ within the
industry allow for a certain malleability of these rules, but here I am more concerned with
what can be termed ‘popular’ pornography, that is, the largely narrow, and unvaried, structure
the majority of porn films, and videos, follow. What can be seen in the past couple of decades
is a development of film techniques and modes of interaction in an effort to keep up with
consumer demand, rather than a development in structure.

Slavoj Žižek, one of the most prominent theorists in the ‘return to Lacan’ in film theory,
sees pornography as ‘inherently perverse’, though not in terms of its content. Instead, in
watching pornography the spectator must occupy a perverse position, what he means by this
is that the Gaze, the stain, is absent from the screen, not just in the sense that it represents a
point beyond the visual field, but in the sense that the Gaze falls upon the spectator so that the
screen contains no ‘sublime-mysterious point from which it gazes at us’ (Žižek 1992:110).
He goes on to suggest that the spectator, rather than the performers, is degraded to the level
of an object, an object of ‘voyeuristic pleasure’, and that the performers occupy the subjective
positions, they are ‘the real subjects... trying to rouse us sexually, while we, the spectators,
are reduced to a paralyzed object-gaze’ (110). What prevents the screen ‘gazing back at us’ is
the breaking of the fourth wall, the look (not limited to pornography) of the (generally
female) performer directly into the camera. This has interesting consequences for POV
pornography in which the look of the female is constantly aimed at the camera, but the
camera, in this instance, is also representative of the (male) partner’s face. The spectator’s
position becomes an even more precarious one, however, it is not, as Žižek maintains, a
perverse one, it is one of neurosis. Whereas perversion is attributed to the denial of castration,
for the neurotic it is a question of repression, the repression of the fact that the Other, the
Symbolic order, is not complete. One explanation for the popularity of pornography is the
lack of distinction between the normal and the neurotic subject. Neurosis is a question of
being for the subject (Evans 2006:126), it is part of the anxiety generated by the lack which
constitutes the subject, and as such is driven by desire. The ambiguous position of ourselves
as subjects is one that is heightened by the ubiquity of virtual communication and
consumption through technological representation. POV porn exemplifies this ambiguity, an
ambiguity which maintains us as desiring subjects. It is in this sense that pornography
functions as providing satisfaction in desire itself, while forever holding back its object.

13
 What we can now look at in greater detail is how exactly POV porn works, how it affects
the subject, and the methods it employs to maintain desire while being careful not to get too
close to the trauma of the Real. Point of view camera techniques are not new to pornography,
the 1995 film Rick Savage’s New York Video Magazine Vol. 5 is cited as featuring a point of
view scene in which the shot, from over the male actor’s shoulder, depicts both the male, and
the female actress within his vision, masturbating (Dines, Jensen, Russo 1998: 77). However,
in recent years there has been an enormous rise in exclusively POV feature films (Digital
Playground’s Jack’s POV 1-16 being amongst the most popular and critically recognised), as
well as smaller gonzo style videos shot in POV style. POV features began to grow in
popularity from the early to mid 2000s, with most of the major industry labels producing
either their own POV series or individual features. In an interview in 2005 Legend Inc.’s
Nelson X accompanied the company’s first POV release with the promise to produce more
POV features, to meet clients’ demands (Woodman 2005). But the current popularity of POV
videos can be seen from browsing the ‘All-time Top Rated’ and ‘All-time Most Viewed’ lists
on the most popular pornography websites; in July 2010, ten of the top twenty ‘Top-rated’
and five of the top twenty ‘Most Viewed’ videos on Pornhub.com were POV videos, at
Youporn.com a POV video had the most hits of all time on the site, and at Xvideos.com two
POV videos were in the top three all time ‘Top-rated’7. And the AVN awards (the Oscars of
the porn industry) has incorporated a Best POV Release award since 2005 8. In an interview
with avn.com, Brent Rockman, directing a POV series for Doghouse Digital, set out his
views on the genre;

‘For POV, most of it is over the shoulder, because you want to give the fan that feeling
that they’re the one fucking the girls... That’s the whole point of POV. You have the
girl talking to the camera, interacting with the camera the whole time – as she would as
though you just fucked her. The girl is talking to the camera, reminding the fan that,
‘Yeah. You’re the one fucking me’. It creates a fantasy environment for the fan. And I
guess that’s why POV’s are selling so well’ (avn.com 2004).

POV features follow the perspective of a male character in a loosely structured story of
numerous sexual experiences. The most commonly viewed online POV videos are individual

7
Sources: www.pornhub.com, www.youporn.com, www.xvideos.com
8
http://avnawards.avn.com/winners/2005/

14
scenes, often between twenty and thirty minutes in length, from feature length movies 9. The
point of POV porn is to immerse the spectator in the act itself, to get closer to the action. The
next step is combining 3D technology with POV filming techniques, along with interactive
viewer control. In Eric Spitznagel’s article ‘3D porn: Up close and a little too personal’
(2010) he describes porn director Tommy Gunn’s recent 3D feature Cummin at you! (as
always there is little subtlety involved in the titles of porn films), which was nominated for
six Adult Video News awards, as follows;

‘The movie includes a surprisingly hot point-of-view cunnilingus scene in which it

actually appears as if the female performer is resting her feet on your shoulders. There’s
also a wealth of interactive options. Do you want the action from the man’s or the
woman’s point of view? Would you prefer missionary, doggy-style, or cowgirl? A
money shot on her face, tits, ass, or pussy? You even get to choose the colour of a
dildo’ (2010).

The rise in 3D TV sales, and 3D computer monitors, points to the growing trend of the
spectator’s ‘immersion’ within representational technology. As always pornography is at the
forefront of technological development in the entertainment industry, but paradoxically, what
is lost in the new technologies is the intimacy, and, in a sense, reality, of the sex itself
(assuming that it ever existed before). In order to provide the spectator with a higher degree
of intimacy, the physical act between performers must become even more absurd. Breanne
Benson describes one of her performances in a 3D POV film; ‘For one of my sex scenes, the
guy had to wear a camera on his head... It fit over his head like a helmet, and it had what
looked like a little blinking flashlight right in the middle of the forehead. So we’re having sex
and he’s looking down at me and I’m trying to keep my composure and not laugh at this
stupid funny helmet’ (Spitznagel 2010).

Although every POV scene is different the videos inevitably follow the same pattern
which involves a brief dialogue between male and female, followed by fellatio, then sex in a
number of positions, and finally the ‘money-shot’, the male ejaculating onto the body or face
of the female, the ‘proof’ that what we’ve been seeing is ‘real’. In analysing a POV clip I
intend to present the effects upon the subject and the methods employed in the video, both

9
Although the average visitor spends a total of between nine and twelve minutes on the site per visit
(alexa.com), for reasons which are presumably obvious.

15
intentionally and accidentally, to engage the viewer. The following video, sourced from
pornhub.com, contains the AVN nominated porn actress Lela Star in a POV scene. The video
is helpfully entitled POV Lela Star, and runs for twenty five minutes and thirty five seconds,
in the three weeks since it had been uploaded to the website it had received 395,610 views.
The categories which the video falls into are listed as Brunette, Pornstar, and POV, and the
tags include POV, Blowjobs, Cumshot, Doggystyle, Tit-fuck, and Ass. These tags and
categories are common to most of the studio produced POV scenes, and this particular scene
is largely representative of the POV structure.

The video begins with a dark haired girl, with blonde highlights, slowly leaning over a sofa,
her back to the camera. The shot pans down and circles around her legs and buttocks, which
are clung to by a pair of tight denim shorts. The voice from behind the camera exhales ‘Jesus
Christ’, to which the girl responds, ‘You like that?’, ‘Yeah, I’m just gonna stay here a while
before we introduce you, cos I think this is quite captivating.’ As the girl turns her head the
shot zooms to her face, she whispers, ‘Is it?’ She has a long, slightly gaunt face. Her skin
lightly olive coloured. The exaggerated eyelashes and enormous lips are matched only by a
gleaming set of perfect teeth. ‘I like you,’ ‘I like you too’ she replies. The scene cuts to a shot
of the girl’s breasts, covered in a casual blue strapped top. As the shot zooms out to reveal
her face she begins to rub her hands across her breasts, the camera then speaks, ‘The fact
that you’re at my house makes me want you even more’, before moving around behind the
girl and extending a hand to squeeze her buttocks. From the sleeve it appears that the
camera is wearing a dressing gown. Slowly the hand begins to caress the buttocks and
vagina of the girl with its thumb, the girl responds by beginning to caress her own backside.
At this point the camera gently enquires if the girl would stand up and face it, ‘I think you
know what I want you to do, don’t ya?’, ‘You wanna see more of me?’ Lela Star replies,
while playing with her own breasts on which the camera has zoomed in. Slowly she pulls
down her top, revealing one breast at a time, and begins to play with her nipples. From the
camera,
‘You know you sent me some pictures?’
‘I did, I sent you a lot of pictures’
‘One of them was just like this’
‘I think I sent you a couple of these’
She begins to shake her breasts from side to side
‘You want one with cum all over?’

16
‘Would you just give my dick a little squeeze, and like, maybe a hello kiss?’
The girl drops to her knees, her eyes gazing up into the face of the camera. Maintaining
visual contact she produces an almost erect penis from between the robes of a dressing
gown, and begins to perform fellatio. ‘Hello’, she giggles. A hand reaches for her breasts
and another pulls her head towards the penis. A voice groans, ‘Just like that, yeah’. Miss
Star continues to gaze upward into the camera while fellating the now fully erect penis. The
camera suggests ‘Maybe I better have a seat, I think this is turning into a little more than just
a kiss,’ and the scene cuts to the girl kneeling between a set of legs and continuing to
alternate between oral and manual sex, sometimes combining both at the same time. As a
hand reaches out for her breasts the camera shifts slightly to the right, revealing the top of a
head in the bottom left corner of the frame. The eyes of the girl follow the camera, apparently
ignorant of the unattached head. The camera moves slowly back into place, gazing down
upon the eyes of the girl, ‘Oh my God, Lela Star’, it cries, ‘You like that?’, ‘oh, fuck yeah’.
The girl then takes the erect penis between her unnaturally large breasts, as a hand reaches
to place a thumb in her mouth. The girl begins to moan, slightly panting. ‘That feel good?’
she enquires, followed by the observation, ‘Umm, cock looks so hot in between my tits’. At
this point the camera, perhaps unfamiliar with the female anatomy, asks, ‘When am I gonna
see that pussy, can you take your shirt off?’ The girl removes her top, which was only loosely
around her midriff, over her head; she rises to her feet before spinning round and showing
her buttocks to the camera as she bends forward. She removes her shorts, revealing a white
g-string, matching the white high-heeled shoes, the only other item of clothing that she has
left on. The camera rises too at this point, standing over the girl, at which point the scene
cuts to the penis and the girl having sex ‘doggystyle’, a hand resting on the girl’s backside.
The shot shows only penis and buttocks. A brief pan up to the girl’s turned head catches the
words, ‘Oh my God, yeah, fuck it’. The voice from behind the camera moans in a deeply.
Another pan to the girl’s face and we hear, between her teeth, ‘Yeah, fucking put it up me’,
as she begins to groan heavily. The shot pans down over the girl’s body, then the voice calls,
‘Let me see your face’, and again pans up to Lela’s face turned towards the camera, her
groans become visual. The scene cuts to the girl standing up, facing the camera, as it
suggests ‘Let’s go to the back where it’s more comfortable’. The girl passes in front of the
camera squeezing her breasts before it follows, zooming in on her buttocks which she
caresses. Cut to the penis inserting itself into the girl’s vagina as she plays with her clitoris.
The frame is cut off at the girl’s midriff, before panning up to her breasts and face. The
camera then zooms out to a perspective from the ceiling showing the full body of Lela Star,

17
legs held up behind her head, her eyes steadily on the camera, ‘Oh fuck, put it there’, she
cries. The shot zooms to the girl’s face for two seconds of silence before she exhales, just as
the camera pans down to show her vagina and the penis. The shot alternates between
breast/face and penis/vagina, the girl playing with her own breasts, eyes closed, moaning
heavily. The voice asks, ‘It feels good?’, ‘Yeah, it does’, ‘You’re so fucking pretty’. The girl
begins to hold the bed sheets and rock back and forth, her breasts shaking in a rhythmic
motion as the camera looks down from the ceiling. After an array of screams she begins to
smile in a girlish fashion. The voice commands ‘Let’s do it from behind’ as the camera
zooms out, the girl spins around slowly, biting her lip in a coquettish manner, before showing
her buttocks to the camera, ‘Yeah, point that thing at me’, it replies. Zoomed in on the girl’s
backside she begins to stroke herself with her fingers before the penis enters the frame and
inserts itself into her vagina. As the shot pans to her face she asks, ‘You like that tight wet
pussy?’, to which she receives the reply, ‘Oh, fuck. It’s so nice of you to do this, let me see
that pretty face of yours’. The girl moans an elongated ‘umm’ looking directly into the
camera before the penis removes itself and the voice demands, ‘That’s so good, come on and
suck on this for me’. Climbing off of the bed and squatting on her haunches the girl begins to
perform fellatio on the penis, her eyes raised to the camera which asks her to ‘Do that
special Lela Star stuff’. The girl obliges, ‘Umm, your cock is so fucking yummy’. Hands
position the girl over the penis as the camera zooms in on its insertion into her vagina, ‘I’m
gonna stick it right in like that’. As the camera pans to the girl’s face and breasts she exhales
‘Oh fuck, your cock feels so good in my pussy’, the voice replies, ‘Your pussy’s so fucking
tight, it’s squeezing my dick, it’s extra fucking hard’. The girl’s white high-heeled shoes are
visible either side of the frame as she straddles the penis, before the camera pans up to a full
body shot with a map of the Baja peninsula on the wall in the background. The voice, ‘Oh
you’re so fuckin’ sexy, look at you’, as the camera zooms in on her face, her hair messed up,
hanging over eyes in which a pained expression glistens, the sound ‘umm’ escapes from her
mouth. The voice gently enquires if she’s tired and would like to climb off for a second, to
which she replies, ‘Sorry, I came really hard and my legs are trembling now’ The voice
offers to ‘do some of the work’ as the penis thrusts back into the girl’s vagina, as she leans
against the bed, ‘You look so good like that’. The shot alternates between the girl’s face and
breasts and her vagina and the penis as the sound of a helicopter can be heard outside. The
scene cuts to the girl lowering herself, her back to the camera, as the penis emerges from the
bottom of the frame, inserting itself into her vagina, ‘Oh holy cow’, the voice cries. The
camera rises and pans to the left, showing the girl from a side on view, her face turned to

18
meet it, before returning to frame the penis and vagina. ‘Oh God Lela Star’. Lela turns
slowly and begins to take the penis in her mouth, ‘I wanna taste my cum’, she explains. Her
eyes fixed on the camera lens as a string of saliva hangs from her lips to the tip of the penis.
‘I wanna fuck your tits’ utters the voice. The scene cuts to the girl on her back, the camera
over her body, the penis between her breasts, ‘It looks so fuckin’ hot’, she observes, as she
smiles and laughs, her eyes shifting from the penis to the camera. The voice enquires, ‘You
want me to cum in your mouth?’ to which Lela Star replies ‘Yeah, I do, you know I love
cum’, ‘I’m gonna give you some then, you ready?’ Her eyes fixed on the camera, the girl
opens her mouth wide as the penis ejaculates into her mouth and demands, ‘Will you swallow
it?’ The girl swallows heavily before licking her lips and taking the penis in her mouth. The
voice adds ‘Oh you’re good, oh I like you, you know all those text messages and
everything?’‘Uhuh’, the girl nods, ‘That was a bit of tension that had to come out there’. The
voice then wishes the viewer ‘Bye’ as Lela Star waves to the camera, the penis still in her
mouth.10

There’s no post-coital cigarette, unlike Hollywood, pornography considers the health of its
young audience. We can now take this scene and analyse the principle aspects of POV porn
consumption, beyond the typical ‘knee-jerk’ reaction, which will give us a clearer picture of
how porn is received by the spectator, how sex, as porn, is manipulated for the purpose of
reception, and what role these perceptions play in explaining the motivations of POV
pornography consumption. I shall note here that what I’m dealing with is the private, and
individual, consumption of porn. It is undeniable that porn is enjoyed by couples, and by
groups, of both sexes, but here I want to concentrate on porn as a masturbatory aid, or as a
pastime, mood management being one of the main motivations for pornography use,
according to Paul and Shim (2008). The principle aspects of POV pornography consumption
fall into four categories, although the experience itself must be taken as an intricate
convergence of all four. Firstly, as touched upon earlier, the impossibility of ‘real’ porn, that
is, the factors that maintain pornography as just that, and not sex, and the ways in which the
trauma of the Real is obscured. Secondly, the level of spectator control involved in POV
porn; how the spectator is encouraged to feel that, in the words of director Brent Rockman,
‘they’re the one fucking the girls’. The third aspect is, to borrow Slavoj Žižek’s reworking of
the Deleuzian concept of the ‘body without organs’, organs without bodies. Here I refer to
the function of the disembodied male performer and also the use of camera techniques to
10
POV LELA STAR, http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=411865976

19
frame distinct body parts. This leads us into the fourth aspect, which was briefly mentioned
earlier, that is, transference. Though, as shall become clear, this is not the same as
identification, but does involve a level of projection on the part of the spectator.

Sex is Real, that is, the sexual act itself, in its pure form, in its biological primitiveness,
stripped of all social connotations, is Real. Pornography can never represent Real sex for a
number of reasons, not least because sex, as the Real, is unrepresentable. What we experience
as sex in reality is always conditioned by the Symbolic and the Imaginary; we must therefore
necessarily construct a fantasy, as Žižek explains,

‘Since sexuality is the domain in which we get closest to the intimacy of another human
being, totally exposing ourselves to him or her, sexual enjoyment is real for Lacan:
something traumatic in its breathtaking intensity. This is why a sexual relation, in order
to function, has to be screened through some fantasy’ (2007:49).

A phantasmatic screen must be erected to provide distance from the ‘real, flesh-and-blood
other’ (Žižek 2007:51), and in order to situate that other within its frame. In this sense, the
TV, cinema, or computer screen acts as a frame of fantasy, the distance between spectator
and the traumatic other is always already in place. No matter how ‘vivid the quality of the
illusion’ the spectator is nevertheless always aware of the disjunction inherent in
representational technology (Crary 1988). No matter how ‘real’, cinema, as Metz pointed out,
is always ‘stamped with unreality’ from the very outset (1982:45). For Sobchack the film
experience is one which must be mediated in order to give the images any form of
significance, and so in this sense must be recognised as images, as representations; ‘the
viewer is always at some level aware of the double and reversible nature of cinematic
perception, that is, of perception as expression, of perception as a process of mediating
consciousness’s relations with the world’ (1995:42). However the embodiment of the
spectator confuses this somewhat, and the immersion of the viewer of pornography means
that other ‘buffers’ are established in order to maintain the fantasy, and ‘protect’ the
spectator. Despite the promise of an encounter with the Real, ‘film works to domesticate
every trauma by producing docile subjects’ (McGowan 2007:17). The recognition that porn is
unreal, that there is no reality in what we are seeing apart from its mediation, removes any
sense of anxiety from the spectator. The fact that porn obscures the Real so successfully

20
accounts for the lack of guilt in watching demeaning or violent acts, and also serves to blur
the brutal existences that many performers in the porn industry are coerced into.

The clinical, seamless nature of pornography is one way in which buffers are established.
The fake breasts, blemishless skin, shaven, or neatly styled pubic hair of female performers,
such as Lela Star, all contribute to the unreality of porn. In Anna Ward’s article on the nature
of representation in amateur pornography, she discusses how the porn-star has ‘come to
symbolise the fundamental problem with hard-core pornography’, the fakeness and plasticity
of the women symbolises the fakeness of the pleasure presented 11, and the clinical nature of
the sexual act ‘ha[s] a curious way of reflecting back the viewer’s own inadequacy’ (2010).
Porn, in the words of Chris Hedges, becomes ‘a bizarre, bleached pantomime of sex’
(2009:57). In another sense, the ‘perfection’ of the female image serves, according to
Jacqueline Rose, to allow the male, in confronting sexual difference, to ‘avoid any
apprehension of lack’ (1986:232), and so again, porn can serve as a relief.

Again, the seamlessness of the editing removes any of the awkward moments of sex, and
allows the male performer to maintain an erect penis and to come right on cue. There are no
shaky camera movements (although this is one of the main draws of amateur pornography,
‘proof’ of its reality), the performers are always in the correct position. But this editing and
cutting between scenes, as in the video described when we jump from a zoom shot of the
girl’s backside walking in front of the camera, to an intense close up of the insertion of the
penis, or, towards the end when the scene jumps from the girl straddling the penis by the side
of the bed, to the penis in between her breasts lying on her back, these cuts serve to remind
the viewer, if only discretely, that what they are watching is a production, not a continuous
act. What is also missing is the sensual aspect of sex, and by this I am not talking about the
performance, but the absence of any sensory perception beyond the visual and aural.
Although it can be argued that modern technology involves a more intimate, tactile,
relationship between spectator and machine, what is lacking in pornography is the sensory
perceptions of real sex; the smell, the sweat, the heavy breathing, the bodily fluids. In other
words, the traumatic encounter with the other body is absent. In a way, smell is the last real
11
In fact, the porn industry is responding to this, with one of today’s most celebrated, and recognised porn
stars, Sasha Grey, being anything but the blonde haired, tanned, big breasted stereotype associated with the
genre. Grey is dark haired, pale skinned, and small breasted, in other words, for the viewers she is more real.
She undoubtedly shows a self awareness of the role she plays in the porn industry, transferring it to
Hollywood, starring in Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film The Girlfriend Experience, in which she plays a high class
New York escort.

21
sensory perception available to us. If we think about contemporary society, the visual is
strictly regulated, in terms of what we see and don’t see (think sewage, landfills etc.), and
also in terms of spectacular society, our tactile sense is being reduced to interaction with a
machine, and the sounds of the real world are drowned out by our mp3 players. Smell is
perhaps the last unadulterated sense.

Another buffer is dialogue. The weak, often deliberately so, stereotypical dialogue of porn
films was traditionally a means of creating desire. Not in the same sense as ‘normal’ films,
relying on character development, but exactly the opposite; the lack of personality of the
characters, the wooden acting, the ridiculous storylines, all functioned in such a way that the
spectator, as well as the performers, were fully aware that what was going on was ridiculous,
that it was purely a ritual to be gotten through as quickly as possible, but which was
necessary in that it served to create a secret bond between the spectator and the actors,
everyone is aware that sex is not far away, but the weak acting and dialogue postponed the
‘object’ from the spectator, drawing out his or her desire. It was these ‘generic props’ which
made porn distinguishable (Bennett 2005). However, when it comes to the consumption of
online pornography videos, in their bitesize chunks, there is little room for the traditional
narrative structure. As in POV Lela Star a few words may be exchanged between performers
but the point is to get to the sex as quickly as possible (in fact, a number of mini-scenes from
the Lela Star video are available online, in six or seven minute long segments). The nature of
the construction of desire is therefore dealt with differently in relation to online porn videos,
but I shall deal with this a little later. First, it is important to state that dialogue still plays an
important role in porn videos, despite the reduction of narrative. The ridiculous dialogue
between performers, even more ridiculous in POV, as the girl is effectively ignoring her
partner, talking to the camera, is another method to hold back the traumatic nature of sex, the
voice of the female actress protects us from seeing everything that we’re shown. And this is
applicable both to the sounds of the female, and to the shared dialogue between the
performers. If we begin by looking at the dialogue in POV Lela Star, a number of examples
stand out; ‘Umm, cock looks so hot in between my tits’, ‘You like that tight wet pussy?’,
‘Umm, your cock is so fucking yummy’, ‘Your pussy’s so tight, it’s squeezing my dick, it’s
extra fucking hard’, and, perhaps the most surprising of all, ‘Holy cow’. The cheesy narrative
becomes part of the sex act itself, and reinforces the fantasy of representation, its unreality.
These lines are there in a sense to distract the viewer, to draw his or her attention away from
the sex. In the same way that the small details of the sexual act catch the eye of the viewer,

22
making the sex itself impossible to register as an isolated act. These can be deliberate acts,
employed by the producer, or part of the spectator’s own sense of ‘protection’. I’m speaking
about, again referring to POV Lela Star, moments such as Lela rhythmically shaking her
breasts back and forth, drawing the viewer’s eyes to her chest, rather than what is happening
lower down. But there are other, apparently trivial factors; the map that is visible in the
background at one point, the helicopter that can be heard outside, the tattoo on Lela’s hip.
These all function as buffers for the spectator, allowing the sexual act to be digested free
from any traumatic impact.

This reading of the female voice, following Kaja Silverman, is not solely applicable to
pornography. Silverman argues that the female voice acts as a fetish, whereas the male voice
is situated ‘in a position of apparent proximity to the cinematic apparatus’ which reveals ‘a
certain aspiration... to invisibility and anonymity’, thus, the female voice becomes identified
with the spectacle and the body; ‘At its most crudely dichotomous, Hollywood pits the
disembodied male voice against the synchronised female voice’ (cited in Smith 2004). As a
fetish, in Lacanian terms, the female voice therefore acts as a substitute for the phallus (not to
be confused with the penis), the privileged signifier that helps to determine the split
(spaltung), through castration anxiety, characteristic of subjectivity. The phallus is
representative of the ‘lost object’, and the female voice, as a fetish, instigates the desire of the
spectator at the same time emphasising the unattainability of the female performer.

The moans and groans of the performer also play a key role in the porn experience. Unlike
the male, who can express his pleasure through visible means, hence the essential feature of
the ‘money-shot’ in pornography, the female must attempt to transfer her pleasure from the
inside to the outside. But this is done to such an extent that performing fellatio encourages
almost orgasmic moans. In their study of pornography, Dines, Jensen & Russo, suggest that
the female’s expressions of pleasure reflect the fact that women are associated with emotion
(1998:78), but they misrecognise the fact that the pleasure expressed is not that of the female,
it is expressed on behalf of the spectator. In POV it is the eyes almost constantly fixed on the
camera that ‘gives away’ the performance, especially in those moments when the point of
view of the male performer is lost, as we see in POV Lela Star. In one shot the top of a head
(that of the male performer) appears in the bottom left of the screen, and in another the
camera pans to the left showing an almost completely side on view of the girl during sex, and
again the shots that zoom out to reveal the entire body of Lela Star, the perspective is from

23
the ceiling and her eyes are directed upwards at the camera, not remotely towards her partner.
Of course, the idea is that the viewer feels that they are ‘there’, with the girl, but unless the
viewer is around ten feet tall the technique necessarily fails. However, there is another
function of the aural and corporeal performance of the female, which involves a level of
transference, which I shall shortly explore.

But first I wish to point out another interesting aspect to the Lela Star video, which allows
us a little insight into the commercial drive of pornography. The dialogue in the video begins
and ends with reference to a correspondence between the two performers; ‘You know you
sent me some pictures?’, and later, ‘You know all those text messages and everything?’ What
is suggested is that the two characters met ‘online’ previously, and this was their first
physical meeting, ‘The fact that you’re at my house makes me want you even more’. Porn
sites, like pornhub.com, are submerged in advertisements and pop-ups for videos,
performance enhancers, but mostly for online sex communities (for example, Fuckbook,
whose tagline reads, ‘the Facebook of sex’), through which you can attempt to engage other
people for sexual experiences, either online, through webcams, or in real life. POV Lela Star
attempts to make the viewer believe that a porn star is there waiting for anyone behind these
adverts, that Lela Star is essentially attainable. Recall how she is referred to by name several
times in the video, and how the male voice discloses knowledge of her previous videos, ‘Do
that special Lela Star stuff’. This video attempts to combine the visual sense of intimacy with
the girl, while encouraging the fantasy for the viewer that ‘that could be me’.

Finally, one more reason why real sex is impossible in pornography, in the same way that
the traumatic real is impossible in Hollywood, is that the functioning of the Symbolic order is
dependent on the avoidance of the Real, which always threatens to emerge through the cracks
in the structure. This is the role that ideology plays, it fills in the gaps. Ideology ensures that
things run smoothly, giving the subject the impression of a ‘complete’ order. This is the
effect of neurosis on the subject, the repression of the fragility of the big Other. But when the
subject experiences the trauma of the Real, ‘it recognises symbolic authority’s failure to
account for everything’ (McGowan 2007:16). It is in this sense that late modernity is linked
with the proximity of the Real, and the ensuing anxiety of such proximity.

Now let us move on to the next key aspect in POV porn; that of spectator control.
Typically, film theory has been established in terms of the spectator’s relationship with the

24
apparatus in a cinema, hence Baudry’s analogy with Plato’s cave. The relative immobility of
the spectator, the darkness of the room, the spectator’s isolation, while at the same time being
surrounded by people, all mean that the spectator is immersed in the space and time of the
filmic experience. Electronic media, on the other hand, involves a level of physical control
over what is seen, reinforcing the sense of habit associated with the internet. Contemporary
technology involves a bodily investment that affects our personal and social experience
(Sobchack 2000:138). In the cinema, one has little choice but to follow, hence the relation
between film and the state of dreams, as Baudry explains;

‘The subject has always the choice to close his eyes, to withdraw from the spectacle, or
to leave, but no more than in a dream does he have means to act in any way upon the
object of his perception, change his viewpoint as he would like. There is no doubt that
in dealing with images, and the unfolding of images, the rhythm of vision and
movement, are imposed on him in the same way as images in dream and hallucination.
His relative motor inhibition which brings him closer to the state of the dreamer, in the
same way that the particular status of the reality he perceives (a reality made up of
images) would seem to favour the simulation of the regressive state, and would play a
determining role in the subject-effect of the impression of reality, which we have seen,
is characteristic not of the relation of the subject to reality, but precisely of dreams and
hallucinations’ (1975).

And so the sense of mastery which implicitly accompanies the visual field is lost in the
cinema, the spectator is obliged to follow the path laid out for them and is thus at the whim of
the film’s manipulation of desire; always circling, while never attaining, the desired object. It
is in this sense that the satisfaction experienced in film spectatorship stems, in part, from
relief of the subject’s own subjectivity, or, in Lacanian terms, aphanisis, the fading of the
subject.

However, does this mean that in representational technologies which are controlled by the
spectator, that is, the technology rather than the representation, does this mean that a sense of
mastery is retained by the subject? If we return once again to POV Lela Star it is clear that,
despite POV’s promise to make the viewer feel as if they are in the position of the male, the
spectator is still obliged to follow the camera. The spectator has absolutely no control over
what part of the body is focused on, nor what acts take place. The alternation between face

25
and breasts and vagina and penis shots is firmly in the control of the producer. In the same
way the structure of the film in terms of its trajectory; from teasing, to fellatio, to sex, to
come-shot, is out of the spectator’s control. However, the spectator is able to skip backwards
and forwards on the video at the click of a button without any delay (due to broadband
connection speeds), and equally to choose another video. What online videos, in whatever
genre, give to the viewer is a greater sense of possession, and, as Franklin Melendez points
out, one of the pleasures involved in pornography consumption is the sense of possession.
One does not possess the girl, but one possesses the video (the representation of the act), and
it is within one’s power to take it or leave it, in contrast to the cinema in which once a film is
chosen, the spectator is more or less obliged to sit through it. Melendez explains a distinction
between possessing the image and being moved by the image, however both must be taken
together to understand the pleasure derived from porn;

‘One mode of viewing – a disembodied gazing predicated on consumption/visual

possession – must be seen as operating in conjunction with corporealized vision, which
accounts for the pleasure of pornography’s physical effects on the body. In this way,
experience comes to complement the facts of production, and pornographic viewership
unfolds in the vacillation between two seemingly opposed poles, producing a visual
pleasure that emerges as a function of both material production and physical
consumption’ (2004:404).

We can say that the spectator’s sense of mastery is given up as a result of the physical bodily
reactions to watching sexually explicit material, and an awareness of the fact of this
submission which necessarily accompanies pornography consumption.12 Thus, although
contemporary technology offers a more tactile, or embodied, engagement with the machine,
as opposed to the dream state of cinema, the images represented still remain beyond the
subject’s control. The spectator must settle for possession of the representation, but the real
thing is always out of reach.

The third aspect of the filmic experience of POV porn is one that is unique to the genre,
although something similar can be seen in regular pornography. It is the phenomenon of
‘organs without bodies’; the penis, the hands, the voice, that belong to the male performer,

12
Here one mustn’t forget that the human body is stimulated, visually and aurally at least, according to
social norms.

26
who is himself absent from the visual field. In POV Lela Star the voice plays an active role in
setting up the narrative of the video, as well as emphasising the porn star’s name throughout,
insinuating her availability, as previously explored. There is some feeling, as can be seen
from perusing the ‘comments board’ attached to each video, that the male voice should be
absent from POV, that it spoils, or disrupts, the idea of projection. But this raises the
question, is it easier to project oneself through the ‘partial objects’ of the hands and penis?
This may suggest that the visual may allow for a greater integration than the aural. But it also
points to the dissolution of the unity of the ‘bodily self-experience’ (Žižek 2004). Žižek
suggests, in reference to the shots which zoom in on, and isolate, the penis and vagina in the
act of intercourse, common to all hardcore pornography, that the spectator’s perception of
‘the bodies as a kind of vaguely coordinated agglomerate of partial objects’ functions in such
a way as to remove the effect of two people interacting, and instead corresponds with the
Deleuzian concept of contemporary society being marked by the multiplicity of intensities,
and the body as an impersonal desiring machine (Žižek 2004). In this sense then, the
‘objectification’ of women in porn, which is defined by feminist and legal scholar Catherine
MacKinnon as ‘women [being] dehumanized as sexual objects, things or commodities...
reduced to body parts’ (Papadaki 2010), is equally relevant to the male performers. Is not
POV porn, in which the male performer is almost uniquely embodied through his penis, not
the extreme of objectification that many critical feminists and anti-pornography campaigners
claim is inherent in the performance of the female? 13 The risk of POV pornography, from this
perspective, for male viewers, is the reduction of pleasure to the penis, both in terms of
inducing it, and receiving it, and this is something that has not been widely considered in the
media. It stands for both sexes; a generation whose first experience of sex is normally
hardcore pornography risk the belief that the sexual organs are the sole source of sexual
pleasure, and this is a dangerous narrowing of what should be a liberal and creative field
based on intimacy and self-understanding.

But this leads us to another role which the penis, as isolated object, plays in POV porn. I
have previously suggested that the injunction to ‘enjoy’ in late capitalist society is relieved
through pornography, and recently I have pointed out how pornography spectatorship leads to
a fading of the subject. But let us look now at the role of the big Other in pornography, of

13
Of course, MacKinnon and Dworkin would argue that the male (in terms of gender) takes on the role of
woman (defined as a social construction), since man is by definition the objectifier, and woman the objectified
(Papadaki 2010).

27
how its presence assumes the responsibility of enjoyment. For Lacan, the phallus stands as a
signifier of Symbolic authority. Now, the phallus is not the penis, at least not implicitly, but
in POV porn the very nature of the penis as a partial object, as an organ without a body, in
other words, its ‘detachment’, allows it to function as the phallus, as a signifier. I do not mean
to suggest that the presence of the phallus implicitly positions the female as castrated,
Lacan’s theory of castration is a lot more complicated, and applies to both sexes equally.
Castration represents the Symbolic lack of the subject, his or her inability to ever reclaim the
‘lost object’, which is associated with the mother (and which never existed in the first place).
By linking the proscription of the phallus, the lost object, with the Symbolic father, the
phallus becomes a signifier of Symbolic authority. The detached penis in POV porn functions
as something alien, as a point at which ‘a foreign power intervenes and inscribes itself’
(Žižek 1996:110). Ideologically the symbolic phallus obscures the lack of signifier in the
Symbolic order, assuring its authority. The presence of the big Other qua phallus at once
inhibits the projection of the spectator onto the male performer, but instead functions to
relieve the spectator of the decree of enjoyment. In Metz’s view, the character ‘off screen’,
whose viewpoint we adopt, even if the camera does not match it exactly, is present only in
the sense that we see through that character. By adopting this position, the spectator finds
themselves, to an extent, ‘inside’ the film, but only through the character off screen (Metz
1982:55-6). Therefore, for Metz at least, any projection by the spectator is necessarily
mediated by a character inside the film, thus in POV pornography, the spectator can never
feel that they themselves are the one performing, i.e., having sex, they can only identify with
the male performer who is already there. However, the function of the detached penis as a
signifier of Symbolic authority makes this process of identification impossible; the penis
must necessarily belong to the Other. And it is the apparent enjoyment of the Other, in place
of the jouissance given up by the subject, that acts as an engine for desire (McGowan
2007:10); the subject draws their satisfaction from the fact that the object of desire remains
always out of reach. Following Sobchack, the viewer is always subjected to ‘signs and
meanings produced by an always already dishonest and subjugating ‘other’’ (1995:47). This
again points to the inability of the Real to emerge in pornography, the presence of the big
Other ensures that the Real cannot break through, for there is no crack through which it can
emerge.

The fourth aspect, which we have already begun to explore, is that of transference, more
specifically the transference of enjoyment. Transference is, of course, a clinical term,

28
referring to the relationship between analyst and analysand, but Lacan’s interpretation has
implications for the relationship between the spectator/reader and a film/text. Lacan
introduces the term ‘subject supposed to know’ in reference to the analyst; the analyst as
perceived to be all-knowing from the point of view of the analysand. But, as Sean Homer
points out, the key lies in the word ‘supposed’, the analyst does not, in fact, have all the
answers. Likewise, a text is presumed to ‘know’, to have meaning in itself, to be complete,
but Lacan’s understanding of transference places the emphasis on meaning as ‘a
reconstruction between reader and text’ (Homer 2006:123). What takes place during the
viewing of pornography is the transference of subjectivity from the spectator to the characters
on screen. The film is presumed to be complete, and therefore the spectator can give
themselves up to the representation. We can speculate why this happens by seeing it as a
response to the controlling superegoic imperative to enjoy placed upon the subject. Žižek
describes the superego injunction as an ‘aspect of today’s “non-repressive” hedonism (the
constant provocation to which we are exposed, enjoining us to go right to the end, and
explores all modes of jouissance)’ (2006:310). It functions as a means of controlling excess
enjoyment, of maintaining a ‘homeostatic balance’ in which everyone is encouraged to ‘have
a good time, [and] to acquire self-realization and fulfilment’ (Žižek 2006:310). But this
constant injunction forces the subject into seeking relief, into transferring their subjectivity
onto an other. Pornography, especially POV, functions perfectly in allowing an ‘other’ to take
one’s place; enjoyment is displaced onto others, and in turn, they perform in our place. The
groaning and climactic screams of Lela Star allow the spectator to sit back and relax, for a
while at least, knowing that they are relieved of the expectations placed upon them by
society.

In this way, watching pornography is increasingly, what Žižek calls, an ‘interpassive’

activity (2007:24). Zabet Patterson describes a video which involves following the daily
routine (and inevitable sexual activity) of an actress, as having the effect in which the girl
seems to be “performing actions for the viewer” (2004:117). He goes on to add;

‘What this suggests is a situation in contemporary culture in which people displace their
enjoyment onto others; that what they enjoy seeing in pornography is not necessarily
the impulse toward masturbation, but precisely the experience of seeing, and having,
someone else enjoying in their place’ (118).

29
This is not to suggest that people do not masturbate while viewing pornography, but that the
relief (as the motivation for accessing pornography) is primarily one of transference, sexual
relief is secondary. The difficulty with measuring motivations for porn use is that the reasons
suggested above are not necessarily conscious decisions; they can be more accurately
described as societal responses, which function below the level of individual consciousness.
There is an analogy here with the fluidity of ‘identities’ in contemporary society; the role of
transference in cinema, as Anne Friedberg points out, is one in which ‘new identities can be
“worn” and then discarded’ (1995:65). It also points to the level of control of the spectator in
online pornography, resulting from the multitude of videos, genres, categories, that are never
more than a click away.14 Interestingly, the one porn site out of the top five in the UK in
which POV videos proved least popular, xhamster.com, is the also the most popular, by a
long way, with the over 65 age group, who make up the second user age group, behind 18-24
year olds (under 18s are not included in the figures) 15. This potentially suggests that POV is
more popular amongst younger consumers, perhaps suggestive of the correlation between
POV porn and transference; porn as a means to engage with technology in order to transfer
the pressures of ‘enjoyment’, something that is arguably more acute amongst younger
generations. I should also point out that the tagline for xhamster.com is ‘Just porn, no
bullshit’. One could speculate that it is exactly the ‘bullshit’ that is essential to younger
audiences in order for desire, in terms of the deferral of satisfaction, to function16.

At this point we can begin to see how pornography websites function in order to stoke the
desire of the subject, in such a way as to remove the onus on the video itself to establish
desire through narrative, allowing the video to get straight to the action. Previously,
pornographic convention meant that a narrative needed to be established before the sexual act
was shown, as Žižek points out, ‘If we proceed too hastily ‘to the point’, if we show ‘the
thing itself’, we necessarily lose what we are after’ (1992:110). Desire needs to be initiated
around the female as the object cause of desire, this is done in the video itself by the camera
circling the female body, recall the opening shot of POV Lela Star, as the camera slowly pans
around her legs and buttocks. Remember, desire can never attain its object, it can only ‘circle’
around it. But what is essential in pornography is the fact that both the performers and the

14
Porn sites include ever an ever increasing number of categories which include Blonde, Pornstar,
Blowjob, Fetish, Interracial, Female Friendly, and even Hentai (cartoon pornography).
15
Source: Alexa.com
16
One is reminded here of Viktor Pelevin’s notion of ‘moutharsing’, described in his novel Babylon as a
combination of the anal and oral wow impulses that maintain the balance of late capitalism.

30
audience know that all will eventually be revealed, desire is initiated before the video has
even begun. And so, there is no sense of teasing, beyond the brief circling of the female.
Traditionally a slow strip tease scene would function to excite the viewer, but online videos
cannot use such techniques as the viewer can just skip forward, get to the ‘real thing’. So,
from this, it is clear that the video is not sufficient in itself, largely as a result of technology,
to create and maintain desire around the female. Instead, this is done through the actual
structure of porn sites themselves. These sites are arranged in such a way that the consumer is
literally bombarded with thumbnails depicting each individual video, which, when rolled
over with the cursor, display a series of stills from the video. Even when watching a video,
thumbnails to others are always present. The search function, the categorisation, the Most
Viewed and Top Rated options all lead to new possibilities, literally tens of thousands of
videos. The Most Viewed and Top Rated, and ‘Videos being watched right now’ sections
also work to eliminate any anxieties that the consumer may harbour, essentially normalising
the process.

Of course, this is not entirely applicable, or even necessary, for the regular user, in which
habit becomes one of the strongest motivations for pornography consumption (Paul & Shim
2008). But why does this habit emerge? What is it about porn sites that encourage this
repetitious behaviour (a repetition that mirrors the content of the videos)? Porn sites can be
seen as a reduction of the internet itself. The whole concept of ‘surfing’ of jumping from one
page to another, one site to another without any real direction, is reproduced through the
thumbnails of the porn site. Just like the objet petit a, the perfect video is always out of reach,
so the consumer must derive their satisfaction from the ‘deferral of satisfaction... an endless
slippage of desire in which part of the pleasure derives from habitual repetition and habitual
deferral’ (Patterson 2004:109). The acceptance of repetition is not due to videos providing ‘a
kind of sex that men in this culture are routinely trained to desire’ (Dines, Jensen & Russo
1998:72), the desire is caused by the deferral of satisfaction. Coupled with the transference of
enjoyment, the obscurity of the objet petit a, which maintains the subject as desiring, makes
porn sites the obvious source of relief from the anxieties which surround the contemporary
subject; anxieties of self reflexivity, of identity, of intensity. Hence the habitual, or
pathological nature of pornography consumption. Pornography is consumed from a point of
neurosis, a point of obsessional neurosis from which one constantly questions the
contingency of one’s own existence, our decentred, incomplete nature constantly reinforced
by the path of desire, which we are obliged to follow in Late Capitalist society.

31
 Our desire is generated by thumbnails, these little images always holding something back,
full of an unknown potential, the secret of the other. But one door inevitably only opens on to
another door and so on ad infinitum. This is not limited to pornography 17; it is becoming the
major organising feature of online content. It is the ‘follow the link’ mentality that sustains
consumers as desiring subjects, it is why Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia are amongst the
most visited websites in the UK, and the rest of the world 18. The rise of UGC sites means that
desire is perpetuated by the consumers, caught up in the same network that controls them.
What analysing the technical shift in pornography allows us to see, is the transition from a
complete narrative structure which positions the subject, to the subject being caught up in an
endless network of fragmented images (and bodies), coupled with an unprecedented level of
engagement, or intimatics, with technology. Simulation comes to displace real sensory
experience. Habit, and the lure of the thumbnail, become the driving forces behind people’s
behaviour in an effort to reclaim a lost object that they are made to believe exists. As Gore
Vidal once said, ‘the only danger in watching pornography is that it might make you want to
watch more pornography; it might make you want to do nothing else but watch pornography’
(cited in Amis 2001).

Writing in The Times, Naomi Wolf claims that ‘[t]oday it is perfect porn that is “real” sex
to young people – and real naked women are just bad porn’ (2009). Although the intentions
may differ, this comment is remarkably prescient in what I have been discussing; porn shows
real sex as simulacra, bad porn is when the Real has not been sufficiently obscured. Most of
today’s younger generation, having grown up with virtual communication as the norm, are
more comfortable with the relief from anxiety of technical representations than the intimacy
of a ‘flesh-blood’ other, of the proximity of the Real. The risks of pornography are not that
women may become objectified, or that porn incites sexually deviancy, in fact we are all
encouraged to be as deviant as we wish in our efforts to find our true selves. The real risks are
that sex is reduced to the sexual organs, that personality and intimacy are lost, and that as a
result sex serves to objectify both partners in the act itself. In a recent Sunday Times article
Camille Paglia asks, in reference to the pop star Lady Gaga, ‘How could a figure so
calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism
17
To the extent that it has become common practice on YouTube, and other video sharing websites, to
place a picture of, say, an attractive woman in the middle of the video, if only for half of a second, in order for
the thumbnail of the video to show this image, regardless of the actual content of the video.
18
Source: Alexa.com

32
have become the icon of her generation?’ (2010). The comparisons with pornographic video
are obvious, and the repetitive beat of her music matches the repetition experienced in the
consumption of porn. The answer lies in the concept of interpassivity, a star whose
extravagant videos and live performances, who exudes a pseudo hyper-sexuality and non stop
excess is the perfect model to assume the ‘enjoyment’ of her fans, to relieve them of the
spectre of the injunctions of the superego. If everything is permitted then life can only be
lived through frames of fantasy, the kernel of the Real becomes glazed over, hidden deeper
and deeper. The risk is that when the Real eventually emerges, as in J. G. Ballard’s short
story The Intensive Care Unit, it becomes even more traumatic.

33
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