Winner of the 2013 Media Personae Award for best Camille Paglia parody
By If you were to provide an artistic critique or analysis of contemporary pornography, what would it be?
Well, on the one hand, I am of course delighted that the fanatical puritan feminists of the anti-pornography crusade of the 1980s have been forced to eat dirt! Their arrogant success in pushing Playboy and Penthouse out of the convenience stores (a campaign where they allied with conservative Christian groups) evaporated when the Web went big in the ‘90s. The feminist politburo toppled like a house of cards, thanks to the explosion of freedoms triggered by the Web. Pornography is now beyond anyone’s control. It’s a classic example of ever-controversial unregulated capitalism — the market automatically responding to individual needs and desires.
I continue to support and defend pornography, which I believe exposes the deepest, darkest truths about sexuality. As an industry, pornography also helps to rebalance the modern psyche: middle-class workers are trapped with their tyrannical machines at home and office. Pornography, with its surging animal energies and guiltless display of the body, brings the flame of organic nature into that mineral wasteland.
Having said that, I must confess that I find very little of interest in too-formulaic contemporary pornography — except for the always hot gay-male scenarios that one stumbles on in surfing the Web.
The problem is that explicit sex has become so diffused through the general culture that it’s lost its charge, which once came from the sizzle of transgression. I’m nostalgic for that primal shock quality, which was still there in spades when a juicily plump Madonna was doing her pioneering videos in the ‘80s like “Burnin’ Up,” “Open Your Heart” and “Like a Virgin.” No one could writhe better than Madonna on the prow of a gondola!
The reference to a “juicily plump [!] Madonna . . . on the prow of a gondola” is just a bit too obvious and over the top, but otherwise an outstanding effort from this year’s winner.
