The Erotic Spectacle
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The Erotic Spectacle: Sexting, Technological Innovation & the Reconfiguration of the Pornographic Imagination by David Rosen Some certified masterpieces (from Chaucer to Lawrence) contain passages that do properly excite readers sexually. Susan Sontag1 21st century pornography The outing of a number of male In March 2015, four teenage students politicians, most nobably Congressmen between 15 and 17 years of ages and Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Chris Lee who attended Ridgewood High School (R-NY), suggests how sexting is going in Norridge, IL, were arrested for mainstream.4 A 2014 Pew Research posting to Twitter videos of study reported that “sexting … is themselves engaging in consensual practiced by couples and singles alike” sex acts. According to local law and the practice nearly doubled since enforcement, they were to be charged 2012. The most active adults engaged with disseminating harmful material to in sexting were between 25 and 34 minors.2 These teens are but two of a years of age. “Married and partnered growing number of young people, and adults are just as likely as those not in an increasingly number of adults a relationship to say they have sent throughout the U.S., engaged in sexts,” it noted.5 Sexting is spreading “sexting,” the exchange of sexually- to an older age cohort, being explicit messages via a wireless integrated into popular culture. device. They are the tip of a mass social phenomenon remaking the Nevertheless, teen sexting messages, pornographic imagination.* sexts, are often misidentified as child pornograph, a form of sexual Sexting is the first original exploitation.6 Teen form of pornography to sexting subverts the emerge in the 21st century. dominant porn It involves mostly young conventions in three people taking, sending and critical ways. First, it receiving explicit nude, involves teen makers semi-nude and provocative and viewers, not adults still images, video clips (i.e., sex predators); and/or text-messages of second, it involves themselves and others. erotic display and not These images are being sent via a explicit sex acts (e.g., fellatio, smartphone or another mobile cunnilinus, intercourse); and third, it is communication device. Estimates vary a non-commercial form of enticements as to the number of teens engaging in (i.e., not a commercial product). Teen sexting, but findings from a number of sexting remains predominantely a studies suggest that anywhere form of flirting, something essentially between 10 to 20 percent of American by and for young people and freely young people are likely sexting.3 exchanged, a gift. * Image = Photobucket.com. Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle Sexting culminates nearly two employing “ready-made conventions of centures of the evolution of the character, setting, and action.” It also mechanical representation of erotica. employs dramatic architypes, most Sexting, however, has a pre-history, nobably “male lewdness” and “female with roots reaching to the earliest virture.” Finally, porn relies on “a forms of the live pose or performace small crude vocabulary of feeling,” art by the sexually provocative female thus avoiding emotional complexity to stage artist.7 The modern expression heighten voyeuristic titillation. Sontag of the female erotic spectacle emerged argued that porn shares some of these as the "posture girl" (or, far less conventions with other literary forms, frequently, the posture boy), a unique including science fiction and religious phenomenon of 18th century London tracks (i.e., “religious obsessions”).8 sex shows. For millenia, non- mechanical forms of creative Film historian Linda Williams clarifies expression, whether written, sung, Sontag’s argument, observing, “… painted or drawn, invoked illicit female pornography is not one thing, but sexuality. The adoption of mechanical sexual fantasy, genre, culture, and forms of representation over the last erotic visibility all operating together.”9 two centuries, first analog and now This has never been more the case digital media, only intensifies the than today. Following a century of power of the erotic female spectacle to analog printed texts and electronic entice the male gaze. waves that defined the modern media experience, postmodern visual culture Sexting, like earlier forms of is completing the transition to a series mechanically reproduced pornography, of digital formats, of 1s and 0s. The expresses an original aesthetic at once digital pallette fosters an historically erotic, subversive and threatening. It new era of media communications and democratizes pornography, an unprecedented expansion of self- reconfiguring what Susan Sontag expression culminating in sexts. identified nearly a half-century ago as the “pornographic imagination.” While Sexting’s pornographic aesthetic is speaking mostly of literature, Sontag shaped by two factors: (i) the live distinguished pornogaphy from pose assumed by the (mostly) female conventional literture in that porn performer and (ii) the technologies seeks to sexual arouse the reader.* involved in the production, distribution “Some certified masterpieces (from and display of the performer’s Chaucer to Lawrence),” she observed, representation. Over the last two “contain passages that do properly centuries, both factors have witnessed excite readers sexually.” In addition, fundamental changes that, together, she identified a series of secondary shape the postmodern pornographic attributes of pornography which, while imagination. Sexts illustrate how applying to literature, also resonate in artistic –- and commercial mass- contemporary media, including marketed -- erotic images have been sexting. Porn relies on a shallow if integrated into personal notions of artificial narrative structure, often sexuality, fashioning the new normal. Today’s teen girl assumes as normal * Sontag’s article originally appeared in the many of the hard-fought gains of 20th Partisan Review in 1967, three years after century feminists and the all-pervasive Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart consumer revolution. Like her older famously declared, in Jacobellis v. Ohio sister, mother or grandmother, today’s (1964), “I know it when I see it,” to teen is an active female, one with her distingush “hard” from “soft” core pornography, obscenity from art. own needs and desires – and, in time, © David Rosen, 2016 page 2 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle a paycheck and the vote. She is also a performers. “They immediately highly sexualized person. She is, stripped stark naked, and mounted along with teen boys, ceaselessly themselves on the middle of the Table. assualted by sexual messages, erotic … The Throne of Love was thickly stimulations, that define her as an covered with Jet-black hair, at least a erotic creature. She is also seizing the Quarter of a Yard long, which she new means of self-expression, of self- carefully spread apart, to display the representation and communication, entrance into the Magic Grotto.” In including smartphones and the 1766, London's Midnight Spy added Internet, to assert her self-identity, another dimension to the posture girl’s including her sexuality, as a form of profile. “A beautiful woman lies personal empowerment. stretched on the floor and offers to the view just those parts of her body that, Unfortunately, sexting’s challenge to were she not without all shame, she conventional pornography only goes so would most zealously seek to conceal,” far. Contemporary pornography, it reports. Going further, it notes: “As whether commercially produced or she is given to drink, she arrives amateur user-generated content usually half drunk, and after two or (UGC) or do-it-yourself (DIY) video, three glasses of Madeira exposes remains very much in keeping with herself to men in this unseemly traditional, patriarchial and manner.” Her moral threat heterosexual aesthetic values. The scandalized: “Look, she is on all four object of display continues to be the now, like an animal. She is ridiculed, exposed female while the subject of and men gloat over such prostitution desire remains the lustful male gaze. of incomparable beauty.”11 The female spectacle Such display came slowly to U.S. public performances. In 1827, a Sexts share much with original 19th scandal greeted Mme. Francisque century pornographic still and 20th Huntin, a celebrated European dancer century moving-image media. They and the first solo ballerina to perform are personally composed, if stylized, in New York. She debuted at the representations; the subject’s pose in prestigious Park Theatre on Park Row a sexually provocative form of self- and her costume overshadowed her expression. In the 21st century, teen performance, generated moral girls often display themselves in sexy outrage. By the late-1840s, female underwear, a push-up bra, bathingsuit performers began to act out “living or, provocatively, in various stages of statuary” shows in all-male saloons undress. Some reveal their breasts, and theatres. These performers often butt, genitals or appear to masturbate. took well-known poses, postures Sexting embodies the strengths and suggesting a character from a classical limitations of 21st century adolescent tale or sculpture like “The Greek and young-adult erotic sensibilities. Slave” or “Venus Rising from the Sea.” In the ‘50s, Lola Montez, originally The live pose and/or performace by a from Ireland, became America’s first sexually provocative female has a long iconic sex star by drawing inspiration history in the West. The modern from the legendary posture girl. expression of the female erotic spectacle emerged as the "posture In the post-Civil War era, female girl," a unique feature of 18th century performers regularly appeared in London sex shows.10 The 1749 “union suits,” neck-to-toe tights that publication, The History of the Human showed off their nature-endowed Heart, offers insight into such finery. In its hey-day, burlesque was © David Rosen, 2016 page 3 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle like no other popular form of live a website of strip clubs, lists nearly commercial female erotic display. The 3,000 operating throughout the first American performance of this new country; another estimate puts the theatrical art occurred on the evening number of clubs at 4,000.