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 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 , 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. They of September 28, 1868, when British reportedly to serve some 1.2 million star, Lydia Thompson, and her troupe, (mostly male) customers a day and the British Blonds, took the stage of generate an estimated $3.1 billion to the George Wood’s Museum Theatre, $7.5 billion in revenues annually. In on Broadway and 31st Street. addition, some 30 club-chain operators Burlesque’s new woman combined control over 300 adult clubs across the what theatre historian Robert Allen, country and one chain, Rick’s Cabaret, author of Horrible Prettiness, calls is publicly traded on NASDAQ (symbol: “sexual allure and inversive feminine RICK).14 And young girls, having insubordination.” “Either half alone unconsciously absorbed the lessons of could be controlled and made to history and the sexual marketplace, please without seriously undermining pose in provative sexts. the position of the male spectator,” he argues. “Fused together in a single Pornography & mechanical performer, however, this combination reproduction was much more threatening.”12 Burlesque drew inspiration from -- and Each modern communications medium found a loyal, enthusiastic audience engenders a distinct form of among -- working-class men. In pornography. The major analog media represented a different aesthetic or of the 19th and 20th centuries included performance sensibility then the more black & white and, later, color printed middle- and upper-class vaudeville or works (books, newspapers, legitimate theatre. magazines) as well as the photograph, telephone, phonograph, radio, film, The 1893 Chicago Exposition broadcast and cable television, introduced a new era of female sexual homevideo and vidoegames. display. Little Egypt, an Algerian, born Together, they fashioned the modern Ashea Waba, and who lived in New pornographic imagination. Analog York as “Mrs. Harper,” was a most technologies are being supeceded by a provocative performer, a national new generation of digital media sensation. She stared in the first porn consisting of still, moving and films of movie-industry pioneers interactive programming or “content.” Thomas Edison and W.K.L Dickson. In Such progamming, from what’s shown 1917, Mae (sometimes spelled May) on a giant digital TV screen at a 3D Dix promendaded before an movie theatre to the tinyest enthusiastic, nearly all-male audience smartphone or game device, can be at the Minsky’s National Winter Garden shared by a global, interactive network theatre in New York, on Second of “friends.” Together, these media Avenue near Houston Street, and express a distinct aesthetic, a “accidently” stripped off her show- vocabulary of the 21st century girl’s costume, launching the modern pornographic imagination. era of the strip tease. As Allen observes, the striptease was Paintings, drawings, lithographs, “burlesque’s last-ditch and ultimately sculptures, cards and printed books unsuccessful strategy to stay alive.”13 long offered erotic representations. Walter Benjamin noted that engraving Today’s posture girl strutts her stuff at and lithography were the first “gentlemen’s” or strip clubs that are mechanical means of image capture no longer limited to Las Vegas. TUSCL, and display. However, they were

© David Rosen, 2016 page 4 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle techniques applied to natural nineteenth century was a period in substances like leather, wood and which a new porno-erotics of stone. Benjamin recognized that the corporealized observation began."18 photography engendered the aesthetic sensibility of the modern age, George Eastman introduced the extending image reproduction from the relatively inexpensive Kodak camera in natural to “man-made” or the 1888, taking advantage of the manufactured substances, specifically then-breakthrough technology, nitro- chemical-based processes.15 cellulose roll film. Eastman Photography introduced a new way to significantly lowered the cost of the capture and display an (initially medium and fostered a new school of stationary) image as well as a new artists and amateurs with greater way of seeing, and thus a new control over image production. The category of art ... and artist, the Kodak system democratized media photographer. It fashioned the communications and expanded the modern aesthetic sensibility that production of pornography. Williams shaped visual imagination for the next reported, “it seems quite likely that a two centuries. wider range of classes of both sexes had an opportunity to observe such It is speculated that "the first person [pornographic] images.”19 to take a photograph was Joseph- Nicephore Niepce, in 1824." In 1832, Projected film emerged in the late-19th Louis Daguerre announced his century and the first storefront movie innovative process to the French theatres opened at the turn of the new Academy of Science and, in 1837 century. One of the earliest picture (after forming a partnership with shows at a Chicago penny arcade was Niepce), introduced an improved How Girls Undress; it was displayed on process using a copper plate coated a “mutascope” system and attracted with silver iodide.16 This launched the many young boys.20 The “vitascope” age of analog media. Joseph Slade was a late-19th century advanced believes that the first pornographic technology, one of the earliest photograph was introduced in 1846, moving-image projection systems. “depicting a rather solemn man William Heise’s classic vitascope film, inserting his penis into the vagina of The Kiss, which runs 16 to 51 seconds an equally solemn middle-aged (depending on version), depicts a woman.”17 close-up of John Rice and May Irwin passionately kissing.21 It was first Since its introduction, photography shown, projected onto a large screen, has been subject to repeated waves of at the Koster & Bials Music Hall in New industrialization. Innovative formats York in 1896 and the performance were introduced; camera production excited many. was rationalized; costs rapidly declined; and a new visual sensibility The display of a larger-than-life sexual was fashioned. In the early-1850s, intimacy must have been shocking, new techniques sped up the even thrilling. Early movies must have photographic production process from felt like a cascade of images several minutes to 20 seconds. The reinforcing the complexity, confusion cost of a commercially-produced and rawness of modern urban life. daguerreotype photograph rapidly Movie theatres at that time were one dropped to 12.5¢ from 50¢ and the of the few acceptable social spaces in market for photographic images which white men and women, often significantly expanded. As Williams unchaperoned strangers, could share found, "... [the] mid- to late- an intimate proximity and an exciting

© David Rosen, 2016 page 5 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle visual experience; African-Americans In the 1950s, stags became “beaver” were barred from early New York movies, often depicting women in movie houses. Other then the saloon, various forms of erotic presentation. the dance hall or church-sanctioned The basic beaver showed a woman gathering, young men and women stripping to display full frontal nudity; (excluding prostitutes) had few public the “split beaver” displayed a woman venues in which to socialize let alone spreading her legs and/or her vulva; flirt, touch or kiss. "The very darkness and the “action beaver” depicted of the room," warned the social softcore lesbian scenes. Stags and reformer Jane Addams in 1909, "is an beavers reinforced the formal added attraction to many young structure of how the (subservient) people, for whom the space is filled female was expected to serve the with the glamour of love making."22 A (dominant) male.25 newspaper critic of the day exclaimed: "Magnified to gargantuan proportions, The peepshow booth was another it is absolutely disgusting. ... Such unique technology to view things call for police intervention."23 pornographic imagery. Adapted from Edison’s earliest peeps, post-WW-II In 1923, Kodak targeted a new market peeps were mounted in wooden booths for its moving-image equipment, the and outfitted with 16mm and 8mm amateur filmmaker, and introduced film -- and, later, analog videotape -- comparatively lower-cost 16mm film image-projection systems. After the equipment. Early porn film producers viewer placed a coin in the money slot, adopted the new technology and used a “loop” -- a projected pornographic it to circumvent Comstock laws movie sequence -- was shown. Peep prohibiting “obscene” materials from booths were often located in a the U.S. mail.* Amateur and semi- darkened commercial venue that commercial pornographers screened permitted, in addition to the viewing of stag films in noncommercial, porn shorts, engaging in other sexual semiprivate venues operating activities, including masturbation and throughout the country, including as fellatio. They were popular in the ‘60s part of evening "smokers" or, as and ‘70s, most notably in New York’s Williams calls them, "primitive genital Times Square. There’s much shows."24 Often smuggled into small controversy as to who “invented” the towns by travelling salesmen, stags peep-booth. Some claim it was were shown at a variety of private Reuben Sturman, a Cleveland porn venues where groups of men entrepreneur; others insist that it was gathered, including Elk’s clubs, college Martin Hodus, of New York, whose fraternities, bachelor parties and initial loops consisted of two-minute military events. movies featuring topless women.26

The opening of the feature-length porn film, Deep Throat, in June 1972 * Anthony Comstock (1844-1915) is the father of modern censorship – of at the New World Theater in Times employing the power of the state to restrict Square, transformed moving-image the adult acquisition and consumption of erotica. According to one scrupulous allegedly “obscene” or “pornographic” critic, the movie displayed “fifteen materials, be they erotica, birth-control nonsimulated sexual acts, including information or or medical contraceptive seven of fellatio, four of cunnilingus ... devices. His major accomplishment was and others requiring more passage of the 1873 federal censorship imagination.”27 Deep Throat was a laws barring obscene materials from the porn flick with “a plot ..., and a U.S. mail; many features were in force until the 1960s. coherent one to boot, with the actions

© David Rosen, 2016 page 6 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle of characters more or less plausibly sexuality pioneered by Hugh Hefner’s motivated.”28 It marked the zenith of Playboy magazine (launched in 1953) filmed pornography. and the ‘60s sexual revolution. In 1972, amateur photography Homevideo further extended popular underwent a second revolution with acceptance of pornography. Ampex the introduction of the self-focusing introduced the first industrial camera.30 videotape recorder in 1956 as part of a technical effort to make television Forgotten by many, the Xerox photo- production more efficient and duplication process introduced in the economical; the consumer videotape 1960s helped rationalize the mass recorder emerged two decades later. reproduction of erotic images, if only The first explicit sexual video seems to in black-and-white. Xerox copies of have been released in 1977 and, very pictures from x-rated photos, rapidly, “X” and “XXX” rated videos magazines, books and calendars came to dominate this fledging new proliferated. Often overlooked, the medium of moving-image porn. So office photocopier contributed a unique popular were adult videos that in ‘85, form of user-generated imagery as when approximately 28 percent of U.S. innumerable employees captured their households had a VCR, three-fifths of most private representations, often on the nation’s 20,000 retail outlets were company time. Whether they exposed selling and/or renting porn titles. their butts, breasts or penises, if not “Video freed porn from its bondage to couples coupling, employees adult bookstores and the raincoat duplicated their most private parts for crowd,” John Heidenry observed.29 posterity. With homevideo, porn moved from the sleazy to the suburbs. As its What Polaroid did for the still image, popularity expanded, porn production Panasonic’s VHS homevideo did for the and distribution were restructured and moving image. Until the introduction a new erotic aesthetic took form. of homevideo, unless one was exceptionally competent technically, Amateur pornography the ordinary amateur could not reproduce 16mm or 8mm film -- or a “Amateur” artists, be they painters or photograph for that matter. He (or writers, sculptors or musicians, have she) needed a commercial vendor to long created UGC or DIY media. process moving or still images. As During the post-WW-II era, the often happened, unfortunately, if a amateur arts expanded to include customer’s image alarmed the vendor, photography, filmmaking and the police were called and the image- homevideo. Technology – along with a taker arrested. more sexualized consumer -- transformed the pornographic Broadcast television utilize the public imagination. In 1948, Edward Land airways and is, therefore, a censored revolutionized photography with the medium; cable offered extended introduction of the Polaroid self- access to porn to many more then developing instant camera. It brought those who visited a XXX-retail outlet mechanical reproduction to UGC, and movie theatres. One night in empowering amateur photography. It November 1979, the posture girl enabled users to take a photograph became the performance artist. Tara and have it automatically duplicated in Alexander, a lanky, long-haired about a minute. Polaroid named one amateur porn star, perfomed in the of its first low-cost cameras, “The Spermathon and had sex with 86 men. Swinger,” in keeping with the new The event was backed by two of the

© David Rosen, 2016 page 7 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle city’s leading sex-preneurs, Al notorious was alt.sex with Goldstein, publisher of Screw, and alt.sex.pictures, alt.sex.movies, Larry Levenson, proprietor of Plato’s alt.sex.voyeurism and Retreat, the city’s hottest hetero sex alt.sex.masturbation. In the late-‘80s, club. It was videotaped and shown on the graphic artist Mike Saenz the city’s new X-rated cable show, introduced “Virtual Valerie,” an Midnight Blue.31 interactive erotic computer game on a floppy disk and then a CD-ROM; it Complementing such semi-commerical allowed the (male) user to repeatedly efforts, UGC fostered a new type of insert a dildo into Valerie’s vagina. In erotic fantasy that did not rely on the 1995, Danni Ashe, a former foreign otherness represented by the and nude model, started “Danni’s Hard commercial professional star. UGC Drive,” one of the earliest online porn conceived video as a mirror, depicting sites; CNN reported it had revenues of the maker as both the subject and $6.5 million in 2000.34 Online and object of fantasy representation. What stored commercial porn as well as it lacked in professional quality, UGC amateur sites like YouPorn and porn made up in viewer identification, PornoTube expanded the porn market. a sense that one was watching the real Sites like SuicideGirls and eroticBPM thing, oneself. It found a welcoming helped turn soft-core porn into a audiance and, by the late-‘80s, DIY feature of goth and punk aesthetics, video porn accounted for 30 percent of further integrating porn into popular new video releases.32 culture.

The new technologies of the the ‘80s More than a century after the and ‘90s further extended the introduction of the beaver shot, full boundaries of the pornographic genital exposure and intercourse -- imagination. The opening of telephone penus and vagina or penus and anus - voice services (i.e., #900 numbers) to - became the iconic pornographic commerical porn added an often- representations of postmodern unappreciated dimension to sexuality. They distinguish the pornography – live and prerecorded aesthetics of much of early-21st audio. In 1988, the Information century commerical female and male Industry Bulletin estimated annual hetero- and homo-erotic porn. The revenues for the dial-a-porn industry beaver shot became the “cum” or at $54 million.33 The adoption of “money” shot, male ejaculation onto a digital technologies in the ‘90s woman’s body, face or into her mouth. transformed porn production and The beaver and the cum shots speak distribution. The digital camera and to the continuing aesthetic tyranny of the computer-based editing and male erotic fantasies. The apparent graphics programs (e.g., Apple’s Final popularity of “gonzo” porn pushs Cut) remade video production; the further hardcore or anti-feminist compact disc, the Internet and representations.35 Surprising, few wireless communications teen sexting messages currently seem revolutionized distribution. A new to involve gonzo porn, whether beaver media culture was born and, with it, a or cum shots. new generation of pornography. 21st centurt pornography The early adoption of a nongraphic Internet led to the establishment of Teen sexuality has been a moral numerous online discussion groups, battleground since the nation’s including Usenet, and innumerable founding. During George W. Bush’s “alternative” groups, the most two administrations (2001-2009),

© David Rosen, 2016 page 8 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle

Christian conservatives exercised Sexuality saturates online life. considerable influence, promoting sexual abstience, a policy that saw Sexting represents a technological adolscent sexuality as a threat to advance over earlier forms of UGC like childhood “innocence.”36 These print and analog film and video. It moralists sought to end government involves the instantaneous – programs providing sex-health electronic, digital -- capture of very information, HIV-AIDS safe-sex personal, if not illicit, forms of self- prevention programs and birth-control expression and transmission to assistance. However meanspirited another device user. Reflection is these efforts, they did little to address minimized; impulse dominates. The the commercial culture that kept transmission can be either a one-to- pushing the boundaries of teen one or a one-to-many exchange. With sexuality. The polices of Bush’s the former, the transmission is second administration intensified the faciliated through a wireless network; teen sexuality crisis. a teen takes a photo and sends it to a receipient with a device capable of The two Obama administrations receiving the transmission (e.g., a 3G accepted the sexualized teen as a or 4G smartphone). With the latter, social and markplace reality. The the transmission is mediated through a Guttmacher Institute found that as of wired or wireless network and facilited February 2012, 13 percent of 15 year- through the Internet. A surprise to old girls had had intercourse and 70 many young people, a private sexting percent of 19 year-olds of both sexes titilation can go viral almost had had intercourse. Surprising to instantanously. The person’s (girl’s) many, as Lydia Shrier of the Harvard image of sexual flirtation can quickly Medical School found, sexually active become available to not only the young people 15 to 21 years old report intended recipient, but also to a more positive feelings on the days community of “friends” that can range they had sex than on the days they from the person next door to someone didn't. Nevertheless, close to 1 million the person does not know located young women under the age of 21 across the global. become pregnant each year and one seventh (13%) of all annual births are Sexting, like all forms of mechanically by teenagers.37 reproduced, distributed and displayed erotic imagery, suffers from its Sexting has become an original form technological limitations. Most screens of self-expression for the early-21st on smartphones have a small display century youth generation. Katrin or aspect ratio; e.g., the iPhone 4.5” x Tildenberg argues that it is but one 2.3” and, in comparison, the iPad form of online sexual self-expression. measures 9.5” x 7.3”. This places Such expression “includes work on significant limitations on the viewing searching for sexual partners, use of experience. At the 2008 Academy internet as a method of solicitation and Awards ceremony, Jon Stewart advertisement of sex-work; cybersex; famously mocked watching David issues of addiction, gender variances; Lean’s epic, 70-mm film, Lawrence of discourses of consumerism, therapy, Arabia, on a tiny iPhone. According to the expression of self-identity and Pew Research, as of April 2015, two- creation of communities within thirds (64%) of American adults had a sexuality; sexualized fan-fiction and smartphone, up from one-third (35%) fan-art; use of internet for queer or in 2011. Lean’s film is now available sexually subcultural identity- from Apple’s iTunes. Mobile devices construction, sexting, fidelity, etc.”38 are uniquely suited to reinforce the

© David Rosen, 2016 page 9 Sex Matters Erotic Spectacle twin tendencies of postmodern visual to law-enforcement officials, these culture: ever-faster editing cuts and imges “constituted child pornography ever-tighter close-up shots.39 Sexual under relevant statutes ….” They also representation adapts to the found that a majority of these cases limitations of the image display (66%) involved an "aggravating" medium, whether a 19th century circumstance beyond the conventional photographic, a 20th century movie definitin of sexting, including a minor theatre or TV set, or a 21st century engaged in abusive behavior (31%) or smartphone screen. And so the an inappropriate adult was involved pornographic imagation is configured. (36%).43 As of yearend 2011, according to the National Conference Porn is a big business in America with of State Legislatures, at least 21 states estimated revenues of $10-plus billion. and Guam introduced bills or In 2012, CNBC estimates that it resolutions aimed at suppressing “generate roughly $14 billion in sexting; bills were enacted in five revenue per year,” including print, states, Florida, North Dakota, Nevada, TV/cable, in-room, DVD and online Rhode Island and Texas as well as programming and services.40 Kassia Guam.44 Wosick, a New Mexico State University sociologist, estimates the globally porn In the U.S, child pornography is a market at $97 billion, with the U.S. crime. The Supreme Court argues accounting for between $10 and $12 that there is a Constitutional difference billion of it.41 According to one between art, “soft core,” which estimate, there are nearly 25 million titliates, and obscenity, “hard core,” porn sites worldwide making up 12 which excites. This difference between percent of all websites. Sebastian art and obscenity was ineloquently Anthony, writing for ExtremeTech, drawn by Justice Potter Steward’s reports that Xvideos is the biggest legendary 1964 obfuscation, "I know it porn site on the web, receiving 4.4 when I see it." Nevertheless, it is a billion page views (pvs) and 350 difference with significant million unique visits per month. He consequence. First Amendment claims porn accounts for 30 percent of protections do not apply to obscene or all web traffic. Anthony estimates the pornogaphic works. The Reagan-era average length of time spent on “war on crime” first promoted child sex Xvideo at 15 minutes. From an abuse as a prominent issue. In 1982, aesthetic perspective, sadly, he notes the Supreme Court ruled, in New York that most people receive their digital v. Ferber, that child pornography was video feeds using low-resolution an exception to First Amendment free- streaming.42 speech protection. It insisted, “a child has been physically or psychologically Teens and young adults around the harmed in the production of the work.” U.S. are being arrested in growing In this way, porn is similar to a numbers for engaging in sexting. In handful of other forms of expression, 2011, researchers at the University of including libel, profanity and sedition, New Hampshire’s Crimes Against and not protected by the First Children Research Center surveyed Amendment.45 some 2,700 U.S. law enforcement agencies. In a series of reports in But is sexting child pornography? Is Pediatrics, the authors found that today’s teenager a “child”? And is the between 2008 and 2009 law- exchange of sexts between enforcement officials handled an consenting, age-appropriate teens the estimated 3,477 cases of "youth- distribution of “child pornography”? produced sexual images." According Sex saturates, defines, teen existence.

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It is driven by two -- and sometimes expression. Only a decade or so ago, overwhelming -- forces. One is pornographers were sleazy dirty-old- nature, the coming-of-age puberty men; today, they are the kid next hormones that transform a youth into door. an adult, a child-conceiving person. The other is the omnipresent The future of sexting among teens will marketplace of fashion, media and likely be determined by three factors: peer pressure, forces that reduce (i) will it continue to principally depict many human relations into commercial heterosexual females? or will it equally exchanges, interactions between depict both males and females, sexualized commodities. straights and gays?; (ii) will it continue to principally depict “nonexploitative” Surprisingly, in the wake of the sex activities? or will it become sexting scandals that led to the incresaingly specialized, fetishized?; resignation of two Congressmen, the and (iii) will it continue to be a form of U.S. Congress has not passed anti- noncommercial sharing or will it sexting legislation. However, a dozen become just another sex business? or so states have passed anti-sexting Answers to these questions will shape laws. The apparent increase of sexting America’s 21st century pornographic among adults may push further First imagination. Amendment freedom of sexual

Notes

1 Susan Sontag, “The Pornographic Imagination,” in Styles of Radical Will (New York: Anchor Books, 1969). 2 “Four Teens Caught in Sexting Sandal in Norridge,” CBS, March 17, 2015. 3 J. H. Humbach, “Sexting’ and the First Amendment,” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, 37 (2010), pp. 433-85. 4 Disclosures about the UK spy program, “Optic Nerve,” which scooped-up an untold number of sexually-explicit images of Americans, suggest that sexting is widespread among adults. See Spencer Ackerman and James Ball, Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ,” The Guardian, February 28, 2014. 5 “Couples, the Internet and social media,” Pew Research, February 11, 2014. 6 Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor and Kimberly J. Mitchell, “How Often Are Teens Arrested for Sexting? Data from a National Sample of Police Cases,” Pediatrics 129 (2012), no. 4: 2; Dena Sacco, Rebecca Argudin, James Maguire and Kelly Tallong, “Sexting: Youth Practices and Legal Implications,” Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Research Publication No. 2010-8, June 22, 2010, pp. 21-24; and Reed Lee, “United States v. Michael Williams,” Free Speech Coalition Analysis. Hanna Rosin noted, “A recent study of seven public high schools in East Texas, for example, found that 28 percent of sophomores and juniors had sent a naked picture of themselves by text or e-mail, and 31 percent had asked someone to send one.” The Atlantic, November 2014. 7 Jonathan Coopersmith, “Pornography, Technology and Progress,” ICON 4 (1998), pp. 94- 125. 8 Susan Sontag, “The Pornographic Imagination,” pp. 34-73. 9 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible” (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), p. 270; see also Robert Stoller, Porn: Myths for the 20th Century (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 24-25; Lynn Hunt, “Introduction,” p. 10. 10 Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution , Vol. 1: Heterosexuality and The Third Gender of Enlightenment London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 197, 136 and 157-59.

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11 Iwan Block, Sexual Life in England: Past and Present (Herfordshire, England: Oracle Publishing, Ltd., 1996), 327; see also Trumbach, op cit., 107, 157-59 12 Robert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 271. 13 Allen, Ibid., p. 248; Stanley Walker, The Night Club Era (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 [originally published in 1933]), 205-07. 14 “Strip Clubs United States,” The Ultimate List; “Strip Club Statistics,” Statistic Brain. 15 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed., Hannah Arendt (New York: Shocken Books, 1969), pp. 218-19. 16 Steven Luber, Infoculture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions (Boston: Houston Mifflin, 1993), p. 51. 17 J. W. Slade, “Eroticism and Technology Regression: The Stag Film,” History and Technology 22 (2006), vol. no, 1, p. 28. 18 Williams, op. cit., p. 34. 19 Ibid., p 25. 20 David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 154. 21 Wiliam Heise, The Kiss (1896). 22 Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: McMillian, 1909), p. 86. 23 Williams op. cit., pp. 286-87 n 10. 24 Williams, Ibid, 26; Slade, op. cit., pp. 13-14. 25 Kelly Dennis, Art/Porn: The History of Seeing and Touching (London: Berg Publishers, 2009), pp. 100-20. 26 Kat Long, The Forbidden Apple: A Century of Sex & Sin in New York City (New York: IG Publishing, 2009), pp. 131-33; Laurence O’Toole, Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1998), p. 103. 27 Richard Randall, “Censorship: From The Miracle to Deep Throat,” in The American Film Industry, ed., T. Balio (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 522. 28 Williams, op. cit., p. 99. 29 U.S. Attorney General, Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1986), pp. 352-53; Heidenry, What Wild Ecstacy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 231. 30 Coopersmith, op. cit., pp. 106-07. 31 Heindenry, op. cit., pp. 263-64. 32 John Holliday, “A History of Modern Pornographic Film and Video,” in Porn 101: Eroticism, Pornography, and the First Amendment, eds. J. Elias, V. D. Elias, V. Bullough, G. Brewer, J. Douglas and W. Jarvis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999), pp. 341-51; Coopersmith, op. cit., p. 107. 33 Joan Mower, “Firm Agrees to Pay $50,000 Fine in ‘Dial-a-Porn’ Case,” Associated Press, November 7, 1988. 34 Claudia Springer, Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 53-54; see also Kelly Flynn, “Danni's Hard Drive to Adult Content Success,” CNN, October 21, 2000. 35 Wendy McElroy, “A Feminist Defense of Pornography,” Free Inquiry; Robert Jensen, “Just a Prude,” Free Inquiry, 17 (1997) no. 4. 36 Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), “A History of Federal Funding for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs,” no date. 37 Guttmacher Institute, “Facts on American Teens' Sexual and Reproductive Health,” August, 2011; Lydia Shrier, Mei-Chiung Shih and Laura Hacker, “Improved Affect Following Coitus,” Journal of Adolescent Health, 36 (2005), no. 2. 38 Katrin Tildenberg, “Bringing sexy back: Reclaiming the body aesthetic via self- shooting,”Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 2014; http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/view.php?cisloclanku=2014021701 39 Apple specs; David Rosen, “Ways of Seeing: Movies on Mobile Devices,” FilmInFocus, November 19, 2008; Arron Smith, “U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015,” Pew Research, April 1, 2015.

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40 “Porn Industry Deserves Coverage,” CNBC; http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/21/porn- industry-deserves-coverage.html 41 Chris Morris, “Things Are Looking Up in America's Porn Industry,” NBC, January 20, 2015. 42 Tony Ge, “Going Deep Inside the Adult Entertainment Industry,” Arbitrage Magazine; Sebastian Anthony, “Just how big are porn sites?,” Extremetech. 43 Mitchell, op cit; Wolak, op cit. 44 UPI, “Teen Sexting Arrests Often Involve Adults,” January 25, 2012; National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), “2012 Legislation Related to ‘Sexting’”; Jamie L. Williams, “Teens, Sexts, & Cyberspace: The Constitutional Implications of Current Sexting & Cyberbullying Laws,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 20 (2012), no. 3, pp. 1017-50. 45 New York v. Ferber. 458 U.S. 747 (1982).

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