Fragments of Fear and Power: On the Pornographic Construction of Masculinity

Abstract

The degrading "objectification" of women in pornography has been widely debated. By implication, men in pornography are often perceived as overbearing "subjects". In this paper, I want to argue however that pornography reduces men visually and symbolically to fragments of a preliminary subjectivity. A brief discussion of pornographic cinematography identifies visual strategies of fragmentation. I then discuss symbolical strategies as revealed in Drucilla Cornell's Lacanian approach to pornography. Cornell's suggestion of infantility in the men of porn is invaluable to my hypothesis: pornography does not represent adult masculinity and sexual power conveyed by men but an infantile fantasy of masculinity and sexual power conveyed by fragments of men. In conclusion, I want to add that in times of ubiquitous online pornography, masculinity is at a loss for alternative models of sexual behavior. The last chapter of this paper explicitly moves from academic to creative questions and offers suggestions from an artist's point of view on how such alternatives could be effected.