Adam Baran, producer of CIRCUS OF BOOKS

A lot of time is spent on this podcast defending the multitude of roles that pornography plays in people’s lives. We say, it’s not a moral scourge, it’s not an enemy of feminism, it’s not corrupting young minds any more than any other media form. The academic study of pornography was established in a defensive mode, against second-wave anti-porn feminists, against the lies perpetuated by the church, against the forces fighting sex-worker rights. And because of this defensive posture, it’s jarring whenever we see the mainstream media portray pornography in a sensible, non-hysterical, perspective. This is what makes the Netflix documentary Circus of Books such a revelation! Circus of Books tells the story of a gay pornography video and book store in West Hollywood that endured as a staple in this gayborhood through the AIDS crisis and the mainstreaming of gay culture that has willfully abandoned its porn past in favor of getting married and joining the military. In this documentary, pornography, and the community build around this store, is presented as a positive, unifying force where the gay community can indulge their sexual desires without shame But while the store served as a beacon of hope during dark times, the owners weren’t as invested in the erotic potentiality of pornography as their customers. And that’s because the owners of this store are a heterosexual, highly religious, married couple! And while they have no problem with the gay community, their worldview is shaken when their own son struggles to come out as gay to his religious mother. This creates a unique dynamic and tension that brings this documentary to the next level. In this episode, I’m joined by one of the film’s producers, Adam Baran. Adam is an interesting character because most of his work deals with pornography and gay sexuality in a very straightforward and blunt fashion. Within an environment where being a buttoned-up sexless chairman of a Fortune 500 company is considered to be a quote-unquote “victory” for the gay rights movement, Baran insistently positions gay sexuality and pornography as an essential part of what it means to be gay in the contemporary age. Baran has produced music videos, short films, web series, and documentaries emphatically positioning pornography and sexuality at the center of the gay experience. In this episode, we talk about how pornography helped him feel comfortable in his own skin and how writing about his own sex-life online led to bigger opportunities.

Adam’s Twitter

Adam’s articles for the Guardian

Adam’s articles for BUTT Magazine

Adam’s posts with TheSword

Queer | Art | Film talks at the IFC Center

Dirty Boots music video 

Jackpot (2012)

Mattachine: Radical Roots of the Gay Movement”

a history of the zine Straight to Hell 

The Great Cock Hunt

Hunting Season (first season)

Himeros TV

The Lives of Hamilton Fish

Circus of Books

Adam’s 2015 TheSword interview with Karen Mason

“Rachel Mason On Making a Movie About Her Parents’ Porn Shop”

The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture

ONE Archives

Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon

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I think it’s fair to say that most academics are guilty of using particular words on their essays and books that are generally understood by all, yet we rarely take the time to flesh out the definition of that word beyond a sentence or two because we’re too eager to make a bigger and flashier point. And when it comes to pornography studies, words and abbreviations like the “money shot,” “BDSM,” “gay-for-pay,” and “bareback” have been a part of the popular vernacular around the genre for so long, that we just utilize these terms based on their face value, and often fail to update or properly contextualize the terms. Pornographic language is so embedded in our discourse, that we don’t often do the work of defining it. Today’s guest—John Mercer—dedicates a large portion of his book doing exactly that, creating a glossary of terms utilized within popular and academic descriptions of gay pornography that give rich historical and culturally specific definitions of terms like “the boy-next-door,” “twink,” “daddy,” “the beautiful boy,” “the ‘fooled’ straight man,” “the international,” “the amateur,” and “the star.” Mercer is a professor at Birmingham City University and today we’re going to talk about his book, Gay Pornography: Representations of Sexuality and Masculinity, published by I.B. Taurus in 2017. What makes this book remarkable is how it works to establish a linguistic foundation for gay pornography studies moving forward. It’s perhaps the best introductory book for anyone looking to contribute to the porn studies cannon. In addition to defining terms, he also explores his concept of “saturated masculinity,” which for him, accounts for the multitude of ways gay pornographic aesthetics signify beyond the gay community, and in fact spread into heterosexual constructions of masculinity as well. Mercer is also one of the primary editors of the journal Porn Studies, and edited a special version of the journal titled “Gay Porn Now,” where he was kind enough to include my essay on Chris Crocker in the issue. In that issue, he wrote about a popular user created genre of poperbate videos, where the creator edits a porn video with music and prompts instructing the viewer to huff poppers at the appropriate moment. It is one of a series of user-generated porn videos that Mercer’s future research will cover extensively. In this episode we talk about how he actually had to travel to over counties to complete his dissertation because hard core gay pornography was still banned in England at the time. We talk about the hypocrisy of the Conservative Party in England when it comes to the issue to freedom, poppers, and gay sex. And he explains why the smell of old beer reminds him of gay porn to this day!

More about John Mercer

John’s website

John’s BFI Star Studies book on Rock Hudson

John’s book Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility

Gay Pornography: Representations of Sexuality and Masculinity  

John’s Masculinity, Sex, and Popular Culture project mascnet.org

Porn Studies special issue, “Gay Porn Now!”

"The Inexplicably Ubiqutous Phenomenon of 'Woods Porn'" 

New York Times’ article “What Teenagers are Learning From Online Porn.”

The Advocate’s article featuring John’s research

The Advocate article referred to in the interview: “7 Thinks to Remember When You Watch Porn.”  

In the interview I mentioned the song “Spring is Busting Out All Over.” What I meant to say was, “June is Busting Out All Over.” My apologies to the ghosts of Rodgers & Hammerstein!

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This episode is a testament to the generosity and the collaborative nature of the pornography studies community. When I was browsing Twitter one day, I saw that a previous guest on the show, Madita Oeming, was going to be at the Berlin Porn Film Festival hosting a live interview with pornography start extraordinaire Jiz Lee! I messaged her immediately and asked if she would be kind enough to record the interview for the podcast, and she agreed to do so. I’ve personally never been to the Festival, so I was very happy to be able to hear what’s going on across the pond and I’m even happier to be able to bring this special exchange to all of you. This podcast wouldn’t exist without Madita and and Jiz’s kindness. The focus of this talk is about how Jiz straddles the divide between pornography and academia. They’re uniquely qualified to address this topic considering that they’re not only one of the biggest queer porn stars in the world, but they’ve also been published in a multitude of academic books and journals. Jiz is the editor of Coming Out Like a Porn Star (ThreeL Media, 2015), a contributor to the Feminist Porn Book (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013), the co-editor along with Rebecca Sullivan (another former guest on the show) of Porn Studies’ special issue titled “Porn and Labour.” This is a thoughtful and funny interview where Jiz talks about the special privileges afforded to porn performers who engage with academia, the similarities between pirating both pornography and academic articles, and what it’s like to have one of your campus visits covered by Fox News!   

 JizLee.com

Jiz Lee’s Twitter

Coming Out Like a Porn Star

Feminist Porn Book

An excerpt from "Uncategorized: Genderqueer Identity and Performance in Independent and Mainstream Porn" Lee’s contribution to the Feminist Porn Book 

Other writing

“Porn and Labour” issue of the Porn Studies journal co-edited by Jiz Lee and Rebecca Sullivan

Pink Label TV

Transparent

Madita’s work about the fallacy of “porn addiction” mocked in the National Review

Girls Do Porn Case

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In this special addition of the Porno Cultures Podcast, we’re proud to feature an episode of the Films(trips) podcast about the porn-adjacent film Cruising. The Films(trips) podcast features extended discussions about sorely underrated or under-watched films and finally gives them their proper due by hosts Dave Babbitt and Andrew Kannegeisser. The boys were kind enough to invite me on the show to discuss William Friedkin’s highly controversial and misunderstood film Cruising. Cruising is about a gay serial killer who is hunting for victims within New York City’s gay leather clubs in a pre-AIDS Meatpacking District. The film was protested by gay groups while it was being filmed, and has continued to be a point of contention within the contemporary gay community. Some argue that the film portrays a stereotypical and damaging image of the psychologically traumatized gay man—a demeaning cinematic trope throughout history. And the other half of the community values the film for its essential ethnographic portrayal of the actual clubs, people, and cruising methods that have been systematically destroyed due to the AIDS crisis and New York’s gentrification imperative. Friedkin’s insistence on shooting inside leather sex clubs like the Mineshaft and the Ramrod qualify as important documentation of a lost sexual history that is nearly impossible to find in contemporary New York. Additionally, pornographic tropes infuse the movie throughout. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out where I stand on all these crucial questions surrounding the film today. I’m so honored that Andrew invited me to be a part of his very funny and in-depth show. It’s a bit of a change of pace from our usual show, but this is an excellent example of how pornography studies can be utilized in readings of non-pornographic films. And Cruising shows just how prevalent pornographic tropes find their way into “mainstream” films. Please be sure to check out Films(trips)’ extensive catalog of shows. They really do a great job of giving forgotten films the attention they deserve!

Pornography is often talked about as this abstract alien “thing” that has no connection to the real-world experience of any “decent” or “good” person. The thinking goes that since pornography is this anti-feminist and morally damaging abstraction, it must originate from a dark place consumed with hate and misogyny. But what if I told you that, in fact, there’s a whole spectrum of pornography dedicated to paying homage to the most cherished children’s stories and beloved horror classics like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1965), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde (1886), and Dracula (1897)? And how would your opinions of pornographers change if you knew that they loved these books as much as you do? Well, that’s part of the story being told by professor Laura Helen Marks in her book: Alice in Pornoland: Hardcore Encounters with the Victorian Gothic. Unsurprisingly, Laura’s academic background is in English, and this book is a product of her attempt to unite Victorian era gender and sexual politics with contemporary pornographic narratives. While many people don’t consider pornographic narratives too deeply, Laura argues that many pornographic tropes that we are familiar with today, including notions around a loss of innocence, the bisexual erotic undercurrents of Dracula biting both men and women, and the dual personality traits of pornography viewers themselves, originate from Victorian literature. While we often think of pornography as a medium indulging shamelessly in all types of sexual practices, pornography still needs to establish some type of taboo within their narratives for one of their characters to subversively upend sexual norms. Incorporating conventions from Victorian literature within these pornographic narratives provides both the cultural norms—and characters willing to subvert those norms—all within one book! Additionally, the obvious tension within Victorian novels where sexuality is alluded to with metaphor, is finally liberated within pornographic narratives where the underlining sexuality of these books are realized within pornography. Laura’s creative approach to pornography studies has quickly made her one of the most essential voices in contemporary pornography studies. Alice in Pornoland is one of the most unique pornography studies books you’ll ever read because of the ways it makes you rethink both classical literature and pornography itself.

This is a special episode of the Porno Cultures Podcast because it’s our first live episode recorded at Babeland (ironically, another Victorian era reference!) in Seattle Washington. Both Laura and I were in Seattle for the annual Society for Film and Media Studies conference, and I thought that this would be a great opportunity to have a live episode where a bunch of pornography scholars could come together to not only celebrate Laura’s amazing book, but also honor the history of one of the country’s most important sex shops, Babeland!

 Laura Helen Marks’ website

 Laura’s twitter

 “#Following: Laura Helen Marks”

 Laura’s Porn Studies article from Feminist Media Histories

 Laura’s Rialto Report feature on Jeff Stryker

 “Merry XXX-mas: A Brief History of Yuletide Smut”

 “The Duce: Porn, Nostalgia and Late Capitalism”

 Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Comedy & Fantasy (1976)

 “Alice in Wonderland (1976): What Really Happened?”

 buy or rent Dracula Erotica (1980)

 Rare photos from Dracula Exotica found by the Rialto Report.

 Shaun Costello’s open letter To Lauran Helen Marks about Dracula Exotica.

 Interview with Vanessa Del Rio

 Dr. Jerkoff and Mr. Hard (1997)

 “Still Alice Director: Escaping a Religious Cult, Making Porn and Celebrating Julianne Moore’s Oscar”

 buy Fuckenstein (2012)

 adultdvdtalk.com

 upcoming events at Babeland in Seattle

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In this episode we explore the wild world of pornographic magazines. Believe it or not, before the popularization of the internet, a great many people had their first and most lasting encounters with pornography via magazines. Magazines were an essential part of pornographic creation and circulation for many decades, and now that they’ve fallen victim to the digital revolution, they’ve only recently been considered as an archival object suited for academic study. In this episode we tackle just a small sliver of pornographic magazine history by talking about a set of magazines addressing queer sexuality. This episode is divided into two sections. The first begins with my conversation with professor Elizabeth Groeneveld. Elizabeth talks to me about her work researching the lesbian pornographic and political commentary magazine On Our Backs. On Our Backs published from 1985 to 1990 and was founded and edited by Susie Bright (we previously talked about Susie in our episode with Lynn Comella). On Our Backs was a sex-positive answer to the feminist anti-pornography magazine Off Our Backs. As one of the only magazines providing lesbian-made pornographic representation for their fellow lesbian readers, the editors surprisingly received a lot of questions from readers about how they were supposed to consume such imagery. After our conversation, Elizabeth goes on to explain in her talk at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies how letters to the editor of On Our Backs reveal confused reactions to the pornographic content of the magazine—regarding both sexual discovery and confusion about whether one can be a “good feminist lesbian” if one is turned on by such imagery. Elizabeth’s research is really fascinating reveals the conflicted nature of pornographic politics.

Our second interview and talk is with Daniel Laurin. Daniel is a PhD student in Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. His research looks into a group of gay male pornographic magazines from the 1970s and 80s to analyze the marketing of the gay-for-pay performer. The most common assumption about the gay-for-pay porn performer is that they emerged in the wake of the AIDS crisis in the mid-1980s to provide an example of a strong, healthy, and dominant male figure standing in opposition to the sick, weak, and AIDS infected gay image that was dominating media depictions at the time. However, Daniel’s research into these magazines tells a very different story. His archival research proves that in fact, the marketing of—and fascination with—the gay-for-pay performer started in the pages of these pornographic magazines long before the AIDS crisis. Here’s hoping that this is the first of many episodes exploring the dynamic history of pornographic magazines!   

More about Elizabeth Groeneveld 

Making Feminist Media: Third-Wave Magazines on the Cusp of the Digital Age

Book review for Making Feminist Media

 Historical background: On Our Backs and Bad Attitude

 “Sex Wars Revisited”

 Daniel’s Twitter

Daniel’s documentary about gay-for-pay performers

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When we think about the rhetoric around sex workers it’s often easier to hear or read opinions advocating for the abolishment of sex work coming from politicians or “concerned citizens” who are not sex workers, or have never bothered to speak to a sex worker. The degree to which the voices of sex workers are suppressed in mainstream outlets throughout the West speaks to how dangerous their voices are considered. What on earth can sex workers be saying that so many people feel the need to speak for them instead of letting them speak for themselves? Well, that’s one of the primary issues that Nicholas de Villiers looks to solve in Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Sexography analyzes a series of films centered around interviewing sex workers. These films represent some of the few instances where sex workers are actually allowed to speak for themselves. Of course, these films are not without their own tensions. Many of the films are directed by non-sex workers and some of the portrayals of sex work in these films is quite negative. This is where de Villiers’ dynamic analysis of these films through a queer perspective helps us think about the nature of sex work, the interview, documentary aesthetics, and the concept of “truth” in new and interesting ways. Sexography is an exploration of how we can go about reading for, and exploring the sexual practices of, not only sex workers, but our own ideas about sexuality as well. How can the financial aspects of sex work help us understand the power dynamics of our own sexual relationships? What can sex workers teach us about sex and pornographic literacy? What is the relationship between sex work, pornography, and drag performance? And how can the work of Foucault help us think about the contemporary nature of sexual practice? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging interview. De Villiers is one of the most interesting and bold queer theorists working today, so you’re not going to want to miss out on his compelling analysis of these films or his thoughts on contemporary sexuality!  

Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary 

L.A. Review of Books review of Sexography

 More work from Nicholas

Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol

Nicholas’ appearance on the Critical Theory podcast discussing Opacity and the Closet

“Afterthoughts on Queer Opacity”

“FBI Seized 23 Tor-hidden Child Porn Sites, Deployed Malware from Them”

“How the FBI Became the World’s Largest Distributor of Child Sex Abuse Imagery”

“Transgender, at War and in Love”

“What Teenagers are Learning from Online Porn”

Paris is Burning (1990)

Love Meetings (1964)

Not Angels But Angles (1994)

Body Without Soul (1996)

Tales of the Night Fairies (2002)

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In this episode we delve into the seedy and exciting world of sexploitation cinema! Oftentimes, pornography studies is so busy working to legitimate hard core texts that we sometimes forget about the wide-world of soft core cinema. Just before the “Golden Age” of theatrically released pornography in the late 1960s, there was almost a decade of sexploitation cinema single-handedly keeping alive a dying studio system that had lost its dominance in light of losing its profits from owning theaters and the invention of the in-home entertainment system knowns as television. Sexploitation movies are a mode of cinema consisting of cheaply financed, quickly made, with B-grade acting adapted to a variety of film genres. There are sexploitation movies that look like film noirs from the 1940s (with nudity), teen beach movies from the 1950s (with nudity), and even sci-fi movies (with nudity)! These movies allowed for a new generation of filmmakers to break into the industry without the heavy burden of having to prove themselves with a big budget or A-list actors. Exploitation cinema is a crucial part of Hollywood history that thankfully has been given the attention it deserves with Elena Gorfinkel’s new book Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Elena’s remarkable book is a deep historical and theoretical dive into the legal history, feminist perspective, legal conditions, and critical response to sexploitation films. In this interview we talk about how Kim’s Video in New York City facilitated her interest in sexploitation films, we talk about the Marxist and feminist implications of sexploitation, we consider why film critics of the 1960s were so “bored” watching sexploitation, and we talk about her role as the co-chair of the Adult Film History Special Interest Research Group, which is a part of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. If you’re looking for a primer on the history of sexploitation, you’ve come to the right podcast!

Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s

Elena’s Twitter

Was '60s Sexploitation Cinema More Than Just Pornography?

Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959

Elena’s Interview with Feminist Media Histories about “Sex and the Materiality of Adult Media”

Fieldnotes: Constance Penley interviewed by Elena Gorfinkel

“The Story of Kim’s Video & Music, Told by its Clerks and Customers”

A Farewell to Kim’s Video

Art Zone: The Wonderfully Weird World of Lisa Petrucci 

Something Weird catalog

pornocultures.podomatic.com

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Pat Rocco is a figure that doesn’t fit easily into pornography’s history. Pat started making films featuring nude male characters in soft core situations just before 1971’s Boys in the Sand, and he continued to purposefully occupy a unique middle ground where his work showcasing tame, but explicit, gay nudity coexisted alongside other films documenting the emerging gay rights movement, wholesome gay romance, and queer sexual politics. Pat used his camera as a form of activism highlighting gay men's varied sexual interests as well as their passions surrounding society’s changing attitudes about homosexuality. In this episode, we explore the legacy of Pat Rocco and try to figure out where he belongs within pornography’s history. This show features Matthew Hipps, who’s a PhD student in Film Studies at the University of Iowa, and Bryan Wuest, who is a graduate of UCLA’s PhD program in Cinema and Media Studies. Each of them presented papers about Rocco's films at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in 2018, so I thought it would be great to have them on to talk about the different ways in which they approach his work. This episode has special resonance considering that Rocco would die just seven months after this recording. Matt considers Rocco's travelogue films where he travels to Brazil and Western Europe with a group of gay men to find out what gay life is like outside of the U.S. And Bryan considers how Rocco’s work should be thought of within the history of gay film production. This episode is intended to both spark interest in a figure that isn’t too well known because of the limited exposure his work as received, and to help us expand our ideas about what pornographic culture can be, and how it can help us delve into modes of political activism that we didn’t know were possible.      

More info about Bryan.

Bryan’s article: “Defining Homosexual Love Stories: Pat Rocco, Categorization, and the Legitimation of Gay Narrative Film.”

UCLA’s articles about:

“Processing the Pat Rocco Collection”

“Pat Rocco Oral History—1983”

“Hey Look Me Over: The Films of Pat Rocco” by Whitney Strub

Pat Rocco’s films:

Pat Rocco Dared trailer

1969 Gay March in Hollywood

Sign of Protest (1970) (a short documentary about the protests surrounding Barney’s Beanery and their “FAGOTS—STAY OUT” sign hanging in their bar.)

Changes (1970)

We Were There (1976)

Harvey Milk’s “Hope” Speech (1978)

Mondo Rocco 

Obituary from ONE Archives 

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In this episode, we’re joined one of the most prolific and accomplished scholars in the field of pornography studies, Susanna Paasonen. She is a professor of media studies at the University of Turku in Finland and has written and edited over eight books covering pornography, sex, internet studies, feminism, and affect. Her newest book is Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play (MIT Press, 2018), where she explores sex, bodily capacities, appetites, orientations, and connections in terms of play and playfulness. Like many people in the U.S., I discovered her work in 2011 with the publication of Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press). It has since become a landmark book within pornography studies due to the way it reorients the conversation around pornography from one centered on censorship, feminism, and the quality of sexual representation, to one trying to account for the various—and hard to quantify ways in which—pornography moves us, not only physically (with feelings of both revulsion and extasy), but affectively (where we find ourselves relating to our own bodies, and other’s bodies in new and different ways). While traditional academic methods of reading moving image texts revolve around notions of sexual, gender, or racial identity, affect theory helps to account for the ways in which social identity isn’t just centered within our race or sexuality, but is, in fact, a part of a wider social assemblage, where our various affective interactions with actors within our social networks dramatically influence the ways we relate to, and understand, ourselves. Affect theory accounts for the ways in which our subjectivity is formed not from our inner-selves, but is a relational force interacting with the body from the outside. Of course, the reason why approaching pornography studies from this perspective is so different from traditional methods is because this perspective frees the genre from needing to affirm or legitimate racial or gender uplift. An affective reading of pornography accounts for the politically incorrect ways in which we interact with the genre. Pleasure, disgust, joy, humiliation, and shame are all affective registers that we tap into when engaging with pornography. The accumulation of these feelings are part of the overall resonance that Susanna is trying to account for in her work. In this interview we talk about her first experience finding porn magazines in a damp Finland forest; the difference between the pornography in Finland and the surrounding Nordic countries; why she thinks Silvan Tomkins and Gilles Deleuze actually work well together, and she explains how she became an expert on bareback gay sex!    

Susanna’s website

Susanna’s Twitter

More about the phenomenon of “woods porn.”

Susanna’s interview with pornographer Paul Morris.

More about the films of Jan Soldat.

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