Why Do Pornographic Films Suck? Essay

This film highlights the flaws of humanity in a western world. The films ability to touch on topics of classism, prostitution, and alcoholism makes the content mature and unlike typical western films. This revolutionary and innovative western created a foundation for many future films. The sophistication of the content, and lack of adherence to the production code makes this film an “adult”

In Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni’s essay “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” they put forward the central argument that film is a commercial product in the capitalist system and therefore also the unconscious instrument of the dominant ideology which produces it. In opposition to the classic film theory that applauds camera as an impartial device to reproduce reality, they argue that what the camera reproduces is merely a refraction of the prevailing ideology. Therefore, the primary and political task for filmmakers is to disrupt this replication of the world as self-evident and the function of film criticism is to identify and evaluate that politics. Comolli and Narboni then suggest seven categories of films confronting ideology in different ways, among which the second category resists the prevailing ideology on two levels. Films of this group not only overtly deal with political contents in order to “attack their ideological assimilation” (Comolli and Narboni 483), but also achieve their goal through breaking down the conventional way of depicting reality.

The article takes many examples from primary sources, mostly from films of the pre-Code and post-Code era. He utilizes these films to exemplify the difference in the portrayal of sexuality due to the Production Code. Secondary sources, including a book called Pre-Code Hollywood by film historian Thomas Doherty, are used to analyze pre-Code films, which did not follow political or moral patterns of the time.

Comedy”. 2 It was called the sleeper hit of the decade, and gained extreme notoriety for its breakage of traditional cinematic taboos, in that it showed rather explicitly both sex and especially, raw and brutal violence. It greatly surprised both the

Paasonen, S., Nikunen, K., & Saarenmaa, L. (2007). Pornification: Sex and sexuality in media culture. Oxford: Berg

Our social world is becoming increasingly sexualised as pornographic references and imagery are progressively more intertwined with mainstream media, social media, advertising, and pop culture. According to Tyler (2011), this intertwinement of pornography and pop culture consists of five fragments; the beginning of the pornographic boom, the

The author, Jackie Stacey is a British feminist film historian. The main goal of her research is to understand the specific pleasure and engagements of British cinema audiences in the 1940s and 1950s. Stacey received 350 letters from women who went to the cinema 2-3 times a week during this period of wartime as cinema going was at an all-time high. Within the book, Stacey discusses Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze and how Mulvey’s analysis of the pleasures of Hollywood cinema led her to conclude that the spectator position offered is a ‘masculine’ one. She talks about how there are 3 looks within the dominant mode of Hollywood cinema; the camera(man), the editor and the director. She emphasizes on how all of these looks work together to create the effect of seeing the female characters as objects of desire through the eyes of the male characters.

Nagib, Lucia and Anne Jerslev. Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film. London, U.K.: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2014. Print.

With reference to relevant cultural theories analyse the representation of sexuality in a film/television text of your choice.

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

Like most popular gender-bending films, Some Like It Hot calls us to critique constructions of sexuality and gender both within the context of historicized moment of the films production and from the perspective of later

The idea that pornography gives feminists of differing opinions this middle ground that they can meet on and see how to articulate the different desires of feminism and what they want to turn it into is one of the main reasons Catherine Lumby argues that feminists need pornography (par 60). As Lumby writes in “Why Feminists Need Porn,” chapter five of her book Bad Girls, “the notion that you can draw a cause and effect line between fantasy and social practice is disturbing and distasteful to some feminists,” (par 60).

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)

In recent years, the term pornography has been primarily associated with that which is accessed and streamed over the internet, rather than the literal definition of, “obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, especially those having little or not artistic merit.” This form of visual pornography is a popular and successful business as it is viewed for fulfilling pent up sexual desires, however it promotes the act of having multiple sex partners without the need of any commitment. Although it is for this reason that this business is permitted, there are many overlooked, long – term affects that have become topics of controversy. Not only does pornography affect those who indulge in it, but it can influence those who divulge

Since its humble beginnings in the later years of the nineteenth century, film has undergone many changes. One thing that has never changed is the filmmaker’s interest in representing society in the present day. For better or worse, film has a habit of showing the world just what it values the most. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to what kinds of ideas films are portraying (Stern, Steven E. and Handel, 284). Alarmingly, viewers, especially young women, are increasingly influenced by the lifestyle choices and attitudes that they learn from watching these films (Steele, 331). An example of this can be seen in a popular trope of the “romantic comedy” genre in this day and age: the powerful man doing something to help, or “save” the less powerful woman, representing a troubling “sexual double standard” (Smith, Stacy L, Pieper, Granados, Choueiti, 783).