Conference Update

At the March, 2007, SCMS meeting, Janet Staiger chaired a workshop that elaborated on the issues. She began by presenting a new issue of The Velvet Light Trap, edited by graduate students from University of Texas–Austin and University of Wisconsin–Madison, on pornography. She explained that, as faculty advisor, she had checked with the University of Texas counsel before proceeding. The lawyer OKed the project as long as no illegal images were present. The issue was passed around the workshop, and the consensus seemed to be that the printed images were actually pretty tame.

Linda Williams and Tom Waugh contributed the remarks published above. Daniel Bernardi elaborated his concern with racism and sexism in porn based on his experience teaching an online course at Arizona State University that analyzes images of race and sex. Students are asked if they are 18 before registering for the course, and the Web site includes disclaimers. Students have the option of choosing a PowerPoint lecture with pictures or without pictures (they almost always choose the illustrated version), and he provides active links to porn that is available online, which students can then peruse on their own. He saw a similar dilemma of using images in presenting both race and sex. The images are necessary as evidence to provide support for rational arguments, but they may be read as pleasurable, positive, or reenforcing, despite any surrounding contextual frame. In addition, porn Web sites are dynamic; they change all the time. Thus to document them, one needs to reproduce them.

Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Film, 1919–1959 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), a foundational scholarly book for understanding U.S. pornographic films, argued strongly that illustration is an obligation in the field. He said it would be dishonest to do research and then not share the evidence along with the conclusions. Scholarship, he said, should be rooted in reason. Verbal description of visual materials can be inaccurate and subjective. Others on the panel agreed with him that the lack of illustrations actually mystifies the material. It reminded several of the antipornography movement s rhetorical distortion when presenting only a very subjective reading of an image (an often-used tactic of activist Andrea Dworkin) or, as in the antiporn slide shows, the use of an image wrenched out of context or distorted though captions or commentary.

In sharp contrast to Schaeffer, Peter Lehman argued that compromise may be necessary and relative progress the best one could do to achieve a long term goal of scholarly investigation. He drew from his own experience in Arizona of having news outlets distort his teaching and research and trying to ambush him to get a lurid story about professors and porn. Some accommodation to local law and public opinion may be necessary for state schools and state university presses.

Two university press editors added their perspectives based on experiences in publishing. Ken Wissoker, editor at Duke University Press, said his previous rule of thumb in publishing had been that images of penises seemed to cause concern for printers. Some such books were printed abroad. But recently a book by Joanna Frueh, the well known and established performance artist who presents her nude 50-something body in some work, was rejected by the printer even though it was patently nonerotic and had a full academic apparatus of commentary. Seeking a printer, Wissoker queried the famous European art book publisher, Taschen, which often publishes edgy nude photography, and was told they were contractually bound not to reveal their printers. Finally, a Hong Kong printer was found for the Frueh title. Wissoker said that despite the hide-and-seek, somebody is publishing all the porn that is out there.

From Rutgers University Press, Leslie Mitchner offered it depends as a mantra for the problems of publishing explicit sexual images. In her experience context is vital, and the publisher has to be willing to fight for the project to be successful. She sketched in institutional concerns such as the difference between private and state university presses, with the latter often subject to pressures and review by politicians in...