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This paper was a first account of the methodological framework I am trying to develop for the analysis of corporate films. Assuming that corporate films are films “without authors”, different criteria for the definition of units of analysis can be stipulated from the usual criteria of auteur theory. Instead of analysing films in their integrity, or the specific contexts in which they appear, one can assume the broader perspective of “corporate culture” (Hediger, Hoof, Zimmermann), and define a research corpus by the identification of the visual regularities circulating in the corporate communication networks. These visual regularities (or patterns of montage, of space and time editing, of stagings of the body, etc.) work as the aesthetic conditions of possibility for the managing procedures in which films are integrated. By considering these regularities as independent units of analysis, crossing films and companies, and coming from different backgrounds (different areas of knowledge, but also different media) it is possible to write their history, a history completely independent from sponsors’ and institutions’ singular intentions – a history of the visual conditions of possibility for the uses of media by corporations.
The video revolution of the 1980s deeply changed porn industry, contributing to promote new formats, aesthetic styles (such as gonzo) and genres. This shift also involved one of the most problematic and difficult to define aspect of porn: the concept of snuff. It is well-known that the idea of snuff movie was firstly codified by Ed Sanders in his book about Mason’s family dated 1972. As illustrated by Kerekes and Slater in their classical (and recently republished) book Killing for Culture, snuff rapidly become a sort of urban legend and its fortune was strengthened by the release of the film Snuff (1976), thanks to its untruthful “real-death” ending. As demonstrated by the continuous release of film devoted to the topic, the fortune of snuff never really ended, probably thanks to its untraceable and disturbing nature. Even porn industry started to produce false snuff videos, generating a new pornographic genre rightly defined snuff porn. Its birth can be dated back to the 80’s, with productions like The New York Centrefold Massacre (1982) and Violations (1986). The paper will try to connect the genealogy of snuff porn to the video revolution of the 80’s, analysing both its format and aesthetic and its underground distributive system. As a matter of fact, it seems that the raise of this problematic porn genre can be explained as a consequence of the new possibilities offered by the video technology. The paper will then try to reach some conclusions reflecting on the ideological value of snuff porn, considering some titles from the ‘90s such as Wave’s Most Gruesome Quicksand Death, Real Detective Stories, the Strangled series etc. What kind of pleasure is displayed in this videos? What idea of pornography is represented in these productions, that often ignore some key-elements of porn such as penetration and money shot? Can the idea of filming death be considered a new (or at least a different) declination of the concept of pornography?
The expression “to shoot”, crucial concept in the grammar of cinema, remind us of a sometimes-overlooked connection. In fact, it also identifies the act of killing, mainly with a fire-arm. Moving from the assumption that this etymology can reveal itself to be a useful tool for a re-consideration of tendencies that cross the history of cinema, the paper will discuss the notion of “snuff” as a problematic genre in which this semantic overlay is particularly evident. A possible starting point is provided by those early “attraction” films that directly depict a killing that happens in front of the camera, such as in Electrocutioning of an elephant (Edison, 1903). In all these movies, all the intricacy of the act of shooting reveals itself: to film a death does not barely mean to testimony it, but to provoke it again and again. The same complexity is involved in different documentary movies, or in films that directly reflect on the act of filming (Peeping Tom, Michael Powell 1960; L’occhio Selvaggio, Paolo Cavara, 1967). It is important to notice that in these movies (such as in the ones directly involved with the idea of snuff movie as an urban legend) the moment of death is, quite surprisingly, not directly represented. The spectator cannot directly experience the perverse pleasure of death on film, that is permitted just to the vicarious characters that incarnate his gaze: after all there is no need to see the corpse, if the act of filming it is so deeply connected with the act of killing.
Nostalgic trends in contemporary TV series. One of the most effective insights of postmodern theory of narrative was that “nostalgia for the present” defined by Jameson in Postmodernism. The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. In the narrative arts there was a trend of works based on “list of stereotypes, of ideas of facts and historical realities”; in the field of cinematographic productions, Jameson called this kind of movie “nostalgia film”, citing American Graffiti and Chinatown as exemplary cases of movies set in another era, as historical films, but that cannot be confused with them because the “nostalgia film” focuses on “imaginary style of real past”. In this trend there were also movies which connect past and present (Body Heat, Blue Velvet, Something Wild), showing “a collective unconscious in the process of trying to identify its own present at the same time that they illuminate the failure of this attempt, which seems to reduce itself to the recombination of various stereotypes of the past”. Three decades away from these insights we start again to talk about nostalgia as the hallmark of many contemporary narrative works, especially in the field of television series in which some scholars actually find a strong trend towards the nostalgic. Katherina Niemeyer and Daniela Wentz assert this kind of nostalgia consists of: “reconstructing and reimagining the past visually, discursively and historically by portraying and referring to the key political, social, economic and aesthetic elements of former times”. We can find examples of that sort both in American and European series such as Stranger Things, Mad Men, Narcos, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, Deutschland 83, Aquarius, 1992, The Get-Down, Manhattan and many others. This trend also includes television series set in the present or in the future, because these narratives display a vast amount of time, and try to establish the narrative world’s present on a complex backstory: Daredevil has a vast amount the time to go back and develop the relationship of the hero as a child with his father; Luke Cage can use an entire episode to narrate the origin of the superpowers of Luke. So rethink the postmodernism can mean exploring some intuitions and tools, pondering the topical relation between media and nostalgia.
«Porn Studies», 2016
The blurred boundaries between producers and consumers and the increased centrality of user-generated content have been seen as characteristic of Web 2.0 and contemporary media culture at large. In the context of online pornography, this has been manifested in the popularity of amateur pornography and alt porn sites that encourage user interaction. Netporn criticism has recently formed an arena for thinking through such transformations. Aiming to depart from the binary logic characterizing porn debates to date, netporn criticism nevertheless revokes a set of divisions marking the amateur apart from the professional, the alternative from the mainstream and the independent from the commercial. At the same time, such categories are very much in motion on Web 2.0 platforms. Addressing amateur pornography in terms of immaterial and affective labor, this article argues for the need to find less dualistic frameworks for conceptualizing pornography as an element of media culture.
The chapter is partly motivated by the fact that public debates, moral panics, articulations of offence, and studies of online pornography have tended to focus on visual and audiovisual examples. The tendency to understand porn in terms of the visual is common, yet this ignores the fact that the history of pornography has largely been one concerning the written word. It also fails to account for the diversity of contemporary practices. While erotica writing has proliferated online since the mid-1990s, it has failed to evoke any significant public uproar. On the contrary, there has been some enthusiasm about the possibilities for exploring sexual expression and fantasy in “safe,” anonymous, and textual online spaces - particularly for women (Leiblum, 2001: 398; Cumberland, 2004). In contrast to audiovisual pornography which is, at least to a degree, anchored in an indexical relationship to that which has been acted out in front of the camera, erotica -- often authored by women - has been understood more as a realm of fantasy, play, and experimentation and linked to aesthetic notions of quality (Juffer, 1998: 7; Kibby, 2001). Definitions of erotica and pornography are often political, aesthetic, and strategic, but here I consider them as categories with particular kinds of dynamics and affective power, and ones which invite and receive particular kinds of reader responses.
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