‘‘I’ll bet I’m having more fun than you are.” A critical case study on pornography 2.0

Abstract

*contains explicit images* Contrary to claims made in the popular discourse on Porn 2.0, non-profit amateur pornography is not the antonym of mainstream pornography, of the commercial “simulacra”. Both offer a representation that is far from the utopian objective, knowable reality and moreover they use similar aesthetic devices, which were developed over the course of more than a hundred years of filming explicit sexual acts. In the discourse on Porn 2.0 ‘real’ is a metaphor, eluding the similarities with professional pornography and its own hypermediality. Porn 2.0 does however represent a kind of pornography that at times is more truthful than the pornography that the industry has been producing for decennia; some of the movies and their discursive construction studied in this case study show a more equally distributed gender agency. Comments on movies, which are considered to be an integral part of the text, show a negotiation of meaning in terms of sexuality, morality and jouissance - this feedback seems to be essential for the amateur producers.