another porn is possible

I recently came across One Dimensional Woman written by high-profiled philosopher lecturer Nina Power and published by Zer0 Books, which is also the publisher of my book, After Pornified. I haven't read Power's book yet, but I know I want to. "Brilliantly acute," commends The Guardian; an "explosive book," acclaims the F-word, exploring "how the right has co-opted the language of feminism to defend its wars and anti-choice stance, how the market sells us empowerment in a glass of Chardonnay and a shiny shampoo, how the feminisation of labour puts women's bodies/goods on display and how looking at the history of pornography can provide us with new narratives with which to talk about the performance of sexuality."

Power's discussion of pornography is striking to me both for what it has in common with my own, and for its different angle. Power and I agree that "another porn is possible," to quote this review of her book. But whereas I look to women's re-visioned and transformed porn, Power looks to to French porn of the 1920s where "she sees things that we would never see today (despite the porn saturation of our culture), scenes that lack the grim seriousness of the standard ‘sex-as-combat’ porn scene and that instead have farcical elements, silly, fun stories: joking scenes about men having trouble with erections and needing to be coaxed into them by understanding women."

Concurs The Guardian regarding Power's section on porn: "One of the highlights is her fascinating genealogy of pornography, which moves the debate on from the "'porn good'/'porn bad' opposition" by looking to the potential of pre-1950s vintage porn, with its slapstick silliness and glorious variety of bodies, as a model for doing things differently today." As summed up by the F-word:

Power believes that looking at pornography from the past shows us that porn's "future need not be as grim as its present."

She argues that, unlike porn in most other points of history, the porn we see today is divorced from the human. It's all about the money shot, porn as sex is sex as work: boring, grinding and with a cash prize at the end of it.

Comparing this endless show reel of "grim orgasms and the parading of physical prowess" to porn made in the early 20th Century, Power notes how silly, funny and slapstick much of porn was. This doesn't mean it wasn't explicit, but that as well as having a range of bodies and faces on display, the participants in early 20th century porn seem to actually like each other, consent to and enjoy sex, unlike in today's mainstream porn that seems to relish violence, force and expressions of actual pain rather than pleasure.

I realize I simply must look at some of these vintage porn films.