Jeffrey Escoffier

Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography

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As Laura Kipnis proclaimed, “Pornography is the royal road to the cultural psyche (as for Freud, dreams were the route to the unconscious).”

This book explores that claim.

Hardcore pornographic films have combined fantasy and real sex to create a unique genre of entertainment. Pornographic films are also historical documents that give us access to the sexual behavior and eroticism of different historical periods. This book shows how the making of pornographic films is a social process that draws on the fantasies, sexual scripts and sexual identities of performers, writers, directors, and editors to produce sexually exciting videos and movies. Yet hardcore pornographic films have also created a body of knowledge that constitutes, in this digital age, an enormous archive of sexual fantasies that serve as both as a form of sex education and self-help guides. Sex, Society and the Making of Pornography focuses on sex and what can be learned about it from pornographic representations.

Author: Jeffrey Escoffier

Paperback Published 12 February 2021 238 pages

“With Bigger than Life Jeffrey Escoffier had already proved himself the most informative and lively chronicler of the history of gay pornography. Now, against the background of this history, he turns his attention to the making of gay sexual fantasies to convincingly explain how the unfaked realities of sexual acts work to connect with fantasmatic sexual scripts to sell alluring performances. This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about gay pornography.”--Linda Williams, author of Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy of the Visible"

"Jeffrey Escoffier brilliantly lays bare what really drives pornography: less the pumping bodies than the underlying sexual scripts, which draw on historical conditions to shape individual desires. No scholar has tracked this process so comprehensively, from the labor arrangements of production to the evolving sites of consumption. Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography offers pointed observations on everything from 1970s 'homo-realism' to contemporary gay-for-pay performance, as well as comprehensive theorization that reshapes porn studies."--Whitney Strub, author of Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right

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