Propsoal forYork Graduate Art History Conference:

Paper Title:

The Panda and the Jack-Rabbit: Some notes on Recent Porn’s escape from the Monstrous.

 

Paper Abstract:

One of the problems with monsters, is that they refuse to contain themselves—the image of the monster is often constructed as an image of rampant and unrepentant sexuality (see the centaur or satyr, the harpy,  the goat headed Satan, or  the Succubae and Incubi in European culture.)  The transgression of sexual profligacy with hints of bestiality and other more liminal spaces is traditionally terrifying.  So some recent pornography, which uses famous performers in animal masks, unsettles these traditional definitions.

Colby Keller is a gay porn star has a reputation as a writer, artist and educator around issues of sexuality and pornography. In the last month he released a self-consciously “arty” remake of 1970s gay porn classic, Boys in the Sand, where he fucks and is fucked, while wearing a rabbit mask.  James Deen is a straight porn star who has become somewhat of a teen icon, while writing about porn. He also acts in more mainstream vehicles. Last year he released a video where he and five other men dress in panda costumes and have sex with one woman.

These two figures, have positioned themselves as aesthetes who use their chosen medium against its literal intentions (i.e. porn’s purpose is formal and social, not just to get off).  This move from a use function of porn to a more formal capability suggests a set of stagings are occurring--providing an ironic or formal distance.  This distance works obliquely to the text provide a way for the monstrous to escape.

This escape happens through two methods: Colby's self-aware queerness allows viewers to taxonomize this as camp. Deen's self-awareness suggests that he knows he is engaging in a performance. By allowing this work to be simultaneously an erotic and a formal event, we echo the slippages between human and beast, but do so positively. In this sense, the erotic consumer, by allowing the monstrous to work through their bodies, processes and isolates the tradition itself.