We Want Discipline
In his work on seduction theory, Jean Laplanche has suggested that masturbation plus fantasy amounts to the zero level of sex – an ambivilant fomulation, since with this imaginary aspect we are already slammed back into the realm of the social. In this way, Laplanche makes clear that sexual pleasure is never a matter of cool isolation, since to determine proper scenographies, private dancers must first acquire colourful costumes and functional masks.
For this reason, whores turning tricks fake their own orgasms to make their clients come faster. But already clear here as well is an integral aspect of sublime deceit irreducible to the simple conscious deception one encounters with hookers.
The dynamic balance that the sexual relation requires inherently demands disavowal – to function effectively as an enjoyable fantasy, a masquerade must precisely conceal the fact that it is really just theatre. Except to a certain special breed of economist fetishist, excited by commercial power alone, a faked orgasm is nothing erotic at all.
It is at this point exactly that finally we enter into pornography proper. Laplanche speaks of codes and variants, letters and photographs, and argues that mental objects correspond to objects in space against the blue screen of unconscious causes. From this understanding, we give ourselves willingly to two connected aspects.
First, the basic contours of the fundamental problem of Deleuze – the problem of how to construct such a screen. This problem recurs throughout his work, but this is not the space for a detailed treatment. Our major issue here is rather the opportunist subversion of the screen-problematic that serves to produce pornography.
This subversion substitutes for the materialism of the screen problematic the resigned idealism of a correspondance dilemma. Relinquishing the hope for the new screen in the face of the various available pseudo-screens - smugly declared eternal and immutable by a bad axiomatics - one simply selects the most adequate option from the frozen aerarium. Pornography thus in the cantilever between surrender and drive, the most pleasurable way possible to exit the real, and enter instead into the sensational realm of the special effect – styles of spectacular variance swallowing history in a series of explosive integral moments.
(Part IV to follow next week)
For this reason, whores turning tricks fake their own orgasms to make their clients come faster. But already clear here as well is an integral aspect of sublime deceit irreducible to the simple conscious deception one encounters with hookers.
The dynamic balance that the sexual relation requires inherently demands disavowal – to function effectively as an enjoyable fantasy, a masquerade must precisely conceal the fact that it is really just theatre. Except to a certain special breed of economist fetishist, excited by commercial power alone, a faked orgasm is nothing erotic at all.
It is at this point exactly that finally we enter into pornography proper. Laplanche speaks of codes and variants, letters and photographs, and argues that mental objects correspond to objects in space against the blue screen of unconscious causes. From this understanding, we give ourselves willingly to two connected aspects.
First, the basic contours of the fundamental problem of Deleuze – the problem of how to construct such a screen. This problem recurs throughout his work, but this is not the space for a detailed treatment. Our major issue here is rather the opportunist subversion of the screen-problematic that serves to produce pornography.
This subversion substitutes for the materialism of the screen problematic the resigned idealism of a correspondance dilemma. Relinquishing the hope for the new screen in the face of the various available pseudo-screens - smugly declared eternal and immutable by a bad axiomatics - one simply selects the most adequate option from the frozen aerarium. Pornography thus in the cantilever between surrender and drive, the most pleasurable way possible to exit the real, and enter instead into the sensational realm of the special effect – styles of spectacular variance swallowing history in a series of explosive integral moments.
(Part IV to follow next week)
2 Comments:
The dynamic balance that the sexual relation requires inherently demands disavowal – to function effectively as an enjoyable fantasy, a masquerade must precisely conceal the fact that it is really just theatre. Except to a certain special breed of economist fetishist, excited by commercial power alone, a faked orgasm is nothing erotic at all.
Nothing these days is built to last 1000 years. Buildings (hospitals, supermarkets, etc.) are really shanties, ready to be torn down and replaced at any time. Their purpose is to be servicable. I'd compare it to the prostitute's room - mattress, sheet, pillow, TV, table, lamp. It's empty, temporary, but it's emptiness makes the atmosphere full with the economic nature of what goes on there. One understands that this is business, in case one hadn't before, and that one's purpose is therefore to use and exploit.
Or compare it to Dogville, as a cinematic technique. Peter Hall made the point that it was in the theatre, and by theatrical technique, that an audience could lose themselves in fantasy. As in horror cinema, the more explicit and realistic the special effects, the less the audience believes in them. A transparently faked orgasm demonstrates a woman's fear and subjection; she has no will left to pretend convincingly, and her subjectivity has perhaps been sufficiently crushed that she would herself be unable to distinguish between the faked and the real.
Surely, seriously, it is precisely commercial power that excites us? In the humiliation and destruction of the child star, the "idol", say, our excitement comes from our participation as purchasers, our buying-power. Like the thrill that may come from buying a Babyshambles record, for example, and helping to pay for his drug habit. A sort of economic bukkake.
Excellent point, well put.
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