Manipulating Power in Spectacles
Commercialized pornography is a collection of representations. It is believed that power relation is involved in the pornographic industry in which commercial concerns have influenced a great extent of the production and presentation of female in pornography. With commercial concerns, there is the manipulation of the pornographic producers. They will subtly pick up the erotic themes that cater to the preferences of society and selectively present the ideal image of female, while a victimized and vulnerable image of the female is being celebrated in the pornography which generally intended audiences are male. In the platform of LIHKG, such representation of female in pornography is commonly found in the posts of the adult channels, our male interviewee has also expressed his preference in the passivity of Asian female comparing with those sexually-active Western female, this is implying the implosion of reality and the sex scenes. The boundary between image and reality has been blurred which the representations of female in pornography may be inaccurate and lack of diversity. It is hard to figure out the reality from the spectacles.
Pornography is merely the representations that are reduced to appearances. “Complexities’ of porn are not reflected but simplified. To be more specific, “complexities” refers to the details like the working condition and exploitations of the porn actresses in reality, they are not concerned by the audiences simultaneously, or feelings and affections of the female are always ignored, they merely become the sexual objects for the satisfaction of male. Spectators, yet, just act as passive receptors of the spectators without challenging this phenomenon,[1] most of the discussions and the sources of pornography are dominated by male-gaze. Within these male-dominated pornography discussion, the victim image of the female has transformed to the source of pleasure of the audiences to gain their erotic visual experience.
The voyeurism of women is not only for the exclusive right of men. Our female interviewee expresses that she sometimes enjoys surfing the “adult channel” of LIHKG, seeking for pornographic images and the links or codes of pornographic films. It indicates that although the discussions and the sources of pornography are in male-gazed perspective, female can also be the spectator and participate in these discussions. However, her gaze in the male-oriented pornography could be a reciprocal reinforcement of her reproduction of her submissiveness in the real life when she is encountering in sex relations, which will be discussed further in the following part.
[1] Debord Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 12.