Slavoj Zizek on Pornography

Here is an interesting interview containing some parts of an interview where Zizek viewed pornography as highly zensored:

"WOLFGANG: Why do you think the image of two men kissing it is still so shocking to many people when pornography has become part of mainstream culture?
SLAVOJ: Why does heterosexual pornography often involve lesbian interplay, while prohibiting male interplay? The standard answer is that pornography caters to the male viewer. But half the people who watch hardcore pornography these days are women.

WOLFGANG: I don't believe that's true at all, but carry on.
SLAVOJ: This image of the lone masturbating male is no longer viable. There's a much deeper issue. I believe Lacan's basic point that sex is exhibitionistic by definition — it's never just you and me. There are always three in the sexual act. You imagine a gaze — you are always doing it for someone.

WOLFGANG: It's always a performance.
SLAVOJ: Pornography is a genre where you would think everything is permitted. No! It's the most codified of genres. But this, for me, is its ultimate charm. I spoke with a Hollywood pornography producer, who told me that he deliberately stages the action so that the male viewer doesn't identify with the guy doing the fucking. He's just a machine. You, the viewer, want to be convinced that the woman is addressing you. And the deepest fantasy is that the ultimate woman — the femme fatale — would be a drag queen, a dressed-up man.

WOLFGANG: Do you think Lacan was right when he made the paradoxical statement that lesbians are the only true heterosexuals?
SLAVOJ: I think the categorization of heterosexuality versus homosexuality is totally wrong. There is a radical asymmetry between male and female homosexuality. Paradoxically, lesbian sex fits the standard phallocentric logic much more neatly than gay sex. I think that lesbianism is enacted for an absent phallic presence. Even some radical lesbian thinkers — like Judith Butler — who otherwise hate me, concede this point. Whereas the third element in male homosexuality is feminine, so gay sex is the truly feminist thing to do — and, in turn, standard heterosexual sex is the most homosexual act. It seems to me that gay penetration realizes and confronts the phantasmic support of straight sex too directly — that's why it is so unbearable for many"


http://www.indexmagazine.com/intervi...oj_zizek.shtml

Here is an interesting interview containing some parts of an interview where Zizek viewed pornography as highly zensored:

"WOLFGANG: Why do you think the image of two men kissing it is still so shocking to many people when pornography has become part of mainstream culture?
SLAVOJ: Why does heterosexual pornography often involve lesbian interplay, while prohibiting male interplay? The standard answer is that pornography caters to the male viewer. But half the people who watch hardcore pornography these days are women.

WOLFGANG: I don't believe that's true at all, but carry on.
SLAVOJ: This image of the lone masturbating male is no longer viable. There's a much deeper issue. I believe Lacan's basic point that sex is exhibitionistic by definition — it's never just you and me. There are always three in the sexual act. You imagine a gaze — you are always doing it for someone.

WOLFGANG: It's always a performance.
SLAVOJ: Pornography is a genre where you would think everything is permitted. No! It's the most codified of genres. But this, for me, is its ultimate charm. I spoke with a Hollywood pornography producer, who told me that he deliberately stages the action so that the male viewer doesn't identify with the guy doing the fucking. He's just a machine. You, the viewer, want to be convinced that the woman is addressing you. And the deepest fantasy is that the ultimate woman — the femme fatale — would be a drag queen, a dressed-up man.

WOLFGANG: Do you think Lacan was right when he made the paradoxical statement that lesbians are the only true heterosexuals?
SLAVOJ: I think the categorization of heterosexuality versus homosexuality is totally wrong. There is a radical asymmetry between male and female homosexuality. Paradoxically, lesbian sex fits the standard phallocentric logic much more neatly than gay sex. I think that lesbianism is enacted for an absent phallic presence. Even some radical lesbian thinkers — like Judith Butler — who otherwise hate me, concede this point. Whereas the third element in male homosexuality is feminine, so gay sex is the truly feminist thing to do — and, in turn, standard heterosexual sex is the most homosexual act. It seems to me that gay penetration realizes and confronts the phantasmic support of straight sex too directly — that's why it is so unbearable for many"


http://www.indexmagazine.com/intervi...oj_zizek.shtml Originally Posted by ninasastri

Sorry, Nina, but I don't find any of that interesting.

That is some of the most twisted, pseudo-intellectual BS I have read in a long time. Ridiculous reasoning passed of as some new insight.

You, on the other hand, are very interesting.