[ecrea] Call for papers - Porn Studies - Inside Gonzo Porn

CFP: Porn Studies Special Issue: Inside Gonzo Porn

This special issue of Porn Studies focuses on contemporary gonzo 
pornography. Emerging in the United States in the late 1980s and 
pioneered by directors such as John Stagliano, Seymore Butts, Ben Dover, 
and Rodney Moore, gonzo constituted both a low budget response and an 
“aesthetic” alternative to the glossy, plot-oriented feature films 
produced by companies such as VCA or Adam & Eve. Gonzo established a new 
“mode” of pornographic expression, taking fiction out of hard-core 
videos and heading straight for the sex, employing a documentary style – 
hand-held camera, camera-looks, live recording etc. – in order to 
enhance the authenticity and the realness of sexual representation 
(Hardy 2008; 2009; Biasin, Zecca 2009; Fuchs 2011; Tibbals 2014). In 
doing so, gonzo exacerbated the constant dialectic between the 
immediate, indexical depiction of the “mechanical truth of the bodily 
pleasure” (Williams 1989), and its symbolical reconstruction and 
“falsification” through specific representative and stylistic 
conventions (Dyer 1985; 1994). At the same time, gonzo pushed hard-core 
videos increasingly to the “extreme,” bringing sex performances and body 
practices to become more and more “hyperbolic” (Stüttgen 2009; Biasin, 
Zecca 2009; Paasonen 2011; Maddison 2012) – and almost completely 
detached from any sexological “idealism”.
Discursive tensions circulate gonzo – where different and often 
contrasting perspectives (theoretical and political) on porn 
representation and sexual agency meet and collide with each other. Some 
identify gonzo as a violent vehicle for the humiliation of women (Dines 
2006; Purcell 2012) and “grotesque degradation” (Langman 2004), a 
chauvinist and hyper-masculinized “fantasy” of retaliation to women’s 
social assertiveness. Yet other academics and activists promote a queer, 
(trans)feminist and subcultural re-appropriation of gonzo as a way to 
explore new “contra-sexual” body practices (Preciado 2000; Stüttgen 
2009), and to displace the heteronormative order (Borghi 2014); for 
them, gonzo constitutes a film form that can be productively re-employed 
to express new post-pornographic fantasies and desires, and to open 
alternative markets of porn consumption (Maina 2014). However, despite 
its centrality in debates about pornography, gonzo has hardly been 
examined in depth. This special issue of Porn Studies welcomes essays, 
interviews, and personal accounts from academics, artists, activists, 
and adult industry practitioners. Proposals are invited to address (but 
are not limited to) the following questions:

•     Genders/Bodies: What gender configurations does gonzo perform and 
(re)produce? What constitution types does it dictate and (re)shape? How 
are bodies depicted and “treated” in gonzo?
•    Actors/Stars: What performative abilities and what acting 
techniques does gonzo require? What actor’s personae does gonzo 
construct? How is a gonzo celebrity built? And what is its social “aura”?
•    Styles/Texts: What are the representative conventions of gonzo? 
What is its iconography? What are the stylistic features of gonzo 
“aesthetics”? Is there a gonzo textual “canon”?
•    Contexts/Positions: What are the ways in which gonzo is consumed? 
And in which contexts? What consumption positions does gonzo activate? 
And what cultural repertories does it entail?
•    Markets/Business: How is gonzo positioned within the porn market? 
How is gonzo produced? What are its business models, its working 
routines, and its commercial strategies?
•    Communities/Fans: What reception and interpretive communities does 
gonzo produce? And what are their dynamics? Is it possible to speak 
about a gonzo participatory fan culture? Is there a gonzo “cult”?
•    Tastes/Affects: Does gonzo produce a distinctive sex taste culture? 
What fantasies and pleasures does it entail? What affects does gonzo 
generate? What is its carnal appeal? How could gonzo be embodied by the 
viewers?
•    Global/Local: How has US gonzo been re-adapted in different 
national contexts? What are the globalisation/glocalization processes 
that underlie the international dissemination of gonzo style?

Submission Details

Articles for peer-review should be between 5000-6000 words. Shorter 
thought pieces of approximately 1500-2000 words may also be submitted, 
and the editors will make a selection for the Forum section.

Journal Deadline

•    The deadline for submission of proposals is September 1, 2015. 
Please send abstracts of 400 words and a short biographical note to 
(federico.zecca /at/ uniud.it) and (e.biasin /at/ libero.it). Authors will be notified 
by September 7, 2015 if their proposals have been accepted.
•    The deadline for submission of full articles is January 18, 2016.
•    The special issue will be published in December 2016.

How to Submit

All the manuscripts must be submitted online. Please consult the Authors 
and Submissions tab in the journal website for more information, and the 
Submit Online link is there as well: 
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprn20#.VOomnFPF--‐Gh.

Editorial information

•    Guest editor: Dr Enrico Biasin ((e.biasin /at/ libero.it))
•    Guest editor: Dr Federico Zecca ((federico.zecca /at/ uniud.it))

Style Guidelines

Manuscript preparation instructions for Taylor and Francis publications 
 and Routledge journals  can be found here: 
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rprn20&page=instructions#.VXXSmaaH4nI

Bibliography

•    Biasin, Enrico, and Federico Zecca. 2009. “Contemporary Audiovisual 
Pornography: Branding Strategy and Gonzo Film Style.” Cinema & Cie: 
International Film Studies Journal 9 (12): 133-147
•    Borghi, Rachele. 2014. “Post Porn: Or, Alice’s Adventures in 
Sexland”. In Porn after Porn. Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, 
edited by Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina, Federico Zecca, 165-187. Milan: 
Mimesis International.
•    Dines, Gail. 2006. “The White Man's Burden: Gonzo Pornography and 
the Construction of Black Masculinity,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 
18 (1): 283-297
•    Dyer, Richard. 1985. “Male Gay Porn
Coming to Terms.” Jump Cut 30, 
pp. 27-29.
•    Dyer, Richard. 1994. “Idol Thoughts: Orgasm and Self-Reflexivity in 
Gay Pornography”. Critical Quarterly 36 (1): 48-62.
•    Fuchs, Michael. 2011. “Starring Porn: Metareference in Straight 
Pornographic Feature Films.” International Ford Madox Ford Studies 10: 
379-413.
•    Hardy, Simon. 2008. “The Pornography of Reality.” Sexualities 11 
(1-2), 60-64.
•    Hardy, Simon. 2009. “The New Pornographies: Representation or 
Reality?” In Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture, 
edited by Feona Attwood, 3-18. London: I.B. Tauris.
•    Lauren Langman. 2004. “Grotesque Degradation: Globalization, 
Carnivalization, and Cyberporn.” In Net.seXXX: Readings on Sex, 
Pornography, and the Internet, edited by Dennis D. Waskul. New York: 
Peter Lang.
•    Maddison, Stephen. 2012. “The Limits of Pleasure? Max Hardcore and 
Extreme Porn.” In Hard to Swallow: Hard-Core Pornography on Screen, 
edited by Claire Hines and Darren Kerr, 113-125. London: Wallflower Press.
•    Maina, Giovanna. 2014. “Grotesque Empowerment: Belladonna’s 
Strapped Dykes Between Mainstream and Queer.” In Porn after Porn. 
Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, edited by Enrico Biasin, 
Giovanna Maina, Federico Zecca, 83-106. Milan: Mimesis International.
•    Paasonen, Susanna. 2011. Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online 
Pornography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
•    Purcell, Natalie. 2012. Violence and the Pornographic Imaginary: 
The Politics of Sex, Gender, and Aggression in Hardcore Pornography. 
London: Routledge.
•    Preciado, Beatriz. 2000. Manifeste Contra-Sexuel. Paris: Balland.
•    Stüttgen, Tim, ed. 2009. Post / Porn / Politics. Queer_Feminist 
Perspectives on the Politics of Porn Performance and Sex_Work as Culture 
Production. Berlin: b_books.
•    Tibbals, Chauntelle Anne. 2010. “From The Devil in Miss Jones to 
DMJ6: Power, Inequality, and Consistency in the Content of US Adult 
Films.” Sexualities 13 (5): 625-644.
•    Tibbals, Chauntelle Anne. 2014. Gonzo, “Trannys, and Teens: Current 
Trends in US Adult Content Production, Distribution, and Consumption.” 
Porn Studies 1 (1-2): 127-135.
•    Williams, Linda. (1989) 1999. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the 
“Frenzy of the Visible.” Berkeley: University of California Press.
•    Williams, Linda. 2004. “Porn Studies: Proliferating Pornographies 
On/Scene: An Introduction.” In Porn Studies, edited by Linda Williams, 
1-23. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Address questions and proposal submissions to:


Dr Enrico Biasin
Department of Cultural Heritage
University of Udine – DAMS Gorizia
Piazza Vittoria 41 – 34170 Gorizia, Italy
Email: (e.biasin /at/ libero.it)

Dr Federico Zecca

Department of Cultural Heritage
University of Udine – DAMS Gorizia
Piazza Vittoria 41 – 34170 Gorizia, Italy
Email: (federico.zecca /at/ uniud.it)



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