Porno Cultures Podcast
Brandon Arroyo
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Whitney Strub
Porno Cultures Podcast
11/10/17 • 107 min
Professor Whitney Strub joins us to talk about his books: Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (2010), Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression (2013), and this co-edited anthology with Carolyn Bronstein titled, Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s (2016). We talk about his historical approach to porn studies, New-Right censorship strategies of the post-war era, the important obscenity trials that have formed the obscenity laws that we’re familiar with today, and we talk about how is new edited collection is fighting against our commonly held assumptions of the “Golden Age” of porn in the 1970s. And after the interview, we take you on an audio tour of New Jersey’s last porn theater, the Little Theater. Which opened in Newark in 1929, and has been showing pornography since the 1970s. You don’t want to miss it!
Here’s a link to Whitney’s personal website: https://strublog.wordpress.com/
A link to the 1965 short film Perversion for Profit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4kMTw-R6o
Link to more info about Perversion for Profit: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/perversion-for-profit/9780231148863
Link to more info about Obscenity Rules: https://www.amazon.com/Obscenity-Rules-Struggle-Expression-Landmark/dp/0700619372
Link to the court’s oral argument of Roth v. U.S. on April 22, 1957: https://apps.oyez.org/player/#/warren6/oral_argument_audio/13231
Link to more info about Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/porno-chic-and-sex-wars
I want a president on the NYC High Line: http://art.thehighline.org/project/zoe-leonard/
Here’s a link to an article that Whitney wrote about the Little Theater: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnkwyg/the-little-theater-newark-porn
Here’s a link to a porn theater in L.A. that I mention during our audio tour: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-los-angeles-last-adult-theaters-20170706-htmlstory.html
More information about the Queer Newark Oral History project can be found at: http://queer.newark.rutgers.edu
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Introduction
Porno Cultures Podcast
10/11/17 • 8 min
Ashley West
Porno Cultures Podcast
04/13/18 • 89 min
Ashley West is the host of the most successful porn podcast of them all, The Rialto Report. The Rialto Report explores the history of the “golden age” of porn in the 1960s, 70s & 80s by interviewing the actors, directors, producers, and distributors from that era. The most remarkable aspect of the show is his amazing ability to find these long-lost people, some of whom haven’t spoken publicly in over 40 years! He gets them to not only talk about their time in the industry, but their childhood, their love life, their adventures and their passions outside of porn. In this way, Ashley paints a broad picture of these people’s lives and reveals their human complexity that shows them as typical people rather than as criminal or sadistic smut-peddlers that anti-porn activists make them out to be. In this interview we talk about his childhood growing up in Italy, and how sexploitation and pornographic movies were shown and written about in the same theaters and magazines as mainstream movies. We talk about his first porn crush, his interview style, why he keeps his identity a secret, and his work as a consultant on the HBO show The Duce. We also get into this concerns about the academic work being done on pornography and his worries that academia is being too insulated in terms of not making enough of an effort to get its work out to the public. Ashely has only done two interviews to celebrate The Rialto Report’s 5-year anniversary, so you’re not going to want to miss this rare opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes peek into how the podcast comes together.
Ginger Lynn: The Girl Next Door
Al Goldstein’s rant about Donald Trump: An Edifice Complex
More, More, More: The Search for Andrea True
Alan Bounville
Porno Cultures Podcast
12/15/17 • 71 min
Playwright, educator, and activist Alan Bounville joins us on the podcast to talk about his immersive theater piece Adonis Memories. The show is based on the testimonials of patrons of the infamous gay porn mecca known as the Adonis Theater, located in New York’s Hells Kitchen Neighborhood. It was a gay porn theater at the 51st location from 1975 through 1989. The theater’s legend was cemented within pornographic history because of Jack Deveau’s 1978 film A Night at the Adonis. A film that was shot within the theater. In this interview Alan describes how he put the show together by weaving a multitude of narratives from people who experienced the theater in their own way. We talk about what this era within gay history, and the sexuality explored in this space, means for gay sexuality and civil rights today. And we use Samuel Delany’s 1999 book Times Square Red, Times Square Blue as a guide to help us think through some of these issues.
More info about the theater: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4693
A New York Times’ article about the theater’s closing: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/12/nyregion/new-york-shuts-2-gay-theaters-as-aids-threats.html
A link to the In Our Words project: http://www.inourwords.org
An article from Alan about how the play came together: http://extendedplay.thecivilians.org/in-our-words-makes-gay-sex-happen-102616/
A New York Times’ article about how Adonis Memories fits within a growing number of plays addressing the gay sexuality of the past: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/theater/gay-histories-close-enough-to-touch-but-dont.html?_r=0
More information about Times Square Red, Times Square Blue: https://nyupress.org/books/9780814719206/
More info about Alan’s Into the Light walk: http://imfromdriftwood.com/alan_bounville/ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-j-hamilton/alan-bounville-into-the-light-walk_b_2639379.html
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Nicholas de Villiers
Porno Cultures Podcast
07/10/19 • 70 min
When we think about the rhetoric around sex workers it’s often easier to hear or read opinions advocating for the abolishment of sex work coming from politicians or “concerned citizens” who are not sex workers, or have never bothered to speak to a sex worker. The degree to which the voices of sex workers are suppressed in mainstream outlets throughout the West speaks to how dangerous their voices are considered. What on earth can sex workers be saying that so many people feel the need to speak for them instead of letting them speak for themselves? Well, that’s one of the primary issues that Nicholas de Villiers looks to solve in Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Sexography analyzes a series of films centered around interviewing sex workers. These films represent some of the few instances where sex workers are actually allowed to speak for themselves. Of course, these films are not without their own tensions. Many of the films are directed by non-sex workers and some of the portrayals of sex work in these films is quite negative. This is where de Villiers’ dynamic analysis of these films through a queer perspective helps us think about the nature of sex work, the interview, documentary aesthetics, and the concept of “truth” in new and interesting ways. Sexography is an exploration of how we can go about reading for, and exploring the sexual practices of, not only sex workers, but our own ideas about sexuality as well. How can the financial aspects of sex work help us understand the power dynamics of our own sexual relationships? What can sex workers teach us about sex and pornographic literacy? What is the relationship between sex work, pornography, and drag performance? And how can the work of Foucault help us think about the contemporary nature of sexual practice? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging interview. De Villiers is one of the most interesting and bold queer theorists working today, so you’re not going to want to miss out on his compelling analysis of these films or his thoughts on contemporary sexuality!
Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary
L.A. Review of Books review of Sexography
Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol
Nicholas’ appearance on the Critical Theory podcast discussing Opacity and the Closet
“Afterthoughts on Queer Opacity”
“FBI Seized 23 Tor-hidden Child Porn Sites, Deployed Malware from Them”
“How the FBI Became the World’s Largest Distributor of Child Sex Abuse Imagery”
“Transgender, at War and in Love”
“What Teenagers are Learning from Online Porn”
Tales of the Night Fairies (2002)
Zachary Sire
Porno Cultures Podcast
05/11/18 • 38 min
Zachary Sire is the editor of the essential gay porn blog Str8UpGayPorn. Str8UpGayPorn is the primary news and gossip site of the gay porn industry. If you’re a porn star and you’ve done something naughty, it’s likely to become a headline on the site sooner rather than later. Zachary started out as a features writer for magazines like Unzipped, Men and Freshmen before becoming a blogger for TheSword in 2010. It’s during his tenure at TheSword where he made a name for himself and became perhaps became the industry’s most notable personality who has never taken off his clothing in front of a camera! His humorous wit, coupled with is biting sarcasm, make his takedowns of hypocritical politicians, racist performers, and reckless studio bosses equally funny and informative. In 2013 he left TheSword to start his own blog about the industry, Str8UpGayPorn. Str8UpGayPorn’s layout intentionally mimics (and mocks) one of the internet’s most well-known sites, TheDrudgeReport. And just like Drudge, Str8UpGayPorn emphasizes how the gossip around gay pornography interacts with our wider pop-cultural world by providing links to news stories related to the pornographic focus of the site. By doing this, Zachary makes the intersection of porn and pop culture evident. In this interview we talk about his rise through the industry, he explains how one of his blog posts was taken down as a result of business pressure, the state of racial diversity within the industry, and we recap highlights from the first-ever Str8UpGayPorn Awards, which took place in June of 2017 in New York City.
“Koering Tells Gay Porn Rag That He Opposes Gay Marriage”
“Will Social-Media Pressure Stop the Gay Porn Industry from Hiring Racists?” (Vice, 2016)
Just some of the reasons why Michael Lucas of Lucas Entertainment is so awful!
The inaugural Str8UpGayPorn Awards
Susanna Paasonen
Porno Cultures Podcast
12/10/18 • 67 min
In this episode, we’re joined one of the most prolific and accomplished scholars in the field of pornography studies, Susanna Paasonen. She is a professor of media studies at the University of Turku in Finland and has written and edited over eight books covering pornography, sex, internet studies, feminism, and affect. Her newest book is Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play (MIT Press, 2018), where she explores sex, bodily capacities, appetites, orientations, and connections in terms of play and playfulness. Like many people in the U.S., I discovered her work in 2011 with the publication of Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press). It has since become a landmark book within pornography studies due to the way it reorients the conversation around pornography from one centered on censorship, feminism, and the quality of sexual representation, to one trying to account for the various—and hard to quantify ways in which—pornography moves us, not only physically (with feelings of both revulsion and extasy), but affectively (where we find ourselves relating to our own bodies, and other’s bodies in new and different ways). While traditional academic methods of reading moving image texts revolve around notions of sexual, gender, or racial identity, affect theory helps to account for the ways in which social identity isn’t just centered within our race or sexuality, but is, in fact, a part of a wider social assemblage, where our various affective interactions with actors within our social networks dramatically influence the ways we relate to, and understand, ourselves. Affect theory accounts for the ways in which our subjectivity is formed not from our inner-selves, but is a relational force interacting with the body from the outside. Of course, the reason why approaching pornography studies from this perspective is so different from traditional methods is because this perspective frees the genre from needing to affirm or legitimate racial or gender uplift. An affective reading of pornography accounts for the politically incorrect ways in which we interact with the genre. Pleasure, disgust, joy, humiliation, and shame are all affective registers that we tap into when engaging with pornography. The accumulation of these feelings are part of the overall resonance that Susanna is trying to account for in her work. In this interview we talk about her first experience finding porn magazines in a damp Finland forest; the difference between the pornography in Finland and the surrounding Nordic countries; why she thinks Silvan Tomkins and Gilles Deleuze actually work well together, and she explains how she became an expert on bareback gay sex!
More about the phenomenon of “woods porn.”
Susanna’s interview with pornographer Paul Morris.
More about the films of Jan Soldat.
More info about Brandon Arroyo
Canadian Content: The Adult Film Industry & its Canadian Contexts
Porno Cultures Podcast
09/18/18 • 72 min
Believe it or not, Canada might be the most important country determining what porn you’re watching today! I say that because the most popular porn sites in the world were created, and continue to operate, in Canada. PornHub, YouPorn, RedTube, and Brazzers just to name a few. While Canada has an extensive porn history and shapes the ways in which we consume and distribute porn today, oftentimes it’s overlooked in favor of its flashier cousin in the south known as the San Fernando Valley. This episode looks to change all of that with a panel that was recorded at the 2018 Society for Cinema & Media Studies in Toronto. This panel features a friend of the show, Professor Peter Alilunas talking about the pornographic history of Toronto’s most famous street, Yonge st. He specifically details the history of a theater on that street known as Cinema 2000. It was a screening room showing pornography on VHS starting in 1969! The second presenter is Cait McKinney. She’s a professor in the department of communication studies at California State University at Northridge. And in her talk, she details the history of a long-lost 1984 film titled Slumber Party. The film was made by a group of radical feminist lesbians. Cait also considers the role that lesbian porn played in the feminist porn wars in the 1980s. A topic that is rarely considered. The third paper is presented by Nikola Stepić. He’s a PhD student in Concordia University’s Humanities Department. And his paper covers how gay pornography shot in Montreal’s Gay Village acted as a type of visual tourism for the neighborhood, attracting people from all over the world, helping make Montreal the gay destination is it today. The final paper is by Patrick Keilty. He’s a Professor at the University of Toronto and his presentation covers the short history of Montreal’s emergence as a global porn capital, followed by a theoretical consideration of the digital interface we as viewers are presented with as we’re surfing these various sites emanating from this city. Here is a link for the pictures from each PowerPoint. Be sure to follow along!
Peter Alilunas: “‘Closed Due to Pressure from the Morality Squad’: The Cinema 2000 and Pornography Regulation in Toronto”
Cait McKinny: “Digitizing Controversies in Toronto’s Lesbian Porn Archives”
Nikola Stepic: “Quebec Exposed: Gay Male Pornography as Virtual Tourism”
Patrick Keilty: “Silicon(e) Valley: Montreal’s Porn Industry”
New York magazine article about the rapid rise of the porn industry in Montreal: “The Geek-Kings of Smut.”
More info about Jon Ronson’s podcast series titled The Butterfly Effect, which details Fabian Thylmann’s role in creating a porn empire in Montreal and more!
More info about Peter’s book Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video.
Cait’s work with the LGBTQ History Digital Collaboratory
Cait’s No More Pot Lucks article: “Out of the Basement and on to the Internet: Digitizing Oral History Tapes at the Lesbian Herstory Archives.”
Cait’s Drain Mag article: “Can a Computer Remember AIDS?”
Nikola’s HuffPost article on the porntastic movie The Canyons: “Stuck in the Canyons.”
Article about the University of Toronto’s Sexual Representation Collection run by Patrick Keilty
Grad Student Roundtable
Porno Cultures Podcast
08/09/18 • 89 min
In this episode we’re trying something different! This is our first “roundtable” episode featuring four guests. And instead of talking with established scholars in the field, we’re actually talking with four up-and-coming graduate students who will soon be making their mark within pornography studies. As pornography studies grows within academe, it is becoming increasingly possible to build a support network of fellow students that share your interests. And considering how much resistance there still is toward studying pornography, these networks can be a crucial part of one’s survival throughout graduate school. This episode is our small attempt at fostering more supportive networks. In this episode you’ll hear stories about professors urging students not to pursue the study of pornography, and even hear about professors that are openly hostile to students working on this topic. Also, studying pornography within different cultural contexts means that students often have to utilize alternative methodologies, which typical film departments are sometimes ill-equipped to accommodate. Like when your research leads you to branch off into urban history and city-planning, or when you have to use anthropology methods to find out how pornography is thought about within different transnational contexts. These are the type of issues we’ll be talking about with our guests in this episode: John Paul Stadler of Duke University, Darshana Sreedhar Mini of the University of Southern California, Ben Strassfeld from the University of Michigan, and Madita Oeming of Paderborn University in Germany. Each of them has their own compelling story about how they found themselves studying this topic, and harrowing tales about how they’ve endured through the suspicion and anger that is aimed at pornography scholars both within America and outside it. Be sure to keep listening after the interview is over because there’s a little bonus where Madita gives all of us a lesson in German dirty talk. Believe me, you’re not going to want to miss that!
More info about John’s book PREHISTORIC
John’s Twitter
Madita’s Twitter
Ben’s Twitter
Darshana’s Twitter
Darshana talking about her SCMS Student Writing Award for the essay “The Rise of Soft Porn in Malayalam Cinema and the Precarious Stardom of Shakeela.”
Films(trips) Podcast | Cruising
Porno Cultures Podcast
11/08/19 • 120 min
In this special addition of the Porno Cultures Podcast, we’re proud to feature an episode of the Films(trips) podcast about the porn-adjacent film Cruising. The Films(trips) podcast features extended discussions about sorely underrated or under-watched films and finally gives them their proper due by hosts Dave Babbitt and Andrew Kannegeisser. The boys were kind enough to invite me on the show to discuss William Friedkin’s highly controversial and misunderstood film Cruising. Cruising is about a gay serial killer who is hunting for victims within New York City’s gay leather clubs in a pre-AIDS Meatpacking District. The film was protested by gay groups while it was being filmed, and has continued to be a point of contention within the contemporary gay community. Some argue that the film portrays a stereotypical and damaging image of the psychologically traumatized gay man—a demeaning cinematic trope throughout history. And the other half of the community values the film for its essential ethnographic portrayal of the actual clubs, people, and cruising methods that have been systematically destroyed due to the AIDS crisis and New York’s gentrification imperative. Friedkin’s insistence on shooting inside leather sex clubs like the Mineshaft and the Ramrod qualify as important documentation of a lost sexual history that is nearly impossible to find in contemporary New York. Additionally, pornographic tropes infuse the movie throughout. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out where I stand on all these crucial questions surrounding the film today. I’m so honored that Andrew invited me to be a part of his very funny and in-depth show. It’s a bit of a change of pace from our usual show, but this is an excellent example of how pornography studies can be utilized in readings of non-pornographic films. And Cruising shows just how prevalent pornographic tropes find their way into “mainstream” films. Please be sure to check out Films(trips)’ extensive catalog of shows. They really do a great job of giving forgotten films the attention they deserve!
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FAQ
How many episodes does Porno Cultures Podcast have?
Porno Cultures Podcast currently has 23 episodes available.
What topics does Porno Cultures Podcast cover?
The podcast is about Culture, Society & Culture, Sex, Interview, Podcasts and Academic.
What is the most popular episode on Porno Cultures Podcast?
The episode title 'John Mercer' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Porno Cultures Podcast?
The average episode length on Porno Cultures Podcast is 69 minutes.
How often are episodes of Porno Cultures Podcast released?
Episodes of Porno Cultures Podcast are typically released every 31 days, 16 hours.
When was the first episode of Porno Cultures Podcast?
The first episode of Porno Cultures Podcast was released on Oct 11, 2017.
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