Nicholas de Villiers
Explicit content warning
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)
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)
Previous Episode
Elena Gorfinkel
In this episode we delve into the seedy and exciting world of sexploitation cinema! Oftentimes, pornography studies is so busy working to legitimate hard core texts that we sometimes forget about the wide-world of soft core cinema. Just before the “Golden Age” of theatrically released pornography in the late 1960s, there was almost a decade of sexploitation cinema single-handedly keeping alive a dying studio system that had lost its dominance in light of losing its profits from owning theaters and the invention of the in-home entertainment system knowns as television. Sexploitation movies are a mode of cinema consisting of cheaply financed, quickly made, with B-grade acting adapted to a variety of film genres. There are sexploitation movies that look like film noirs from the 1940s (with nudity), teen beach movies from the 1950s (with nudity), and even sci-fi movies (with nudity)! These movies allowed for a new generation of filmmakers to break into the industry without the heavy burden of having to prove themselves with a big budget or A-list actors. Exploitation cinema is a crucial part of Hollywood history that thankfully has been given the attention it deserves with Elena Gorfinkel’s new book Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Elena’s remarkable book is a deep historical and theoretical dive into the legal history, feminist perspective, legal conditions, and critical response to sexploitation films. In this interview we talk about how Kim’s Video in New York City facilitated her interest in sexploitation films, we talk about the Marxist and feminist implications of sexploitation, we consider why film critics of the 1960s were so “bored” watching sexploitation, and we talk about her role as the co-chair of the Adult Film History Special Interest Research Group, which is a part of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. If you’re looking for a primer on the history of sexploitation, you’ve come to the right podcast!
Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s
Was '60s Sexploitation Cinema More Than Just Pornography?
Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959
Elena’s Interview with Feminist Media Histories about “Sex and the Materiality of Adult Media”
Fieldnotes: Constance Penley interviewed by Elena Gorfinkel
“The Story of Kim’s Video & Music, Told by its Clerks and Customers”
Art Zone: The Wonderfully Weird World of Lisa Petrucci
Help Support the Podcast!
More info about Brandon Arroyo
Next Episode
Porno Mags
In this episode we explore the wild world of pornographic magazines. Believe it or not, before the popularization of the internet, a great many people had their first and most lasting encounters with pornography via magazines. Magazines were an essential part of pornographic creation and circulation for many decades, and now that they’ve fallen victim to the digital revolution, they’ve only recently been considered as an archival object suited for academic study. In this episode we tackle just a small sliver of pornographic magazine history by talking about a set of magazines addressing queer sexuality. This episode is divided into two sections. The first begins with my conversation with professor Elizabeth Groeneveld. Elizabeth talks to me about her work researching the lesbian pornographic and political commentary magazine On Our Backs. On Our Backs published from 1985 to 1990 and was founded and edited by Susie Bright (we previously talked about Susie in our episode with Lynn Comella). On Our Backs was a sex-positive answer to the feminist anti-pornography magazine Off Our Backs. As one of the only magazines providing lesbian-made pornographic representation for their fellow lesbian readers, the editors surprisingly received a lot of questions from readers about how they were supposed to consume such imagery. After our conversation, Elizabeth goes on to explain in her talk at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies how letters to the editor of On Our Backs reveal confused reactions to the pornographic content of the magazine—regarding both sexual discovery and confusion about whether one can be a “good feminist lesbian” if one is turned on by such imagery. Elizabeth’s research is really fascinating reveals the conflicted nature of pornographic politics.
Our second interview and talk is with Daniel Laurin. Daniel is a PhD student in Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. His research looks into a group of gay male pornographic magazines from the 1970s and 80s to analyze the marketing of the gay-for-pay performer. The most common assumption about the gay-for-pay porn performer is that they emerged in the wake of the AIDS crisis in the mid-1980s to provide an example of a strong, healthy, and dominant male figure standing in opposition to the sick, weak, and AIDS infected gay image that was dominating media depictions at the time. However, Daniel’s research into these magazines tells a very different story. His archival research proves that in fact, the marketing of—and fascination with—the gay-for-pay performer started in the pages of these pornographic magazines long before the AIDS crisis. Here’s hoping that this is the first of many episodes exploring the dynamic history of pornographic magazines!
More about Elizabeth Groeneveld
Making Feminist Media: Third-Wave Magazines on the Cusp of the Digital Age
Book review for Making Feminist Media
Historical background: On Our Backs and Bad Attitude
Daniel’s documentary about gay-for-pay performers
Help Support the Podcast!
More info about Brandon Arroyo
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