Prurience, punishment and the image: Reading ‘law-and-order pornography’

Abstract

This article aims to expand interpretations of the representational and spectatorial politics of images by investigating what Wacquant has termed 'law-and-order pornographies'. By this, he refers to images of crime and punishment accorded signifiers of the pornographic and the prurient in order to describe the fusion of the erotic and the punitive. The first part of the article brings into conversation the fields of porn studies and visual criminology. It examines more closely what is at stake in imbuing crime images with the grammar of the pornographic. The second part of the article argues that the application of the pornographic to images of law and order has been refracted back onto the sphere of adult entertainment, in particular, the phenomenon of 'revenge pornography'.

Sex Work, Sensory Urbanism and Visual Criminology: Exploring the Role of the Senses in Shaping Residential Perceptions of Brothels in Blackpool

“…Others have looked to moving images, with studies on crime films and television programmes (e.g. Rafter, ; Nellis, ; Rafter and Brown, ), revenge porn (Dymock, ), and the self‐recording of crimes by offenders (Sandberg and Ugelvik, ). The tenor of much discussion within visual criminology has been about correcting stereotypical, unflattering and inaccurate reporting and portrayals of characteristics, behaviour and processes.…”

Ched Evans, rape myths and Medusa's gaze: a story of mirrors and windows

“…30 For a comparable analysis in a different context, see Felman (1997 There are various possible ways to theorise visuality and its application in the study of crime and criminal justice. For example, Foucault's (1995) discussion of the efficient production of compliance and docility in prisons utilising Bentham's panopticon has spawned a wealth of criminological literature identifying manifestations and effects of the surveillance state (Mathiesen, 1997;Smith, 2004;Stalcup and Hahn, 2016;Wacquant 2009 Dymock (2016), for whom to speak of the state in such terms is demonstrably appropriate given that the consequences of criminalisation often involve scrutinising female sexuality.…”

“…Elsewhere, it has been observed that the way that criminal justice humiliatingly ‘exposes’ and ‘marks’ the body of the offender often provides a source of fascination and even entertainment for the ‘law-abiding majority’ (Carney, 2010, p. 32). The suggestion here is that criminal justice orchestrates ‘spectacles’ of punishment, and legitimises these as sources of prurient and prying (and implicitly sexual ) enjoyment (Dymock, 2016; Biber, 2015, p. 234; Young, 1996, p. 92) 3 . Indeed, Lois Wacquant (2009, pp.…”

“…For an illustration of this framework in the context of our discussion of rape and sexual studies that identify a relationship of complicity between the prurient eye of the male voyeur and the gaze of criminal justice (Wacquant, 2009, Dymock, 2016. Such complicity is central to a psychoanalytical visual criminology since, firstly, the exposure and scrutiny of a woman's sexuality serve to displace male fear of state censure that would 'cut him off' from society.…”

Visual pleasure and gonzo pornography: Mason’s challenge to convention in ‘the hardest of hardcore’

“…Mulvey is often still used to either provide a shorthand account of the filmic conventions of porn in general, or (where counter-examples are offered) as a synecdoche of anti-pornography writing from a film theory perspective (See, for example,Henning 2004, 172; Bauer 2015, 158; Schaschek 2014, 134; Ellis 2006, 37;Bronstein 2011, 143, Paasonen 2011 Kaite 1995, 67; Zagala 2002, 30;Dymock 2016. It also remains a tool of critique in anti-pornography writing, as inAdams 1996, 154).3 This also seems a moment which she mis-remembers: in her essay, Mason imagines this moment as having occurred much later in the scene than it actually does, after a series of commands from Ferrara for Quinn to crawl and bark like a dog.…”