Porn

I was watching Masterchef on iPlayer last week, and found myself groaning out loud at some of the descriptions and images of food. I was about to comment to C that this was like 'food porn', but I never got around to saying the words because I got distracted, in my head, by thinking about the ways that we use the word 'porn' when we're not talking about the kind of porn embodied by explicit magazines, DVDs with poorly-punning titles, and 90% of the internet.

The two examples that I can think of are 'food porn' and 'torture porn'. Actual porn, 'regular' porn, doesn't need the word 'sex' in front of it to distinguish it from these other types of porn, because porn is about sex. More explicitly, it is about desire, arousal. Chambers dictionary has 'pornography' as: "books, magazines, films, etc dealing with or depicting sexual acts, in a more or less explicit way, intended to arouse sexual excitement; description or portrayal of prostitutes and prostitution." (source) The modern colloquial use of 'food porn' usually refers to images of food, often on TV cooking programmes, or, occasionally, to Nigella Lawson, who seems for many to embody traits of both regular and food porn. The images of food which give rise to the phrase 'food porn' evidently arouse some kind of desire in the person who describes them as such, and this surely isn't surprising, as sexual desire is often described as a kind of hunger. There's not such a big stretch between having your 'want' aroused by images of sex or by images of food. 'Torture porn' is usually used to refer to (specifically) films which include graphic and frequent torture. The Saw films are often described as torture porn, as well as things like The Human Centipede. Often the main purpose of these kinds of films seems to be to disgust the viewer - impel them to make that face - the wrinkled-nose, stretched-mouth, furrowed-forehead face.

Both 'food porn' and 'torture porn' are used to imply a value judgement. In the case of 'torture porn', the judgement is harsh: it's often accompanied by a sneering face and a profession of innocence of that kind of taste. Those kinds of film are lowbrow, they are for stupid people, they are contributing to our culture of violence. Criticisms usually stop short of accusing people who enjoy that kind of film of being freakish, sadistic menaces to society. But the judgement - and the implication, however subtle - is there. The phrase 'food porn' is much more lighthearted in tone. This doesn't mean, however, that there isn't a value judgement implicit in its use. Take Nigella Lawson, for example. She is popular as, and famous for being, a sexy cook. Not a cook, but a sexy cook. And the same judgement is, I think, applied to food. The implication is that it is not as inherently worthy as other kinds of food - that it is somehow less highbrow.

It is this value-judgement that interests me. The accusation levelled at films which are described as 'torture porn' is not levelled at films which have similar content such as Casino Royale, which shows Bond strapped naked to a bottomless chair and having his penis and testicles whipped from below. The accusation is to do with the apparent desire to create some kind of arousal, and, importantly, only that kind of arousal. The torture scene in Casino Royale is one scene among many, so it can be viewed as one part of a bigger project, whose intent is not solely to arouse one particular emotion. Saw, on the other hand, is seen by many as appealing solely to that instinct for disgust (which, of course, is 'bad' because people are choosing to feel that disgust by going to see the film rather than, for example, being 'righteously' disgusted by a piece of news featuring torture).

I think the value-judgement is to do with choice and desire. People are judged more for seeking to be aroused than they are for naturally being aroused. And media that caters to a desire for arousal, of whatever kind, is judged negatively for that reason. This extends to weepy films, too - films like The Notebook are often criticised for (apparently) being deliberately manipulative of the viewer's emotions. For some reason it is seen as embarrassing in some way to seek out, or to be seen to seek out, arousal, and similarly the media which caters to such desires is somehow less worthy than other media. There is a hierarchy, of course: food porn and weepy films are merely silly, but torture porn is disturbing at best, and sexual porn  - well, it is all things to all people (silly, embarrassing, disturbing, damaging, stunting, ruinous).

As a final thought, not because I've finished thinking about this but because I'm bored of writing it - isn't it interesting that the 'lesser', 'silly' forms of manipulative media (food porn and weepies) are gendered female in some way, whilst the 'worse' forms are usually seen as being of interest only to men and boys?