Lacking In Emotional Content The state of ralph emerson mcginnis
This online journal and blog is for anything that pops into my head while I'm not working on more important things. I'm a visual artist and writer. Read more about me here.
I bought the latest issue of Print, which is the “sex” issue, because I’m a sucker for that topic. It was a moment of weakness, and I thought, for some unknown reason, that they were going to discuss the design of pornography. Apparently even broaching the subject is offensive to some people. The only thing that offended me is how squeamish and tepid it was. I mean, the cover wrapping would only be clever if there actually was graphic graphic content inside, which there wasn’t.
I don't think they went far enough at all. They didn't discuss the quality and relationship of design to the sex industry in depth, or discuss good design instances in the sex industry. Sexually charged commercial imagery is discussed – but real pornography would have been infinitely more interesting and original.
There is a decent article on Playboy’s poor design by Ted Allen and a review of the fabulous new book X-Rated: Adult Movie Posters of the 60’s and 70’s which is highly condescending and hardly illuminating. However, for the most part the issue deals with the tired discussion of pornography’s influence on popular media, such as in Rick Poynor’s article “Designing Pornotopia.” Needless to say, his article has nothing to do with the design of pornography. Instead all we have is an ambiguous moral argument against the objectification of women and a pronouncement of boredom. He quotes (shudder) Andrea Dworkin, and though he states that she’s a bit extreme, one feels his empathy for her. Dworkin, in her 1981 book Men Possessing Women claimed that (I’m paraphrasing her) pornography was rape, and that even two gay men having sex in a porn was tantamount to raping a woman, because (!!!!) one partner was the submissive and therefore the feminine representative.
Gay men are a problem when one over simplifies the tendency of men to objectify as a bad thing. We show that objectification isn’t limited to women, and isn’t motivated by a lack of respect for women. Men objectify and enjoy visual representations of sex and nudity; gay men exalt in this unashamedly amongst one another (A gay man rarely hides his porn collection if a date comes over.) We don’t mind being objectified. Gay men, as stylists, photographers and designers have been highly influential in the heightened sexual imagery in fashion magazines and advertising – which Poynor seems completely unaware of. In fashion, they show their love for the beauty of objectification using clothes and woman. There is a connection between advertising, fashion and porn – and gay men were the first to ironically present it. This unapologetic objectification and irony in gay men’s work has influenced all of popular media and in turn heterosexual men and women’s feelings about objectifying and being objectified. The concept of objectification as it relates to graphic design is the ripest subject here, but remains unexamined in Poynor’s piece.
This illustrates an even larger problem with Print – it rarely deals with how particular impulses motivate a designer to certain aesthetic choices. That is to say, it is rarely about design at all; it is more often about the subjects that design presents, only superficially dealing with the nature of design itself. Further, the depth and timing of Print dealing with these subjects is very poor. Poyner discusses the Face and Sleaznation as examples of explicit sexual imagery in popular media, and while both magazines are “guilty,” they have already discussed the issues Poyner broaches years ago, with much more humor and less cowardice than Print.
One wonders why Poynor doesn’t discuss the magazines that have gone much further than The Face did 5 years ago. The bubble was popped long ago and magazines such as Richardson, Nerve, Dutch, Purple Sexe, and Butt take for granted that there is no line between art/porn/commerce anymore. They just do their thing.
I'd recommend Laura Kipnis's book _Book and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America_, which is a good antidote to some of the squeamish and/or conservative discourses on pornography. Kipnis also spends some time on the aesthetics of pornography (in a fascinating study of tranvestite personal ads, of all things!) which I've found really informative.
