Linda Williams, "Power, Pleasure and the 'Frenzy of the Visible"

Linda Williams, in her article Power, Pleasure and the“Frenzy of the Visible”, discusses the "stag film" and the history behind it. Stag films are usually represented and constructed for male audiences. They focus on the "fellatio" (the stimulation of the penis). Williams talked about the position that women take and how the phallus is a form of fetish. Marx defined fetish as "a mysterious thing", and in the movie Deep Throat, a woman is viewed as the other because she lacks sexuality. She was portrayed as a woman who does not enjoy sex very much and did not come; she went to the doctor and found out that the clitoris was in her throat. The doctor than instructs her how to penetrate herself, etc. As women have become the unknowing subject, "fetishization is an obvious way for the male subject to maintain the phallic economy of the one. Freudian fetishist attempts to preserve his own humanity at the expense of stressing the freakish inhumanity – the "horror" – of the female other" (Williams 114). Williams argues that the subjects of stag film are often women, and she explains how they are constructed in a way for the viewers to view the male penis and to make women invisible as a form of fetishism.

Laura Kipnis, "Disgust and Desire: Hustler Magazine" and "How to Look at Pornography"

Laura Kipnis in the chapter of Disgust and Desire: Hustler Magazine argues that Larry Flynt reinforce the first amendment "freedom of the press" (Kipnis 128) by publishing his magazine Hustler. A lot of people are not very fond of Flynt because of his magazine "Hustler," which is generally considered obscene. Flynt's magazine contrasts to the features of "Playboy," which is more standardized and made for the "male gaze." Hustler, oppositely of Playboy, sets "its mission to disturb and unsettle its readers, both psychosexually and sociosexually, by interrogating the typical men's magazine conventions of sexuality" (Kipnis 131). Hustler magazine has depicted pornography in a different way, aiming away from the typical mainstream pornography usually produced. Flynt represents different body images and is devoted to produced "grossness": an obsessive focus on the lower half of the body and on the processes (and products) of elimination. Its joke techniques are based on exaggeration and inversion, which have long been staples of pornographic political satire"(Kipnis 132). Hustler magazine exposes how we look at pornography, as Kipnis goes on discussing how people distinguish what is proper and what is improper. In How to Look at Pornography, Kipnis talks about the case of Daniel DePew, who was arrested and is now serving a thirty-three year sentence for creating child pornography. DePew was arrested for exchanging his ideas with the officers and is considered as a pervert. Kipnis uses Freud to argue that "disgust so often seeps over into sex to the child's arousal during parental hygiene ministrations. There are certain things we just don't want to know about ourselves and our formations as selves. These seem to be precisely what pornography keeps shoving right back at us" (qtd in Kipnis 171). In the DePew case, Kipnis argues that the jury had sentenced DePew according to the "culture, in coming to terms with the existence of pornography" (Kipnis 205). As pornography has become a part of the capitalist world where it will not disappear anytime soon, Kipnis hopes that we are able to learn a "few things from its civil disobedience" (Kipnis 206).

Patricia Hill Collins "Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies and Images of Black Feminity"

Patricia Hill Collins in her article Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity discusses the history behind the word "freak". In the nineteenth century, “freak” was a description for people who were perceived as different, far from what the mainstream conceived as normal, and who were displayed in circus sideshows, such as in the famous story of Sarah Bartmann. Bartmann was a part of a medical experiment that "illustrate[ed] how Western sciences constructed racial difference by searching the physiology of Black people's bodies for sexual deviance" (Collins 120). Now the word "freak" is being redefined into a new way of understanding. Artists such as Missy Elliot and Rick James use this word to mean "the kind of ‘kinky’ sexuality... [as] boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality soften and shift, so do the meanings of freaky as well as the practices and people thought to engage in them" (Collins 121). The term "freak" categorizes with such terms as “nigger”, “bitch”, etc., which are being used in everyday speech as a form of resistance to their original meanings. Collins also distinguishes between class differences and how these terms are used differently in the African American community. For example, the working class could use the term “bitch” to mean being "aggressive, loud, rude, and pushy" (Collins 123), whereas women who are represented as being a "Black Bitch [who is] super tough, super strong… are often celebrated" (Collins 124). Some African American women rappers take words such as "ho" – which is considered the language of racism, sexism and heterosexism – and redefine it by the female sexuality. In the African American community, such words as "ho" could be represented as "female sexuality [which is] part of women's freedom and independence" (Collins 127). The social construction of beauty has changed throughout time, allowing Black women to appear more beautiful, such terms used are now reconstructed and now modified into a new meaning.

Kobena Mercer, "Reading Racial Fetishism: the Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe"

Kobena Mercer in Reading Racial Fetishism: the Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe argues that Mapplethorpe objectified black men according to the way the dominant "white" culture viewed blackness, the "black male sexuality is perceived as something different, excessive" (Mercer 173). Mercer discusses the photographs Mapplethorpe creates within the male sexuality, which are created in a way to reinforce the stereotypes of how black men are represented in the mainstream. Mapplethorpe photographs black male nudes and uses them as objects within the male gaze. Mercer compared Mapplethorpe's photographs of black male sexuality as a form "within the dominant tradition of the female nude, patriarchal power relations are symbolized by the binary relation in which, to put it crudely, men assume the active role of the looking subject while women are passive objects to be looked at" (Mercer 175). Mercer further argued that Mapplethorpe's photographs of the black male sexuality is a form of the master/slave relationship. In the sense that these photographs are like the form of the reinforcement of the master and slave, Mapplethorpe uses black men as the object, as it is he who instructs the black men in a certain way. These photographs operate under what is considered the "male gaze," which predominantly consists of mainstream middle class white men who often look at nude women in this way. Mercer, however, changes his analysis of the photographs by Mapplethorpe because he tries to encounter these pictures differently. Rather than positioning himself as the subject, Mercer admits, "sharing the same desire to look, I am forced to confront the rather unwelcome fact that I would actually occupy the same position in the fantasy of mastery that I said was that of the white male subject!" (Mercer 193). These photographs of black male sexuality can be very contradictory because one can interpret them as very racist but one can also view them as a "shocking" form of art, resisting the representation of sexuality within the mainstream.

Michel Foucault...History of Sexuality

Michel Foucault's book The History of Sexuality is a very complex book to understand. Foucault talks about the discourse of sexuality and how the dominant culture represents sexuality. An example of this is marriage and its representation within the heterosexual context. Heterosexual marriage in this case is economically useful because the wife will depend on the husband to support the family so that the state does not have to. Sex is usually thought of as occurring after marriage: "The sex of husband and wife was beset by rules and recommendations. The marriage relation was the most intense focus of constraints; it was spoken of more than anything else; more than any other relation, it was required to give a detailed accounting of itself. It was under constant surveillance" (Foucault 37). Foucault discusses the constant surveillance we face in society and how society structures human beings from childhood onwards. Sexuality has been constructed in various forms: "the sexuality of doctor and patient, teacher and student, psychiatrist and mental patient, those which haunt spaces (the sexuality of the home, the school, the prison) all form the correlation of exact procedures of power" (Foucault 47). Although marriage has become a part of state concern, it allows for those who are married to gain certain benefits and protection within the state. Marriage supports the idea of heterosexual monogamy, which the dominant religion practices as "politically conservative" (Foucault 37). The upper class would support the heterosexual married couple for instant medical benefits rather than supporting a single person. Being married allows a couple to register with the state and gain protection. In the case of a divorce, it becomes a constant surveillance and policing of the state. An example of this is if a person cheated when they are married; the state protects the other person and helps in ensuring alimony from the person who cheated because cheating, in this case, is perceived as wrong by the state.