Bound And Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America is a 1996 book by Laura Kipnis. It attempts to approach pornography in a new way, focusing not on whether pornography is a serious social ill, but rather on its nature and what its function and meaning might be in the lives of its audience as well as the lives of those who seek to ban or suppress it.
The book is divided into five sections, each of which can stand more or less independently as individual essays:
- "Fantasy In America: The United States v. Daniel Thomas DePew" presents an account of the first computer bulletin board entrapment case, in which Daniel DePew is convicted of conspiring to make a snuff film and sentenced to thirty-three years in prison even though there was little evidence that his "plans" were anything other than kinky sexual fantasy.
- "Clothes Make The Man" is a look at transvestite pornography, specifically the self-portrait personal advertistements, comparing them to the more "respectable" work of photographer Cindy Sherman.
- "Life In The Fat Lane" is about fat fetish pornography and contemporary American culture's anxiety and hypocrisy about fat and desire. She argues that pornography featuring obese subjects is a revolt against the cultural esthetic of thinness.
- "Disgust And Desire: Hustler Magazine" discusses Larry Flynt's use of pornography as a political, class-conscious act. It also examines feminists' disgust with Hustler and similar magazines because they are class-based.
- "How To Look At Pornography," the book's conclusion, discusses (among other things) the marriage of anti-pornography writer Catharine MacKinnon and anti-psychoanalytic writer Jeffrey Masson.
Kipnis rejects the more militant anti-pornography views expressed by feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and dismisses the conservative movement to exempt pornography from First Amendment protection. She sets out her view that pornography is a legitimate cultural expression which exposes class prejudices and sexual hypocrisy while it deliberately seeks to transcend taboos. The book involves themes including Freudian analysis, consumer capitalism, and societal taboos.
Famous quotes containing the words bound and, bound, politics, fantasy and/or america:
“Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God’s cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter’s task again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Think not, thou noble Roman,
That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome.
He bears too great a mind.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“A restaurant is a fantasy—a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.”
—Warner Leroy, U.S. restaurateur, founder of Maxwell’s Plum restaurant, New York City. New York Times (July 9, 1976)
“In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilisation.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)