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)
“Perhaps there are only a few women who experience without deception the overwhelming intoxication of the senses which they expect from their encounters with men, which they feel bound to expect because of the fuss made about it in novels, written by men.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he “lives” his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.”
—George Gurdjieff (c. 1877–1949)
“How can I explain the difference to me between America and Russia?... the America I’ve known is a place where men on horseback escort union marchers, the Russia I’ve known is a place where men on horseback slaughter young Socialists and Jews.”
—Golda Meir (1898–1978)