Tonight our class had the privilege to dialogue with Barbara DeGenevieve, artist, professor, and porn maker from the Chicago Art Institute, as well as enjoy some clips from her two adult films, Full Load and Rough Stuff.
Aside from her many art projects, DeGenevieve runs a queer adult website; www.ssspread.com
To access this site, one must become a member and pay monthly. When questioned why the site is not free, as the queer community represents a range of economic levels, DeGenevieve responded that they would not be able to pay their models or cover their expenses if the website were free. Further, DeGenevieve wants to stay away from the trends of mainstream porn sites that bombard you with advertisements and pop-ups; "we didn't want annoying ads, pop-up windows, and the gross commercialism you see on traditional porn sites" (DeGenevieve 2002).
DeGenevieve also strives to show a diverse range of body types among her models. Indeed, one of the traits of queer porn is that you see more than just Barbie dolls with long red nails on the screen. DeGenevieve comments that "of course there are tons of people who will never tire of watching 'perfect bodies' as they're presented by advertising and mainstream movies, but there's a large enough population either bored with this hollow ideal, or that never really found it fully satisfying to begin with." DeGenevieve's concept of reality also extends to shots filmed at the models' own home, revealing their "punk aesthetics" and environments that are definitely not mainstream.
In DeGenevieve's work, it is evident that she is challenging conventional notions of porn in terms of gender roles. DeGenevieve discusses how the anti-porn position believes that the "male gaze" in pornography objectifies women. DeGenevieve rejects this notion of gendered gaze, saying that "there is no male gaze, or female gaze for that matter, just the gaze. The gaze does objectify, but a woman's gaze objectifies just like a man's gaze." For DeGenevieve, women are also active viewers of pornography and further, it is not always the woman that they have to identify with. As we saw in her videos, queer and trans people role play and their gender roles are fluid. A viewer then is allowed "to make up any subject position, and a subject position has nothing to do with gender."
I would love to continue with all the "juicy" details of DeGenevieve's work, but I rather encourage you to join her website, or order her films, and support alternative queer porn.
Aside from her many art projects, DeGenevieve runs a queer adult website; www.ssspread.com
To access this site, one must become a member and pay monthly. When questioned why the site is not free, as the queer community represents a range of economic levels, DeGenevieve responded that they would not be able to pay their models or cover their expenses if the website were free. Further, DeGenevieve wants to stay away from the trends of mainstream porn sites that bombard you with advertisements and pop-ups; "we didn't want annoying ads, pop-up windows, and the gross commercialism you see on traditional porn sites" (DeGenevieve 2002).
DeGenevieve also strives to show a diverse range of body types among her models. Indeed, one of the traits of queer porn is that you see more than just Barbie dolls with long red nails on the screen. DeGenevieve comments that "of course there are tons of people who will never tire of watching 'perfect bodies' as they're presented by advertising and mainstream movies, but there's a large enough population either bored with this hollow ideal, or that never really found it fully satisfying to begin with." DeGenevieve's concept of reality also extends to shots filmed at the models' own home, revealing their "punk aesthetics" and environments that are definitely not mainstream.
In DeGenevieve's work, it is evident that she is challenging conventional notions of porn in terms of gender roles. DeGenevieve discusses how the anti-porn position believes that the "male gaze" in pornography objectifies women. DeGenevieve rejects this notion of gendered gaze, saying that "there is no male gaze, or female gaze for that matter, just the gaze. The gaze does objectify, but a woman's gaze objectifies just like a man's gaze." For DeGenevieve, women are also active viewers of pornography and further, it is not always the woman that they have to identify with. As we saw in her videos, queer and trans people role play and their gender roles are fluid. A viewer then is allowed "to make up any subject position, and a subject position has nothing to do with gender."
I would love to continue with all the "juicy" details of DeGenevieve's work, but I rather encourage you to join her website, or order her films, and support alternative queer porn.
Libidoc and Dr. Jacobs, "Interview with Barbara DeGenevieve ," in Libi_doce: Journeys in the Performance of Sex Art. Ljubljana, Maska, 2005, 142-147.
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