Content Analysis: Pornography
Miroslava Illasova
University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Pornography is the portrayal of sexual acts for the purpose of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction. Pornography and the industry of pornography have been around for hundreds of years shaping the material into different forms and portraying different ideas of ideal beauty. What is however one of the most important parts of pornography is the way it fits into the society that created it and what message it is sending to its audience. The pornographic industry has grown drastically making more profits each year. Knowing that this industry is mainly controlled and driven by men I started wondering if there is a difference in content between male and female directed pornographic material. In this paper I will look closely at how the gender of the director affects the content of the material.
Looking at the content and not knowing the director’s gender I believed there would be a significant difference in the content of the pornographic material. I started looking at the comparisons in aggression, the type of aggression and other scene variables. Once I summed up all of the information I found many shocking facts about the pornographic industry and the role that directors and their gender plays in the pornographic content. In this paper I will conduct textual analysis of pornographic materials and how it connects to the creators of the content.
Aggression is the most common component in the pornographic material. According to Chyng, Bridges, Wosnitzer, Scharrer and Liberman there are two types of aggression identified: physical and verbal (Dines & Humez, 2011). In male directed pornographic material the verbal aggression is present 49.2% of the time. Looking closely at the different types of verbal aggression we can see that name-calling is the most common taking up 49.2% of time. The threat of physical harm and coercive language are both present 1.6% of the time. Comparing this information to female directed porn I found that verbal aggression is present 50.8% of the time. Name calling being the main factor of verbal abuse as well represented by 50.8%. It is however shocking to find that the threat of physical harm is present 3.3% of the time. That is 1.7% difference between the content of male and female directed pornography (Chyng, Bridges, Scharrer, Wosnitzer & Liberman, 2008).
Physical aggression is a little more complicated as it has multiple components within. Looking at the components presented in the pornographic material I found that the spank, gag, open hand slap and pull hair are the most common. Spanking being at the top is present 70.5% of time in male directed porn and 72.1% in female directed porn. Another fascinating factor was looking at the percentage comparison in the act of gag, which to me is one of the most violent aspects of porn. The act of gag was present 54.1% of the time in male directed pornographic material and 59.0% of the time in female directed porn. Bondage was among the variables of physical aggression, but was not that common. However it caught my attention, as female directors use this act drastically more than male directors. In female directed porn the act of bondage was present 14.8% of the time while in the male directed porn it was present 4.9% of the time. (Chyng, Bridges, Scharrer, Wosnitzer & Liberman, 2008)
These results are not only shocking but also might explain the way women and men see the world of pornography. Looking at the comparisons in verbal aggression I could speculate that women are more verbal and therefore the presents of verbal insults was more frequent. It also showed that men directors use more physical aggression in their porn. Even though there are differences in the variables and their frequencies in the pornographic material directed by two different genders I do not find them drastically distinct or different.
Scene Categorical Variables
According to Chyng, Bridges, Wosnitzer, Scharrer and Liberman the most common scene categorical variable is the ejaculation position. Mouth being the main target in both male and female, I found that it is present 62.3% of the time in male directed pornography and 47.5% of the time in female directed material. What is however very interesting about the ejaculation position variable is the distinct difference in content in the following sub-variables. The sub-variables are face, breasts, stomach, buttocks and internal. Male directed porn had scenes with ejaculations in one of these areas 19.6% of the time. The female directed porn did not have any such scenes.
Looking at these differences I could not find a correlation between any of the variables and the gender of the director. I also believe that the director influences some of the content in the pornographic industry subconsciously. It is however necessary for the director to know what the consumer is looking for. I also believe that besides having the consumer in mind while creating the pornographic content, the director is aware that the consumer can adapt to what is being provided. It is after all a circle where the pornographic industry shapes the needs and wants of the consumer and the consumer influencing the content of the material by consuming certain types of porn.
Another scene categorical variable are the sex acts. The most common sub-variable in this category is the female-to-male oral act being present 93.4% of the time in male directed porn compared to 67.2% in the female directed porn. Another common sub-variables found in this category are the following scenes: male-to-female-oral, vaginal penetration with penis, anal penetration with penis and ass-to-mouth sequence. These acts are common in both male and female directed porn. They are all present close to 50.0% of the time. There is however one sub-variable drastically different in male and female directed material. The woman-to-woman act is present 14.8% of the time in male directed porn and present 41.0% of the time in female directed porn. This significant difference could point us to the answer why the difference exists. I believe that this difference tells us about the audience that is trying to be targeted. The director knows what scenes to include for certain audience. For example the woman-to-woman oral might target the lesbian audience. (Chyng, Bridges, Scharrer, Wosnitzer & Liberman, 2008)
The pornographic industry is mainly controlled by men and therefore there is not much space for women to be able to change drastically change the content being present almost in all of the porn material studied. In this paper I looked closely at how the gender of the director affects the content of the material. I found that the content was not dramatically different and did not indicate any dramatic shifts from one type of sexual scene to another.
Overall I believe that gender of the director creating the pornographic material does not play such a big role in the content of porn. I believe that my expectations of female-directed porn being distinctively different were not met for couple of reasons. Men largely dominate the business of pornography and therefore there is a lot of pressure for anybody creating pornographic material to conform to the norms that were established prior to their entrance of the business. It would therefore be very hard for women to shift away from what is being viewed as standard content for a pornographic material. Even if the women wanted to change the world of pornography the political economic structure is restraining them from doing so. It is the profit and the proven way to profit that must not be broken and you as a director should conform to that in order to be successful and profitable. I also believe that the audience’s needs and wants as well as target groups are the main concern of the director. Besides slight differences in the content between the male and female directed pornography, I could not find a distinct example that would indicate the gender of director to be a powerful variable in the content of the material.
It is the fact that a change in the content would be a hard one without the support of the audience and it is the fact that a change in the needs of audience are to appear without the change in the pornographic content. The political economic production is one of the variables that would have to contribute to the change, as it is the profit that runs this business.
References
Attwood, F. (2007). No money shot?. In Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media (283-292). Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.
Caputi, J. (2004). The pornography of everyday life. In Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media (307-320). Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.
Chyng, S., Bridges, A., Wosnitzer, R., Scharrer, E., & Liberman, R. (2008). A comparison of male and female directors in popular pornography: What happens when women are at the helm?. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32(3), 312-325. Available from: Academic Search Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed October 15, 2011.
Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.) (2008) Gender, Race, Class and Media (Third Edition) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2010). Adolescents' use of sexually explicit Internet material and sexual uncertainty: The role of involvement and gender. Communication Monographs, 77(3), 357-375. Available from: Academic Search Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed October 15, 2011.
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