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Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 363
EAN: 9780822323433
ISBN: 0822323435
Label: Duke University Press
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 226
Publication Date: 1999-12
Publisher: Duke University Press
Studio: Duke University Press
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Editorial Review:
Laura Kipnis, who teaches film at Northwestern University, adopts an unpopular stance: that of speaking for those whose sexual tendencies stray from the acceptable path. As such, she adds a different perspective in the always-raging debate on the role of pornography in America. Among her arguments is that pornography is often overlooked as a class issue, couched instead almost always as a morality matter. Realizing that many of those employed by the sex industry and those who support it are separated by class from those who deem it so unsavory, provides a particular insight into the perspective of those sitting in judgment.
In a book that completely changes the terms of the pornography debate, Laura Kipnis challenges the position that porn perpetuates misogyny and sex crimes. First published in 1996, Bound and Gagged opens with the chilling case of Daniel DePew, a man convicted—in the first computer bulletin board entrapment case—of conspiring to make a snuff film and sentenced to thirty-three years in prison for merely trading kinky fantasies with two undercover cops.
Using this textbook example of social hysteria as a springboard, Kipnis argues that criminalizing fantasy—even perverse and unacceptable fantasy—has dire social consequences. Exploring the entire spectrum of pornography, she declares that porn isn’t just about gender and that fantasy doesn’t necessarily constitute intent. She reveals Larry Flynt’s Hustler to be one of the most politically outspoken and class-antagonistic magazine in the country and shows how fetishes such as fat admiration challenge our aesthetic prejudices and socially sanctioned disgust. Kipnis demonstrates that the porn industry—whose multibillion-dollar annual revenues rival those of the three major television networks combined—know precisely how to tap into our culture’s deepest anxieties and desires, and that this knowledge, more than all the naked bodies, is what guarantees its vast popularity.
Bound and Gagged challenges our most basic assumptions about America’s relationship with pornography and questions what the calls to eliminate it are really attempting to protect.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - This is the future of porn studies
The author of the Kirkus Review (above) states that Kipnis's work would be "more at home at an MLA conference," while at the same time he contends her work is "not likely to inspire the dawning of a new era of pornography studies." But what could signal the dawning of such an era as well as a presentation by Kipnis at an MLA conference? You can't have it both ways, Kirkus.
Besides, Kipnis's essays are not written in the complicated intellectual prose of typical MLA ... Read More
Rating: - An eye-opening, mind-expanding look at "filth"
Kipnis adds her distinctive study to the growing chorus of books by women that have defended and explored pornography dispassionately in the last five years. (See, for example, Nadine Strossen's _Defending Pornography_ and Wendy McElroy's _XXX:A Woman's Right to Pornography_.) Kipnis takes as her jumping-off point the case of a gentle, well-behaved gay man who was given a long jail sentence for responding to fantasy bait concocted by the FBI on the Internet; somehow, discussion (read: Orwellian ... Read More
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