Abstract
The term 'pornography', intended in Media and Cultural Studies to describe a particular media genre, has often been used in public debate as a figure of speech to 'express many kinds of intense revulsion' (Rubin, 1993: 37). This public marking of 'bad' texts has become more widespread in recent years in what Brian McNair has described as an era of 'porn fear' (2009), often focused on the notion of the 'extreme' or signified by the use of the term 'pomography' for texts that are not necessarily sexual. It has become increas- ingly common, not only in right wing, religious and anti-porn feminist debates, but in serious joumalism and liberal cultural commentary. Martin Barker has drawn attention to the way that broadsheet newspapers make use of the term 'pom' (2011)' to denote amongst other things; weakness, self-indulgence, loss of contact with the self, the world or other people, and excessive attention to feel- ings, emotions, sensations, bodies (Barker, 2011). Forms of 'extreme' pomography are seen as 'not just at the edge and different', but having 'a magnetic hold over the rest', able to 'drag everything and everyone towards it'. Here, 'porn' is not a cultural form but a force. This usage of 'porn' underpins a range of commentaries about texts that are not produced as porn but are understood as somehow pornographic, especially those con- taining images of violence such as 'rape", 'revenge', 'war' and 'torture' porn. For exam- ple, Mark Dery's (2005) account of US soldiers' grisly combat images of maimed and dead Iraqis shared online describes these as 'pom...of the most atavistic sort'; viewed *with a voyeuristic, high-fiving glee familiar to anyone who has ever watched hardcore videos with a drunken gang of guys at a bachelor party' and poking 'a stiff little finger into the killer-ape part of our brains, right where the desire to fuck gets confused with the urge to fuck shit up'.`
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