April 16, 2004
Porn & popular culture
Jenna Jameson is a porn star who is marketed as a goddess of the adult entertainment industry, and a pop pinup. She markets her image with references to Hollywood cinematic aesthetics:
jenna jameson
Like the characters in your standard Hollywood dreamfactory movie, this image is a projection surface for the perceptions and desires of the consumer. It is an image that one encounters in the transit points and temporary abodes of the non-places, such as airport lounges, train stations, hotel/motel rooms, supermarkets, and conveyor belts.
It is argued here that the Jameson image:
"...continuously transforms in order to sustain a commodified existence within the pornographic world and beyond. The image has become economically autonomous to the extent that there is no longer any resemblance to the signified, if there ever was a signified. The image is real only in its ability to generate capital and accommodate the sexual desires of its consumers. These desires exist indefinitely as they are never really fulfilled, and therefore generate a self perpetuating Lacanian cycle of unfulfilled plentitude – ideal for the capitalistic appetite. The Jameson image is a sexual simulacrum."
Consumer culture--and the Jameson images are a part of consumer culture---is now full of images of public sexual-posturing, erotica, sex toys, and fetishes. Porn has become a popular culture genre.
There is a deterritoralization process taking place.