Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Pornography for the End of the World | The StoryGraph

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Pornography for the End of the World by Brendan Vidito

2 reviews

biobeetle's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

goblingorl's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Pornography for the End of the World handles the anxieties of climate change, war, and societal collapse with all the delicacy of a demolition crew. Brendan Vidito is Clive Barker with a sledgehammer; he’s Thomas Ligotti taken at face value, he’s Lucio Fulci’s idea of the world’s best surrealist. I loved and hated this book in equal measures; “Church of the Chronically Ill” felt like the standout story, written with just enough dexterity to evoke tangible emotion. The basement room, bags sealed over the windows and paint like dried phlegm, felt tangibly stifling and anxiety-inducing. The concept was wonderful, feeling very much like Munchausen by proxy with religious flair, and the prose was tighter than the stories that preceded it. On the other end of the spectrum, “Mother’s Mark” was the worst story of the collection. It felt like a clumsy attempt at making a commentary on the radical feminist rhetoric of male sexual aggression, or at the very least, the author using radfem theory as an excuse to write creepy, body-horror laden sex. It’s such a short little snippet with so, so much worldbuilding thrown in at the end, that it feels like there isn't any authentic build to the commentary on sexual aggression. The cramming in of the actual “meat” of the story left it feeling inauthentic and odd. This leads to my main critique of the book: it has political window-dressing, with a gaping expanse of nothingness behind it.

Throughout this whole book, you can't escape the fact that it was written by a man. The story “Apate’s Children,” while it is presumably about a man’s infidelity, is weirdly sympathetic towards the male character. The way the story is written, it is almost implied that the man is punishing himself unjustly, that maybe his guilt and penance are partially unjustified. Other stories show an incredibly male-centric and pornography-spectacle based view of sex (yes, I understand the irony of saying this when the book has pornography in the title). In “The Living Column,” every woman who orgasms does so by squirting, which is described in great detail, as if the only way an orgasm is significant is if there is ejaculation involved. In “Mother’s Mark,” an unnamed woman in a society devoid of men attempts to create a man solely for pleasure: he is described as tall, broad, hairless, and doesn't speak a word, which makes me wonder if the author consulted literally any women before trying to imagine the Ideal Man. Throughout the book, the monsters (and subsequent body horror sequences) also give us a look into this phenomenon: the monsters are voyeurs, like the thing on the ceiling in “Walking in Ash” or the floating camera in “Nostalgia Night at the Snuff Palace.” Interestingly, while many of the men retain their humanity (with sexual impotence being the ultimate humiliator), the women undergo horrific transformations, often accompanied by yonic symbolism. Dale’s head splitting down the middle in “Walking in Ash,” Candace’s body opening into a nightmarish birthing canal in “Glitterati Guignol.” The women in Vidito’s stories don’t have any agency: Susan in “Apate’s Children” is placid in her suffering, the entire story focusing on the emotions of her cheating partner and how tortured he is. We learn little about Candace as she is groped, hurt, and threatened with rape by the male characters in “Glitterati Guignol.” We have our hashtag girlboss Carrie (of course, her male colleague is Dr. Halverson, but she's just Carrie), but even she only gets a few lines, and half of her time in the story is spent describing her breasts. I mean, the story that focuses entirely on a female-only society doesn’t even pass the goddamn Bechdel Test!

There is a strong possibility that my dissatisfaction with my reading experience came from the fact that I found myself under-represented and unable to relate to many of these stories. I find that women are almost entirely ignored in the weird fiction and body horror genre; we really only have Clive Barker to turn to for representation, and while he does a wonderful job at writing women, he still turned Jacqueline Ess into a prostitute. Why is it that, even when writing in a world that has cancerous, decomposition-inducing guns, men cannot separate themselves from the idea of female sexual subjugation? Is the idea of women being free of sexual violence such an outlandish idea that, even in stories about the apocalypse, women are still experiencing rape with zero critical commentary? Resorting to tropes of sexual violence as window dressing for your gritty apocalypse is uninspired and played out: it alienates the women who would otherwise read and adore your work, using our reactions of discomfort to tell us “this is not for you, and never will be.” Nobody is saying you cannot use these things to say something meaningful; what I am saying is that using a woman in pain as a decoration without agency is a cruel slap in the face.

Despite my biting feminist critique, I did actually love the human aspect of this collection. The common denominator of these stories seemed to be that, while we are alienated from the world around us, we can find solace in each other. The characters of these stories attempt to connect with their partners, their chosen family, and the world around them, using intercourse and sexual pleasure as a desperate cry for love. In some stories, like “Apate’s Children” and “The Chimera Session,” sex alienates us from those we love, and from ourselves. In others, like “The Living Column” and “Nostalgia Night at the Snuff Palace,” sex is a last-ditch effort at survival, a bid for connection and reassurance in a world that alienates us from our humanity. In the single stand-out story that does not feature sex, “Church of the Chronically Ill,” connection is made not through sex, but through sickness. Those with chronic illnesses, instead of seeking medical care, make themselves sicker in order to find community. In the midst of the end of days, when everything is collapsing, all we can really do is take solace in our connections with others, in any way we can.

Overall, Vidito created a work that brought up so much disgust, anger, elation, and sadness in me, I ended up writing an essay in the form of a review. I think, more than anything else, that speaks to his skill as a storyteller. This book is rough around the edges, it's unsettling and stomach-turning, and it packs so much into such a small space that half of the meaning spills out over the edges. You can feel the fervor with which it was written, and I read it at much the same breakneck pace. Pornography for the End of the World is a passion project in the truest sense of the word, and in the end, passion is all we really have. Passion for ourselves, passion for each other, and passion for the things we love. Are you alright? Are you with the people you love? You won’t be alone. I’ll meet you at the end of the world.

Content Warnings