whitneyborup's review against another edition
5.0
Linda Williams is one of the best academic writers I have come across. She is clear and concise, funny, and entertaining. I loved this book. It's very explicit, so it's obviously not for everyone, but any feminist (both pro- and anti-pornography) should check this one out.
mrbargus's review against another edition
4.0
Great but limited. Williams' prose is witty, accessible, and very clear, which makes even her most dense concepts compelling. She excels at connecting the development of cinema itself to a fundamental theory of how (primarily heterosexual) pornography engages with the presentation of sex as a gendered act(s). Everything from Muybridge to early stag loops blew my mind a bit. After that, it's a bit dicier. She was writing this at a very transitional moment in porn, and there are many questions that she doesn't have the hindsight, foreknowledge, or even diversity of appreciation to really answer. The BDSM section, for instance, feels almost tangential for how little she genuinely posits, and it's one of the sections that highlights how much her understandable exclusion of gay pornography has limited her analysis of the genre as a cultural and political object outside the relatively narrow confines of hetero-gender analysis. She also limits herself to mostly mainstream work at the expense of some genuine weirdo auteurs exploring the boundaries and philosophical implications of pornography such as Roger Watkins, Jonas Middleton, some of Damiano's more obscure stuff (I could go on and on - I think she mentions Rinse Dream and Cafe Flesh once as a throwaway oddity?); again, a broader appreciation of the form and its stranger corners could have filled in some gaps, but she was one of the pioneers so slack is plentiful.
franceswilde95's review
3.0
I love Linda Williams. This was kind of outdated, but at the same time, much needed still, to distinguish between anti-graphics and anti-censorship. She writes so concisely and produces a balanced argument. Love Chapter 7.
More...