TY - JOUR
T1 - From exceptionality to mundanity
T2 - exploring the everyday particularity of porn spectatorship
AU - Thorneycroft, Ryan
AU - Hanckel, Benjamin
AU - Smith, Erika K.
AU - Nicholas, Lucy
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - Pornography scholarship is often dominated by discourses surrounding its alleged risks to viewers. Approaching sex and porn through the lens of 'play' rather than 'drama', this article concentrates on the everyday particularity of porn viewing, where media-related practices/technologies afford possibilities between porn users and digital objects. Drawing upon focus groups/interviews with 17 young adult porn viewers (18-25 years) based in western Sydney, this research illustrates the routinised and experimental, immersive and affective, experiences pornography provides. Far from the 'sexually corrupt' discourses that dominate, the participants identified playful affordances"”boredom, distraction, curiosity, fun, exploration/experimentation, relaxation, stress relief and pleasure"”informing their everyday affective engagements with pornography. There is greater need to listen to young adults' everyday experiences with pornography and to examine the multiplicity of porn use. Moving from 'texts and effects' to 'experiences', and from 'drama' to 'play', identifies more nuanced and capacious elements to porn spectatorship unfettered by dominant moral panics.
AB - Pornography scholarship is often dominated by discourses surrounding its alleged risks to viewers. Approaching sex and porn through the lens of 'play' rather than 'drama', this article concentrates on the everyday particularity of porn viewing, where media-related practices/technologies afford possibilities between porn users and digital objects. Drawing upon focus groups/interviews with 17 young adult porn viewers (18-25 years) based in western Sydney, this research illustrates the routinised and experimental, immersive and affective, experiences pornography provides. Far from the 'sexually corrupt' discourses that dominate, the participants identified playful affordances"”boredom, distraction, curiosity, fun, exploration/experimentation, relaxation, stress relief and pleasure"”informing their everyday affective engagements with pornography. There is greater need to listen to young adults' everyday experiences with pornography and to examine the multiplicity of porn use. Moving from 'texts and effects' to 'experiences', and from 'drama' to 'play', identifies more nuanced and capacious elements to porn spectatorship unfettered by dominant moral panics.
U2 - 10.1177/1329878X251321859
DO - 10.1177/1329878X251321859
M3 - Article
SN - 1324-5325
JO - Media International Australia
JF - Media International Australia
ER -