Porn Sells (my Blog)

Ever since I posted about photoshopped playmate bunnies in December my blog's audience has increased tremendously. "Kill stretch marks" and "playmate bunnies" are now among the top key words with which people land on my blog. I'm very flattered obviously by all this extra attention, but since I'm not much of a porn expert and actually tend to think porn doesn't really exist, except as a joke people amuse themselves with like wearing hats or collecting stamps, that realization was fascinating to me.

Earlier this month, my fascination experienced a breakthrough when the week I spent in nyc was the week New York magazine's special Porn issue came out. The magazine had three stories on the topic - one on the recent 'arrival' of the web in the industry, a second on how this open to all free content is affecting teens and a third on how porn is decreasing men's libido.

From the first I discovered new astonishing websites and also that Montreal didn't only give Arcade Fire to the world but also the three geniuses behind Brazzers, pornhub, xtube and extrememetube (among many more excellent sites). Apparently they are the people behind the revival of the MILF in porn. Great you say? well they didn't stop at that achievement. They also made millions by making platforms for free porn - free to watch, free to post, free to make, free to stop, free to zap, free to collect, etc. The old porn millionaires hate them, but many thank them, like Liz, 30, who claims "I get excited making them [porn videos], posting them and seeing how people react to them." (p.88)

The second wasn't as exciting. Alex Morris talks to young girls who post images of themselves online, but have boyfriends who may or may not know about this but that anyways are their boyfriends only online because boys don't assume in real life what they are online or something. Basically Morris seems as confused as the 14 year olds he's interviewing except he doesn't post sexy images of himself online. Frankly I'm not convinced facebook has shattered teenage angst at its core: when I was 14, there was no facebook and boys would say things that they knew nothing about but had the terms for, all while looking at boobs, and then would call us to talk about homework. 

The third was about male porn watchers having libido decreases. That could be really bleak or not so much. When I was in Egypt a few 14 year old boys groped me and a friend in Alexandria. It was funny and punishable by Allah. There's three ways to read the situation: either they associated white females to the western porn they saw on xtube so they groped us, or they were frustrated that they couldn't wank off to real girls so they groped us, or they were just very confused teenagers so they groped us. Hopefully those kids marched to topple their government and got their cherry popped in the process and/or wank off to xtube videos guiltlessly. Maybe their libido is so low now they can actually go on date without the extra sister or female cousin to look out for his female date.

What is Levi's Up to When Simply Reproducing History is so Trendy?

Opening Ceremony is collaborating (again). With Levi's again. 

The video launched for the occasion is touching with a cake and a playful kiss, short skirts and cute accidents all happening in a little white-cube house, but the clothes seem really secondary. I get that Levi's is confused and needs the trendy power of OC to feel hip again, but I think that instead of producing a few pretty unnecessary items to be associated with Opening Ceremony, Levi's should have engaged in a now very common branding maneuver: look back (on its own) to reproduce some of their old collections. Like Mr.Oizo's Sta-Prest or their Twisted (greatest jeans of all time) collection which (unlike their past collaboration with OC which is on sale) would last more than a season:

Opening Ceremony (aw... adorable colour coordination, clothes?):

Sta-Prest (great ad, interesting outfit):

Twisted Collection (weird ad, great pants):

A Simple Concept

(Because if you aren't from North America it doesn't really matter) I watched the Grammys for the first time in my life yesterday. It was great particularly the screening of Katy Perry's wedding video, Justin Bieber's now more or less official affair with Usher and Rihanna's subtle play with fire imagery. As a reminder that simple things can be also really powerful here's a 'simple' music video with a 'simple' concept:

Walter's Idea, Google's Project and a few (elitist) thoughts

In the 1930s a man called Walter predicted that as technologies of reproduction would expand, the aura of art would wither. So much so that with everyone owning a version of the Mona Lisa, art (as a Bourgeois elitist enterprise) would not longer exist. Walter was a marxist with big ideals. And obviously in today's context of Picassos selling for billions and every cellphone including lenses, he could very easily be discarded as have been heavily mistaken. Yet he's cited by everyone everywhere, and it is not only his terms that are used and quoted but his actual motivations and beliefs - as Google has shown with their new Art Project.

It's a website where Google has scanned in very very high resolution amazingness with high tech machines greatness some important museums' collections and spaces. This is how the employees of Google describe their aspirations with the Art Project: "It started when a small group of us who were passionate about art got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible—not just to regular museum-goers or those fortunate to have great galleries on their doorsteps, but to a whole new set of people who might otherwise never get to see the real thing up close."

Isn't the trust of Walter and of Google employees in visual reproductive technology and imagery not only as enabling larger access to more people but also better access to more people stunning? And I don't disagree. I myself enjoyed going through the halls of the Prado (that I've never been there) - although got fed up quickly - and I've never seen a Van Gogh brushstroke quite like that before. But who cares? The people who don't have access to museums, those mentioned by Google's art loving employees? There's a cultural capital to quote Bourdieu in wanting to see art which I fear will exclude many. However in the cultural capital there is also a behavioral protocol in experiencing art, that the Art Project dissolves entirely. Indeed if one thing is for sure is that the Art Project versus the Museum experience is like facebook or porn versus stalking an ex-boyfriend's house or the actual sexual act - there's not pressure to perform a proper social behavior. Although, honestly museums have done a great job at making record entries, and adding restaurants, stores and lounge-like areas to make their spaces more accessible in recent years. So was it necessary? Some even complain about the dumbing down, the infotainment of contemporary museums and exhibitions.

Furthermore seeing art frontally isn't what art is all about, truthfully. Zooming on the skull of the Ambassadors is one thing, but unable to position oneself differently to ultimately see the perspectival trick that made the painting famous is another. Furthermore excluding all the other senses that are at play in the museum space and that are so fundamental to their 'artness' again seems like reducing art quite dramatically. The anthropologist Contance Classen might even say that the Art Project is the latest in Modernity's plan to make everything appear most real when rationally organized in an ocular-centric way (versus multi-sensorially experienced). For example, how about the clinical cleanliness of the Louvre, the decaying ceilings of the Hermitage (that clash with the Matisses so wonderfully), the over heating and noise of the MoMA and the Tate Modern's unique smell of humidity that are such fantastic ways to think about objects and their agency over people's actions.

This might sound elitst, but the Art Project seems to be far from a generous act but rather a marketing coup for Google to gain cultural (capital) credit.

The Smartest Thing - People Watching

This is an amazing 1979 ethnography (by William H. Whyte) with (pre-cellular phone) footage of urban spaces, aka it's a team that spent months people-watching and deconstructing social behavior to think of ways to build 'better' cities. It includes a bird lady, the art of chair ownership, girl watchers, people mimicking people and the power-dynamics of food.