Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible, Expanded Edition

by Linda Williams

Book Overview

In this now-classic study, Linda Williams moves beyond the impasse of the anti-porn/anti-censorship debate to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does-as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic form, and as part of contemporary discourse on sexuality. For the 1999 edition, Williams has written a new preface and a new epilogue, "On/scenities," illustrated with 25 photographs. She has also added a supplementary bibliography.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520219430
• ISBN13: 9780520219434
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Interesting

This is an easy to read, comprehensive analysis of visual pornography. Williams is thorough and openminded, and clearly shows that this isn't a homogenous and stereotypical genre. On the contrary, she maintains that all trends visible in other types of movies exist in pornography as well. An interesting read.

Review of Harcore

This book changed my my mind about I saw pornography. This is a smart and sexy book that dispels many ideas we have about pornography and how the feminist anti-pron rhetoric not only endangers the First Amendment with their calls for taking this protection from porn, but retains the patriarchal concept of female purity that promotes a sexual double standard. This books opens a dialogue and forum for women to talk about pornography. I only wished I hadn't read it ten years earlier, because my copy doesn't have pictures.

Unfettered Academic Insight

I never thought that this would happen to me...but I must share my pleasure with "Hard Core" in an online review. The author takes up a discursive thread generally reserved to the letter columns of Adult Entertainment mags, and develops a unique anaylsis that provides the reader unfettered access into the manifold issues of power given in the presentation of human congress onscreen. If Max Weber had written on porn, this would have been his work!

Young Porn Fan in Oklahoma

I am only 16 and haven't really seen much pornography, but after reading Linda Williams book I am enthusiastic about learning more. She writes about pornography in a way that is clear and easy to understand, even for a high school student like me. I learned alot about how complicated a porno movie can be and the pictures were great!

The Best Book on Pornography I Have Ever Read

Linda Williams gives a scintillating evaluation of the politics of porn. Her detailed and insightful analysis goes beyond mere recitation of plot points and totaling of body parts to an in-depth engagement with the semiotics of pornographized couplings. The pictures were really helpful in conveying the cultural work done by this underevaluated art form. Porn-tastic!