Page 185 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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170 Now
While the previous discussion of Baudrillard’s obscene may appear
largely theoretical, practical illustrations of it are evident throughout
the mediascape. This creates social porn’s atmosphere of ubiquitous
explicitness. Pornography’s money shot can thus be seen as merely a
literal, physical climax of the mediascape’s more generally subli-
mated need to unveil the innermost workings of the camera’s target
whether that proves to be a person’s body or psyche. The rise of
social porn can be most readily witnessed in the ever more bizarre
format conflation and mainstreaming of Reality TV programmes
about the innately explicit adult movie industry (Porn: A Family
Business, My Bare Lady, Porn Valley, Porn Week, and so on). More
significantly, however, and building upon the previously cited expres-
sions of capitalist culture’s digestive enzymes, it is also evident in
areas as nominally benign as food preparation. The anthropologist
Claude Levi-Strauss used the terms ‘the raw’ and ‘the cooked’ to
describe the difference between the naturally existing world and that
of human culture. The notion is that the act of cooking represents a
symbolic transition from nature to human culture and to this extent,
food preparation occupies a privileged symbolic role within society.
The recent rise in popularity of TV shows based upon food
preparation (and the closely related phenomenon of celebrity chefs)
thus provides an interesting example of Baudrillard’s distinction
between aura-lacking semiotics and culturally grounded symbolism
and his theory’s critique of a widespread process of cultural
de-symbolization.
Empirical evidence of the theoretical concept of social porn is
provided by the practical market-based experience of Greg Rowland
Semiotics, a company who successfully combined the rise of porno-
graphic imagery with the idea of Pot Noodle as a guilty, private,
pseudo-onanistic activity. In their own words:
‘Greg Rowland Semiotics was asked to make Pot Noodle a more
iconic brand. By looking at the codes of the brand, sector and
product offer we devised a surprising positioning statement for
Pot Noodle: ‘‘Food Porn.’’ This directly inspired the legendary
‘‘Slag of All Snacks’’ communications that raised sales by 29%
7
when on air ’.
Empirical evidence of this close affinity between commodity culture
and pornography is further provided by Barbara Nitke, a stills
8
photographer from the pornography industry employed by the US
Food Network to work in a television genre she labels gastroporn. For
Nitke, both pornography and gastroporn share both an idealization
and degradation of essential human activities: ‘You watch porn
saying, Yes I could do that,’ explained Nitke. ‘You dream that you’re
there, but you know you couldn’t. The guy you’re watching on the
screen, his sex life is effortless. He didn’t have to negotiate,

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