Risk and Utopia

The utopian promise of porn is one of carnal intensity, sexual abundance, and pleasure. Building on Richard Dyer's discussion of the utopian aspects of entertainment, this article expands his conceptualization to contemporary pornography and the gay bareback subculture in particular. Structured as a dialogue between a gay bareback porn producer and a media studies scholar, it explores the sexual politics of barebacking, the notion of risk in gay sex, the mediation of intensity and sensation within pornography, the role of online porn distribution, and the uses of music in porn. These strands of dialogue are tied to a conceptualization of utopian sensibility within bareback pornography as an issue of transparency, community, abundance, energy, and intensity. The authors argue for the centrality of fleshiness and viscerality in pornography as well as the necessity to account for such carnal intensity, or resonance, in studies of the genre.