Tumblr crosspost on trauma/misery porn

I read an interesting post this morning about the rhetoric around "trauma porn" and "misery porn" and so on. It's here.

I'm not reblogging directly because my response is fairly tangential, so I'm handling it in ye olde journal fandom way by making a separate post. But the short version of the other post is that "porn" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in those formulations in ways that reflect on cultural discourse around pornography, tragedy, exploitation, and spectacle. Also, there's something iffy about the way things like trauma or tragedy are conceptualized as intrinsically flawed and excessive if they don't directly further the core of the story or have a clear "point."

That's all true, though I think the "x porn" formulation extends faaar beyond dismissal of tragedy or misery or dark fiction. In these formulations, "porn" becomes a convenient shorthand for "this exploits [something, usually real] for the benefit and enjoyment of others, frequently others who are not otherwise involved with [thing]."

For instance, as someone with a disability, I'm accustomed to hearing criticism of "inspiration porn"—in which actual or fictionalized disabled people are exploited and reduced to hopeful inspiration for other, usually non-disabled people (in short, so others can feel good). You could say "inspiration exploitation" but ... meh. So it's important to be clear that this terminology is far from just disapproving of grimdark or whatnot.

That doesn't mean that "[x] porn" isn't worth interrogating as a catchphrase in terms of how it relates to cultural perspectives on pornography etc etc. Just that it's used in a much broader context than this particular issue.

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