A very British carnival

Abstract

This article addresses the claim that pornography's theme is 'male power' and the recent counter-claim that pornography may embody transgressive potential. It pursues the apparent contradictions in these claims by focussing on a specific pornographic text, the British downmarket softcore magazine, Fiesta, and locating it in relation to other forms of sexual and non-sexual representation. In considering the text's relation to other 'mass' and 'low' texts, 'bawdy' and 'carnivalesque' sensibilities, it becomes possible to establish its particularly British and vulgar representation of sexuality which relies not only on its sexual content, but on a 'dirty style' in which notions of sexual propriety are self-consciously transgressed. The analysis of Fiesta plays particular attention to the role of women's bodies and a mode of 'dirty talk' as key elements in its representation of sexuality which illuminate the rather abstract claims made about pornography's structures of dominance and transgression.