Currently obsessed with the part in Disco Elysium where Joyce refers to the fishing village as “pornographically poor.”
The word ‘porn’ and its derived terms have taken on a new meaning, referring to things that aren’t actually explicit pornography but share its defining qualities - given that philosophers and legal experts have been trying and failing to create a universally accepted definition of pornography, it’s rather presumptuous of me to throw my hat in the ring, but what was I talking about
right, the zen koan of porn-that-is-not-porn. The defining traits of ‘porn’ in this sense are:
1. A commitment to an aesthetic designed to arouse (in the literal sense), which takes priority over all other aspects of the narrative, and
2. The clear influence of a pervert, and
3. (optional) something that you feel you ought to be a little ashamed of enjoying
Take, for example, the ‘oh no, I’m stuck in the washing machine/dryer’ trope. It is (1) patently absurd - is it even physically possible to get stuck in any commercially available washing machine like that? That would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Let alone how casual everyone is being about a situation that would definitely qualify as sexual assault. But those concerns are superseded by pornography’s commitment to arousal, not just the physical act of sex but also (2) the sexualization of family and domesticity - in Japan the trope was first popularized as being stuck in a wall; when it came to America it became ‘stuck in washer/dryer,’ likely because it’s probably a lot cheaper than getting the construction permits to build a fuck-hole but it’s noteworthy that it’s specifically an appliance associated strongly with the ‘women’s work’ of cleaning clothes. It is also a very intimate chore: you might trust a relative stranger to clean your house or drive you somewhere but cleaning your clothes is generally reserved for spouses and family members. Cleaning one’s clothes involves contact with their underwear, the sin-eater of clothing which protects the outside world from exposure to our most impure (and therefore sacral) fluid, the fig leaf which represents the border between the human as an upright citizen of a society and the human as an ignorant, edenic beast of mere pleasures and passions.
…what the fuck was I talking about again
right, porn that is not porn. A common example of this is ‘food porn’ - it’s not just that a cooking anime will feature dazzling, lurid depictions of cooked food intended to arouse the viewer, it’s that, as a cooking anime goes further and further in the story, cooking becomes a bigger and bigger deal until you get the sense that the fate of nations will hinge on the quality of the protagonist’s beef bourgeoisie, or whatever it’s called. The commitment to the arousing aesthetics of food and cooking devours the narrative like a black hole.
Or ‘competence porn’ - medical shows that take place in towns that seem to be occupied exclusively by airplane crash victims and people with one-in-a-billion genetic diseases who are also the daughter of the local mob boss/senator/CEO, with hospitals that suffer drama-enhancing maintenance issues like power failures faster than you can say “no AHJ permits” - the rules of society and the laws of physics are warped as necessary just to provide more and more scenes of Doctor Hotshot doing impressive procedures.
Or, say, ‘savior porn’ - movies like The Blind Side or Radio, movies which appeal to, well, the desire for a suburban while woman to fix racism by domesticating an oafish but pure-hearted black teenage boy who plays sports. And now that narrative vacuum seems a little less benign. It’s honestly fine for a narrative to pay no attention to questions like “why is the entire world invested in this cooking tournament,” but it’s another thing entirely to sidestep questions like “you realize what this sounds like in the context of centuries of scientific racism used to justify slavery, right?”
Which brings me back to the fishing village in Disco Elysium which Joyce described as “pornographically poor,” that is, appearing poor not just in the sense of having poorly maintained buildings but of playing towards some consummate image of ‘poorness.’
It is at this point that it becomes essential to remember that in Disco Elysium, Joyce Messier is both a character with motivations and agency and also a representative of Wild Pines, a corporation which appears to be something like a cross between Amazon and the East India Company (ironic that she uses her narrative agency as a fleshed out character to become a vessel for a giant corporation!). In other words, the way she talks about the fishing village will be colored by her ideology of ultraliberalism (essentially neo-liberalism with a libertarian streak), and just as importantly, her desire to explain the world as seen by that ideology in a way that makes that ideology seem sympathetic and reasonable!
When Joyce Messier calls the fishing village “pornographically poor,” it’s a very loaded phrasing. That use of ‘pornographically’ carries a sense of unreality or illusion, a forced aesthetic being prioritized above all else. In other words, it implies that the apparent poverty of the fishing village should not be accepted at face value, that something about it must be a deliberate illusion designed to evoke feelings of pity and sympathy, which is a very neoliberal thing to say! “Those people don’t actually need help, they’re just trying to scam us by looking more poor than they actually are.”
2087
turnnoffyourmind
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