Bob Langjahr

Theology, Ethics and Human Sciences program

Chicago Theolgical Seminary

Why is it that in “heterosexual” pornography, regardless of the intended market of the fetishistic niche (i.e. anal, oral, blonde, other haircolor fetishes, small/big boobs, etc…,), final scenes conclude with a tight “money shot” of an erect, usually hairless, cock, the “cumming” on the body, usually the face of the female actor(s), which then spontaneously triggers a verbal reaction that one can suppose to signal her gratification, maybe even her orgasm (save rape base pornography)? There are a myriad of responses and readings that one could employ in answering this question. 

For the purposes of this paper, I will take a Butlerian psychoanalytic approach when reading these closing images of “straight” pornography. Within the psychoanalytic discourse, identity formation and one’s desire for the “other” are both “constructed” through loss. 

Freud’s Oedipal complex narrates how this loss of the opposite parent is transformed into heterosexual desire and gender identification. Judith Butler subverted this narrative in her ground-breaking text Gender Trouble by suggesting there must be a prior same-sex desire that is prohibited, which then initiates Freud’s narrative. However, unlike Freud’s Oedipal complex, Butler’s prior same-sex prohibition takes the form of loss that is unknown and consequently, unresolved, in the heterosexual psyche, the loss is melancholic. 

Taking as a starting assumption that these scenes are primarily marketed towards and viewed by men, it is my contention that the closing scenes of “straight” pornography echoes a loss within the male psyche. The erect penis takes the form of, though with intentional erasure from the scene, a same-sex desire that cannot be articulated. I argue in order for the “straight” male viewer to be aroused in this homo-erotic exchange, the female actor must be present. Here, I turn my attention to the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Sedgwick argues in Between Men, and Epistemology of the Closet, that male homosocial bonds structure all culture. This structuring can and does, only take place through the presence of women who deflect any overt homoerotism. With that in mind, I will argue that the presence of the female actor enables the male viewer to “safely” erotize the money shot; not as an act of heterosexuality, but rather as a melancholic erotic same-sex desire. Furthermore, the audible reaction, her moaning and calling for more, by the female actor is a verbal sign of acceptance/encouragement of this homoerotic exchange between two “straight” men, the actor and the viewer.

About Bob Langjahr