Erotic Analysis & Media.

Erotic analysis explores the array of resistive pleasures that audiences derive from media by examining the various sensuous, creative and transgressive ways in which persons use and interpret media. Resistance is defined as the symbolic and material practices that challenge cultural codes, rules and norms that neutralize social structure in a certain space and time. Now, resistance is based on five principles:

               Contextual (how, what when where and why; depends on prevailing norms or codes to resist)

               Tactical (must cease the opportunity; fleeting)

               Creative (takes advantages of available resources)

               Cumulative and Incremental (over time, slowly while incremental resistivness is motivated by personal benefits and desires)

Desire and pleasure hand in hand constitutes domination in one form or another. However, the term interpretive play is quite different. Interpretive Play is an active mode of reading media artefacts that ignores dominant interpretive codes in favor of pursuing one’s own desires. Erotic analysis encourages the understanding that neither text nor audience determines the other, but instead recognize the production of meaning through Open text (“writerly”) A text structured to call for active participation from audiences in the production of meaning. (e.g. Lost, Walking Dead) or Closed text (“readerly”) A text structured to elicit a particular, usually singular, response from audiences. e.g. a situation comedy; tv game show such as The Price is Right)

"Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even when it is shown. Basically it is helplessness." - Theodor W. Adorno.

Pleasure is everything in society. If it feels good, we want more. If it eases the burdens of our hard lives, we "need" it even more. Plaisir is a hegemonic pleasure. A type of pleasure that is both comfortable and comforting, but reproduces dominant culture and subjectivity. Dominant (hegemonic) is the gaze; form, genre and narrative. In contrast, Jouissance on the other hand is described to be the disruptive pleasure that is elusive and ecstatic pleasure that destabilizes culture and subjectivity. Jouissance creates a divide in dominant ideology. Resistive (counter-hegemonic): interpretive play; fandom, cultural production and participatory media.