Race Play in BDSM Porn: The Erotization of Oppression

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Media/Film

Abstract

This paper rereads the pornographic film Niggas’ Revenge (2001) seeking to grapple with ideas of pleasure that are tied to scenes of historical pain, and reveal ways that pleasure may be produced in such scenes. I focus on BDSM porn here because of its representation of “extreme sexuality” and its use of particular “scenes” such as a slave auction or holocaust scene to illicit erotic response from its viewers. One such scene within BDSM porn is that of “race play” i.e., the act of heightening sexual arousal through the use of racial epithets like nigger and/or racist fantasy scenarios such as slave auctions (Hernández 2004). Building on Weiss’s (2012) performative efficacy of circuits and Nash's (2004)racial iconography, this led to a very complicated analysis of the film bringing the author to two specific research questions at the center of this study: In what ways can pleasure be found in race play BDSM pornography? And what does this pleasure look like in a racist society that limits the boundaries of interracial desire? While some researchers have begun to grapple with these questions, few how been able to show the extent to which these dynamics take place and the limits of these exchanges. This paper aims to do so.

Author

• Jesus Gregorio Smith, Texas A&M University