Porn Stars, New Media and the Cyborg

The other day I was thinking about porn. Now these weren't the typical thoughts I usually have about porn but surprisingly were more geared toward our new media class. I began to think about how porn stars, male and female, alter their bodies. Similarly to the way in which Harraway talks about how the cyborg remakes themselves, porn stars remake themselves into the way that they wish to be.

Harraway states that cyborgs are "an ironic, political myth" rebuilding themselves in a way that is separate from the conventions (culturally, physically and ideologically) that make up current and existing culture. They live in a world that is not entrenched in the "myths" of a culture but are able to rise above those conventions and remake those ideologies and themselves in a way that best serves the current technological world.

In a sense, porn stars do the same thing. First, they are not encumbered by notions of gender and the ideologies that accompany them. The instances in which gender does necessitate a form, they fashion those roles into new experiences. Next, porn stars remake their own bodies. Of course many people have cosmetic surgery that are not in the porn industry, but what separates porn stars from other people is the length to which they sometimes take their alterations. They have taken the norm of what is considered to beautiful and sexual and created a hyper-real version of it. They are not striving to be the most beautiful, they are striving to reconstruct themselves and their image into a idealized version of themselves, one based upon their own ideals.

I do not know how much of the porn industry is based strictly upon the emergence of digital technology (or any specific technology for that matter, after all it is the oldest profession), but digital technology is going to continue to increase exponentially and so to, most likely will the porn industry. It will be interesting to see how the proliferation of porn via the internet will shape our culture. It will also be interesting to watch if the "freedom to come into your own" attitude, exemplified by many in the porn industry, will bleed into culture on broader scale.