The Power of the Image

3

Sexual disguise and cinema

Pornographic photographs are not alone in their preoccupation with sexual difference: other visual representations are also interested, in their own ways, in this question. Sexual difference is dealt with in a variety of ways across different media, genres and forms, is produced through diverse codes and conventions. All representations are coded: they do not merely reflect a world outside the bounds of the text, but mediate external discourses, as it were rewriting and reconstructing them. Representations – or readings available from them – are constituted by a series of discourses which circulate both within and beyond the text itself. Thus, for instance, the appeal pornography makes to distinctions between masculinity ...