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Power Bottom: Performativity in Commercial Gay Pornographic Video

This piece is a continuation of research into the iconography of gay porn that commenced with my doctorate. Whilst the academic study of pornography has gained a degree of validity over the course of the past 20 years, due in large part to the intervention of Linda Williams with the publication of Hard Core in 1989, there is a tendency to homogenise academic discourse on the subject. As theorists such as Laura Kipnis (1999) have argued, the result of this homogenisation serves to avoid engagement with the manifest content of the texts themselves and to overlook marginalized aspects of the form especially gay or lesbian pornography.

The emergence of the Power Bottom, epitomising an aggressive and predatory form of performativity that destabilises the active/passive dichotomy of sexual role in gay pornography, is a significant moment in the development of the genre. This new type of performance coincides with the emergence of the queer cultural and political agenda and an increased rejection of the politics of safer sex practices espoused (often problematically) in the gay pornographic text. In many ways the Power Bottom type predicts the even more problematic emergence of the barebacking phenomenon within the gay subculture, eroticised in the work of Treasure Island Video’s productions amongst others. This paper discusses and situates the emergence of the Power Bottom iconography and performativity and explores the extent to which the deployment of such a type can be regarded as a progressive or regressive phenomenon. The essay set the agenda for research during the audit, informing a monograph proposed for the post-REF period.