Pornography is generally thought of and written about as a problem. It's something which has to be regulated and controlled, managed and administered, marginalised and, in many cases, excluded. Variously, pornography is figured as depraving and corrupting, dehumanising and depersonalising, offensive and degrading, and so on.

Laurance O'Toole's fascinating study of the genre comes as a refreshing change, therefore. A mix of reportage and critical analysis, O'Toole deconstructs popular notions about the form, suggesting that there's no simple pornographic object, but, rather, a variety of discourses around pornography:
In reality, porn is a multifaceted phenomenon...made more diffuse and complex by the way different people experience and interpret porn as viewers (p.xii).

One is led to the conclusion that what is generally defined and described as pornography is really only a composite effect, a consequence of all that's ever been said and written, not so much about something called pornography as about representations of sex and sexuality in the media in general, and cinema, television and video in particular. It's the traces of all these debates and arguments and controversies which constitute what we think of as pornography.

As such, it's not terribly surprising that for all O'Toole's attempts to redefine and re-describe porno as just another cultural commodity and artefact, a mode of production, distribution and consumption and a genre or narrative form with its own peculiar themes and motifs and codes and conventions, the book returns again and again to pornography as a regulatory discourse and practice, a system of classification and censorship, a way of sorting the good from the bad, the meaningful from the meaningless, the profound from the profane. For when all's said and done, pornography's a politico-social schema used to regulate and control our cultural life in general, and sexual behaviour and its representations in particular.

Perhaps, therefore, in attempting to deconstruct and subvert popular notions about porno, O'Toole should have concluded by thinking up a brand new term for the whole business.