Porn Studies

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Harder than fiction: the stylistic model of gonzo

pornography

Giovanna Maina & Federico Zecca

To cite this article: Giovanna Maina & Federico Zecca (2016) Harder than fiction: the stylistic
model of gonzo pornography, Porn Studies, 3:4, 337-350, DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2016.1241161

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2016.1241161

Published online: 14 Dec 2016.

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PORN STUDIES, 2016
VOL. 3, NO. 4, 337–350
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2016.1241161

Harder than fiction: the stylistic model of gonzo pornography

Giovanna Mainaa and Federico Zeccab
a
Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e Sociali, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Italy; bDipartimento di
Lettere lingue e arti. Italianistica e culture comparate, Università degli Studi di Bari ‘Aldo Moro’, Italy

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article reads gonzo pornography as a stylistic model, in order to Received 19 July 2016
go beyond current interpretations that see it as either a genre Accepted 22 September 2016
merely based on degrading sexual practices or a filmmaking form
KEYWORDS
primarily based on the active role of the camera. Drawing on Gonzo pornography; stylistic
theoretical notions derived from cinema and media studies, we model; sexual hyperbole;
analyze the stylistic model of gonzo according to four different cinéma vérité; factual
(albeit interrelated) dimensions: representative/performative; representation; feigning
technical/expressive; enunciative/communicative; and semio-
pragmatic. This integrated approach allows us to account for the
semiotic and aesthetic complexity of gonzo pornography, as well
as for its specificity.

A systemic approach: gonzo as a stylistic model

Over the last decade, gonzo has undeniably gained centrality in both social and academic
debates about pornography. On the one hand, porn critics (Pipe 2004; Weasels, n.d.) and
scholars (Biasin and Zecca 2009; Maddison 2009, 2012; Tibbals 2014; Alilunas 2016; Zecca,
forthcoming) have recently begun to acknowledge its importance as a technological, aes-
thetic, and economic turning point in the history of pornography. On the other, the resur-
gent anti-porn movement has denounced gonzo’s ‘sheer explicitness’ (Purcell 2012, 91)
and extreme ‘violence’ (Dines 2010, 183 and 252) in line with its its sexual panic, pro-cen-
sorship agenda. This centrality notwithstanding, gonzo is apparently affected by a
problem of definition. Alternately classified as a pornographic ‘genre’ (Taormino 2002,
100; Blue 2003, 60; Lust 2010, 105; Purcell 2012, 91), ‘sub-genre’ (Kleinhans 2001, 295;
Ziv 2015, 69), ‘form’ (Tyler 2010, 58), and ‘format’ (Hardy 2009, 8), or designated with
more vague terms such as ‘category’ (Dewey 2015, 394) and ‘kind of pornography’
(Keeble 2016, 144), gonzo does not seem to have yet found a stable discursive identity.
Even its defining characteristics appear to be somewhat uncertain. Many scholars and
commentators identify the absence of narrative and the accent on extreme sexual acts as
the main features of gonzo, thereby adopting a definition primarily based on content. One
of the first public statements to propose such interpretation was Martin Amis’s (2001)
article in The Guardian, in which he asserted that ‘Gonzo porno [as opposed to feature]
shows you people fucking without concerning itself with why they’re fucking. [ … ] The
new element is violence’.1 This line of thought has been entirely embraced by, among

CONTACT Federico Zecca federico.zecca@uniba.it

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
338 G. MAINA AND F. ZECCA

others, anti-porn authors, who consider gonzo to be a specific genre of adult film, empha-
sizing the lack of motivation of gonzo sex and its excessive quality in order to demonstrate
the harms of pornography as a whole. Robert Jensen, for instance, describes gonzo as
‘simply recorded sex, often in a private home or on some minimal set’ (2007, 55), charac-
terized by ‘an expanded repertoire’ (2007, 57) of rough and degrading acts, including
‘double penetration, double anal, double vag, and ass-to-mouth’ (2007, 58). In a similar
fashion, Gail Dines correlates gonzo’s cheapness and ‘brutality’ (2010, 135 and 14) with
the depiction of ‘body-punishing sex in which women are demeaned and debased’
(2010, xi).
However, other authors understand gonzo mainly as a filmmaking form, in this case
taking into account the ‘expression plane’ rather than the ‘content plane’ (Hjelmslev
[1943] 1969, 59). According to porn reviewer P. Weasels (n.d.), for example, ‘the purest
definition of gonzo is filmmaking in which the camerawork is a representation of the cam-
eraman’s senses, and in which the camera is an acknowledged participant in the scene’.
Such a reading is promoted by the adult industry itself, as is demonstrated by the descrip-
tion of gonzo included in the Review Guide of Adult Video News, one of its most influential
trade journals: ‘Porno vérité, in which performers acknowledge the presence of the
camera, frequently addressing viewers directly through it’ (2016, 78). Chauntelle Tibbals,
in her article for the inaugural issue of Porn Studies, sees the active role of the camera
during the recording of sex as the essential defining trait of gonzo porn; for the sociologist,
gonzo is ‘a content production form characterized by the presence of a “talking camera”,
wherein the person recording a particular sequence or scene is also playing an active, inte-
gral role in the on-screen action’ (2014, 138).2 In her attempt to move beyond the defi-
nition of gonzo as a non-narrative genre based on extreme sexual practices taken up
by anti-porn activists, Tibbals goes even further by refusing to apply the category of
gonzo to a specific set of products that share similar contents: since gonzo ‘is a filmmaking
form’, in fact, ‘it is possible for any and all adult content to include moments of gonzo, the
intensity of sex and/or genre notwithstanding’ (2014, 129).
Leaving aside the highly controversial political agenda underlying the anti-porn
discourse, both of these visions present some points of interest, as they outline two
characteristics of gonzo that seem worth investigating further: the (supposedly)
extreme and unmotivated nature of its sexual representation and the performativity of
its ‘personified’ camerawork. These definitions, however, seem to be at the same time
too (theoretically) narrow and too (analytically) broad: on the one hand, the semiotic
and aesthetic structure of gonzo is – as we will try to demonstrate – far too complex to
be reduced to one single formal or content element; on the other, by focusing on
general concepts such as rough sex and lack of narrative, or active camera and cinéma
vérité, both interpretations fail to account for the expressive and discursive specificity of
gonzo – that is, the sum of textual (and contextual) elements that differentiate it from
other pornographic forms that might share similar characteristics (for instance, amateur
porn or 1980s wall-to-wall pornography).
We suggest that gonzo pornography should be examined through a more systemic
approach that considers sexual content and expressive form in their mutual relationships
as well as in their connection with other external factors, such as production practices,
economic constraints, and so forth. As already suggested elsewhere (Biasin and Zecca
2009; Zecca, forthcoming), contemporary cinema and media studies’ explorations of
 PORN STUDIES 339

film style intended as a system offer the theoretical tools that might help us make sense of
all these elements.
This idea was originally developed by David Bordwell, although in a way that still privi-
leged the relationships between formal aspects over other kinds of relations (narrative,
thematic, etc.). For Bordwell, style ‘constitutes a system in that it [ … ] mobilizes com-
ponents – particular instantiations of film techniques – according to principles of organiz-
ation’ (1985, 50; emphasis added). Similarly, in his recent work on film style and mise en
scène, Adrian Martin considers style as primarily a formal matter, since ‘the basic inventory
of stylistic elements in cinema’ is essentially composed of ‘properties of the image [ … ];
properties of the soundtrack; acting performance; and editing’. However, Martin intro-
duces the notion of ‘aesthetic economy’ in order to account for the ways in which such
elements relate to each other and to ‘their narrative and thematic contexts’, as well as
to ‘their intended or actual effects on the cinema spectator’ (2014, 21).
Other authors (Quaresima 2007; Buccheri 2010) have developed an even more exten-
sive idea of film style, conceiving it as an ‘organic process that involves all the codes
and modes of signification’ (Buccheri 2010, 147),3 thereby not only including the visual
components of a film but also its narrative structure and content. According to Vincenzo
Buccheri, film style can be understood as a coherent system of ‘technical, grammatical,
narrative, and communicative options’, which tend to appear with certain regularity and
in stable patterns within specific groups of texts. The presence of recursive stylistic pat-
terns allows a viewer possessing the necessary knowledge to ‘immediately identify a
given text or fragment of text as belonging to a sufficiently distinguished corpus’ (2010,
36); for example, to the body of work of an auteur, or to a certain art movement, and
so on. In this sense, ‘a plurality of texts’ can be ascribed to a particular ‘stylistic model’, envi-
sioned as a set of linguistic, narrative, and communicative ‘choices that a director, a screen-
writer, or a cinematographer can make in a specific historical period’ (2010, 147) and
within a particular social environment.
As we shall see, the concept of ‘stylistic model’ offers a fruitful way to account for the
semiotic and aesthetic complexity of gonzo pornography, as well as for its specificities. To
define gonzo as a stylistic model means to consider it as an integrated assemblage of
recognizable textual features (related to both content and form) that interact depending
on cultural, social, and economic conditions. In this sense, the notion of stylistic model
allows us to exceed both the interpretation of gonzo as a filmmaking form exclusively
defined by formal aspects and the interpretation of gonzo as a genre only defined by
its content.4
Drawing on these ideas, we outline the stylistic model of gonzo. Developing previous
reflections (Biasin and Zecca 2009, 2010; Maina 2014; Zecca, forthcoming), we identify four
different (though interwoven) dimensions through which this model can be examined.
More specifically, the distinguishing elements of gonzo pornography can be summarized
in Table 1.
As constitutive parts of a theoretical model, these dimensions and elements are to be
considered the ‘ideal’ traits of a product classifiable as gonzo; that is to say, this model may
be actualized in different ways by different texts. In the following discussion we explore
the characteristics of gonzo, with a specific focus on its semio-pragmatic dimension.
However, it would be impossible to describe these characteristics without taking into con-
sideration gonzo’s historical, aesthetic, and pragmatic relations with feature, the stylistic
340 G. MAINA AND F. ZECCA

Table 1 The stylistic model of gonzo pornography.

Dimension Element
Representative/performative Fetishistic practices
Deconstructed disposition
Athletic hyperbole
Technical/expressive Hand-held camera
Continuous filming
Low production values
Enunciative/communicative Interpellation/subjective view
Acknowledged ‘participants’
Identification communication
Semio-pragmatic Monstrative attraction ‘Real’ enunciator
Spectacular space Feigned reality
Factual spectacle (Pseudo)Documentary

model ‘against’ which gonzo has modelled itself since its inception. Whereas feature devel-
ops the textual structure and the production practices of ‘golden age’ feature-length porn
films – diegetic space, fictional regime, narrative integration of the sexual numbers, trans-
parent enunciative instance, medium-to-high production values – gonzo seems to
‘update’ and transform the all-sex structure typical of 1980s video vignettes (Williams
1999; Zecca 2011; Alilunas 2016).

The sexual excesses of porno vérité

One only needs to watch a few products marketed as gonzo to notice that its forms of
sexual representation are characterized by a blatant disavowal of a specific ‘sexual tra-
dition’; that is, ‘a more or less coherent body of assumptions, beliefs, prejudices, rules,
[ … ] and forms of moral regulation’ (Weeks 2003, 6), which shapes the way western
society defines sexuality. In other words, gonzo seems to disrupt the ‘unitary model’
(2003, 76) of sexual conduct developed by sexology during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and based on highly ritualized cultural ‘narratives of good and bad behavior,
things to be done, things to be avoided’ (Gagnon 2004, 169).
Such disruption is inherent first of all in the very nature of the sexual acts depicted in
most gonzo materials. Practices such as ‘anal gaping’, ‘ass-to-mouth’, ‘anal creampie’,
‘throat fucking’, ‘cum swapping’, ‘bukkake’, ‘multiple swallows’, and so on, can be easily
read according to a traditional post-Freudian paradigm of fetishism and perversion
(Freud [1905] 1949). This means that these (mostly oral and anal) practices could be con-
sidered ‘perverse’ in that they either extend pleasure beyond ‘those regions of the body
conventionally designated as appropriate’ (i.e. genitals) or consist of ‘activities that may
be proper’ if ultimately leading to vaginal penetration but instead ‘remain as ends in them-
selves’ (Weeks 2003, 72). An extreme example of the ‘fetishistic’ nature of gonzo can be
found in series such as Feeding Frenzy (11 titles, Jordan 2002–2013) or No Cum Dodging
Allowed (13 titles, John 2003–2013) in which a female performer usually ends up drinking
sperm from a glass or cup into which a group of guys (generally more than three) has eja-
culated after a prolonged session of exclusively oral sex (fellatio). Moreover, some films
and series are centred on specific fetishes, frequently also alluded to in the titles – such
as, for instance, anal gaping in the series Gape Lovers (nine titles, Sin 2007–2015) or mul-
tiple facials in Baker’s Dozen (nine titles, Iron 2004–2006).
 PORN STUDIES 341

This disruption is not only related to the kind of practices shown. Another distinctive
feature of gonzo is its (partial) deconstruction of the ‘sexual scripts’ that ‘organize the
sequences of specific sexual acts’ (Gagnon 2004, 136) according to the linear model of
sexual intercourse (excitement–plateau–orgasm–resolution) codified by traditional sexol-
ogy (Masters and Johnson 1966). As Stephen Maddison observes, although most gonzo
scenes ‘retain the climatic significance of external male ejaculation, this is often preceded,
not with a linear progression [ … ], but with mechanized cycles of penetration from one
orifice to another’ (2009, 49). This characteristic can be demonstrated by ‘dissecting’ the
central part of the sex sequence in Elastic Assholes 5 (John 2007). Here, the two performers
Keeani Lei and Steve Holmes alternate: ‘cunnilingus/masturbation, fellatio (“deep throat”),
vaginal penetration, cunnilingus, fellatio (“deep throat”), vaginal penetration, anal pen-
etration, ass licking, anal penetration, fellatio (“ass-to-mouth”), vaginal penetration, anal
penetration/masturbation, fellatio (“ass-to-mouth”), anal penetration, cunnilingus, ass
licking, anal penetration’, exactly in this order (Zecca, forthcoming).
In other examples, the representation is not only disruptive of the orgasm cycle, but
also of the conventions of pornography itself. In the first episode of Down the Hatch 7
(John 2001), for instance, the ‘climatic significance’ of male ejaculation is totally under-
mined by a sort of circular structure. This episode shows female performer Catalina
engaged in a blowbang that ends in a multiple swallow (with Erik Everhard, Jon Dough,
Mr. Marcus, and Sergio); after a cut, the sequence moves into a gangbang where none
of the male performers ejaculates; after another cut, it returns again to a blowbang with
a final multiple swallow. In the third episode of the same film (Monica Sweetheart, Mike
John), the money shot loses its function as ‘closure’ to the sexual event because it
happens right in the middle of the scene, becoming just one of the elements in a seamless
flow of oral sex, vaginal and anal penetration, titfucking, and other sexual acts.
Thus, gonzo does not seem to represent sex according to cultural conventions of
‘acceptable’ sexual behaviour; on the contrary, it transforms the representation into a
‘transgressive’ (Kipnis 1998) and ‘hyperbolic’ (Biasin and Zecca 2009; Paasonen 2011) spec-
tacle. This excessive nature of gonzo sex is also enhanced by the exorbitantly extended
duration of the sex scenes, especially when compared with sex scenes in feature pro-
ductions: while the average length of a feature sex scene may be 15–20 minutes, in
gonzo we find scenes that range from 35 minutes to more than one hour – as in, for
instance, the scene between Mike Adriano and Remy LaCroix in Anal Dream Team
(Adriano 2013), which lasts exactly one hour and six minutes, more than 40 minutes of
which are devoted to anal activities.
The sexual performance thus becomes a sort of athletic tour de force, an extreme sport
in which (especially female) performers are constantly pushing their boundaries and
testing their physical resistance (Smith 2012). Such ‘athletic’ connotation is also thema-
tized by frequent paratextual and textual references: series such as Anal Trainer (10
titles, Darkko/Mann 2003–2005, New Sensations) or Anal Boot Camp (three titles, Jordan
2013–2015), for instance, directly refer to intense physical activities of some kind, even
from their titles; while a film like Anal Overdose 2 (Adriano 2012) goes as far as measuring
the dilation of the female performers’ anuses, as if they were engaged in a ‘real’ sports
competition. In this sense, gonzo seems to partially challenge the ‘pornographic genre’s
original desire for visual knowledge of pleasure’ (Williams 1999, 192), driving the represen-
tation towards a visual exploration of the limits of the sexual body.
342 G. MAINA AND F. ZECCA

Closely related to the nature of gonzo’s sexual representation is its technical and
expressive dimension. As also noted by other critics and commentators, gonzo seems
to avoid the continuity editing adopted by conventional fiction films that re-create a
coherent diegetic world. Instead, it privileges a ‘continuous filming’ technique inspired
by cinéma vérité or reality television, which is characterized by the extensive use of
hand-held camera and long-takes with very little post production. Anal Dream Team’s
one hour and six minute sequence mentioned earlier, for example, consists of only five
shots separated by ‘technical’ (rather than narratively significant) cuts. In this sequence
– and true of gonzo in general – camera movements are complex although extremely
fluid: the hand-held camera follows the sexual action in its entirety, from full shot to
extreme genital wide-angle close-ups; it explores the body of the female performer,
almost ‘touching’ it and lingering on particular details (body parts, bodily fluids, etc.); in
moments of particular intensity, it shifts from the recording of the sexual act to an
extreme close-up of her face, as if trying to ‘capture’ her reactions. Such enhanced
proximity of the camera to the performers’ skin, sexual organs, and fluids produces
extraordinarily haptic images that really seem to ‘encourage a more embodied and multi-
sensory relationship’ (Marks 2000, 172) between the image and the viewer.
Besides giving the impression of an uninterrupted and haptic flow of images, the use of
long takes also plays an important role in the strategies of signification enacted by gonzo,
in that it certifies the ‘authenticity’ of the sexual acts performed during the scenes, even
those considered most ‘extreme’. The absence of cuts in a scene involving, for instance,
ass-to-mouth or cum swallowing guarantees that the act has been actually performed,
without any profilmic or cinematographic ‘trucage’ (Metz [1972] 1977).
These technical and expressive characteristics of course entail a ‘light’ production struc-
ture (low production values, a small crew, and limited technical equipment). Because of its
non-fictional nature, gonzo does not require a detailed screenplay, particular casting
choices (performers are selected mainly for their physical characteristics and skills),5
acting abilities, or specifically designed settings. Moreover, because of gonzo’s cinéma
vérité quality, the sexual performance is shot without interruptions – usually with just
one hand-held camera, and without any retakes – which reduces the technical crew to
a minimum. Because there is almost no editing, post-production work is reduced as well.
Furthermore, gonzo productions mostly benefit from an economy of scale, because
they are often organized into series that share common content and formal features. All
of the movies in a series like POV Jugg Fuckers (six titles, Darkko 2008–2015) for instance,
employ the same expressive structure (point of view, or POV) and sexual fetish (breasts); as
a consequence, every instalment after the first one dramatically reduces the pre-pro-
duction efforts that are instead necessary in a feature – such as the conception of a
new idea, plot, and so forth.
At a different level of analysis, we can frame the formal articulation of gonzo as an inte-
gral part of its communicative strategies; that is, the processes through which it establishes
‘imaginary’ subject relations between enunciator and spectator (Stam, Burgoyne, and Flit-
terman-Lewis 1992, 159). For film studies, these subject relations are based on a set of con-
figurations of the gaze (Casetti 1998). In gonzo texts, there are at least two configurations
at play: interpellation and subjective view. Commonly used in film semiotics, the term
interpellation defines a scene ‘staged in order to recognize someone outside the text to
whom the film makes a direct appeal, “hailing” this “you” in the form of an aside’ (Branigan
 PORN STUDIES 343

2006, 51); in gonzo, interpellation is actualized by the female performer looking into the
camera and directly addressing the viewers during the sexual action.
Subjective view is based instead on the coincidence between what appears on screen
and what characters see, feel, learn, and imagine, so that viewers see, feel, learn, and
imagine through them (Casetti and di Chio 1990). Gonzo’s specific articulation of subjec-
tive view means that viewers see through the eyes of an observer placed within the
scene, rather than the eyes of a character within a narrative. In some cases, this observer
corresponds to the director/operator, hidden behind the camera although sometimes
participating in the scene with verbal instructions and comments. For example, at the
end of the first sequence of Nutz about Butts 2 (Streams 2015), James Deen ejaculates
on Ryan Conner’s face. As the camera moves closer, she looks directly into it, saying
‘Yummy!’. A voice from behind the camera (probably the director himself) asks ‘So,
today was a good day?’ and Conner replies, her face in extreme close up, ‘Today was
a good day’. However brief, this dialogue certificates and highlights the presence of
an observer who has recorded the sexual act from outside of the action.
Alternatively, in so-called POV – one of gonzo’s signature features – the observer cor-
responds to the male performer holding the camera while engaged in sexual intercourse.
In Tunnel Vision 3 (Jordan 2008) for instance, the camera is hand-held by performer Falco
Zito during the scene with Lela Star, with the effect of bringing the viewer right inside the
space of the representation, literally in the place of the performer – who in turns becomes
‘a disembodied penis’ (Biasin and Zecca 2009, 145). Thus, gonzo POV can be productively
compared with the notion of ‘first person shot’ as developed by Ruggero Eugeni for the
analysis of first-person videogames, (fake) found footage horror, go-pro extreme sports
video, and the like. Like those representations, gonzo POV exhibits ‘an embodied,
dynamic, and relational gaze; an intimate synergy between this very body-gaze and a
recording device; the idea that we are witnessing an alive experience’ (Eugeni 2015, 53;
emphasis added).
The conjunction of interpellation and subjective view produces a communication strat-
egy that we term ‘identification communication’, drawing on Casetti and di Chio (1990,
257): viewers look at the sex through the eyes of the operator/performer, while at the
same time being looked at by the female performer. This strategy brings the viewers
inside the scene, enhancing their engagement and their (virtual) performative interaction,
as if they actually were acknowledged participants in the action.

Monstrative attraction and feigned reality

The characteristics outlined so far significantly contribute to the formulation of the
complex semio-pragmatic regime of gonzo; that is, the modes through which gonzo
encourages the viewer to perform specific readings of its images (Odin [1983] 1995).
According to Roger Odin:
A film does not make sense per se: rather, the sender and the receiver ‘give sense’ to the text
through a series of procedures available to them in the social space in which they operate. This
means that there is no true communication between the author and the viewer: however, they
can either employ the same procedures (in this case, both of them making sense of the film in
the same way [ … ]) or implement different procedures (in this case, each creating their own
film). [ … ] It is possible to describe every textual production through the combination of a
344 G. MAINA AND F. ZECCA

limited number of modes of production of meaning and affects; each of them creates its own
specific experience, the sum of them all forms our communication competence. ([2000] 2004,
xxviii and 5; original emphasis)

Gonzo generally employs two different (and, at least in part, contradictory) modes,
thereby encouraging two different readings: a spectacle mode and a documentary
mode. On the one hand, there is in fact a ‘spectacle mode, in which the spectator perceives
the [sexual performance] as a spectacle’ (Buckland 2000, 88; emphasis added). Clearly,
gonzo refuses to integrate the sexual acts in a diegetic space – that is, a space that
allows the viewer to interpret the images on screen as a fictional universe (Odin [2000]
2004, 5). Instead, it creates a spectacular space ‘that presents itself as intentionally
aimed at delivering a show’, rather than at creating a plausible world ‘to believe in’
([2000] 2004, 8), as usually happens in fictional products. In this spectacular space, then,
the sexual performance is ‘shown’ as pure monstrative attraction (Gaudreault and
Gunning 2006; Gaudreault 2009) rather than ‘told’ as part of a storyline.6
At the same time, the expressive and enunciative features already analyzed –
continuous filming, hand-held camerawork, subjective view, and so forth – allow gonzo
to activate a documentary mode, ‘which Odin defines as informing the spectator of real
events’. This mode is characterized by ‘the real (as opposed to fictional) status of its enun-
ciator’ (Buckland 2000, 88): according to Odin, a documentary mode requires the construc-
tion of a ‘real enunciator that can be interrogated in terms of truth’ ([2000] 2004, 105). For
this reason, gonzo creates an ‘authentic effect’ (Odin [1983] 1995, 221), in that it
encourages viewers to read what they see as the factual recording of a sexual performance
– rather than as a fictional story.
Both modes always operate jointly in the production of meaning activated by gonzo.
However, we identify at least two macro semio-pragmatic configurations, depending on
the dominance of one mode over the other. We can see a basic example of a spectacle-
driven semio-pragmatic strategy in a film like Facialized 2 (Mason 2015). At the beginning
of the first episode, the female talent Mia Malkova is sitting in the backseat of a car, chat-
ting with the director Mason. Although we do not see Mason, we hear her talk at length
with Mia, asking her whether she has ever performed in a blowbang involving multiple
facials, whether she is nervous or excited about that, and so on. The sexual action starts
abruptly after a quick dissolve; Malkova exclusively engages in intense oral action with
five guys, who end up ejaculating together on her face; meanwhile she is masturbating
with the aid of a Magic Wand. When the sex scene is over, Malkova starts talking again
with Mason, commenting on her impressions and laughing about her face covered in
semen.
This episode activates a spectacle mode in that it constructs an absolutely non-diegetic
space (a nondescript room), in which sexual acts are ‘shown’ without any narrative justifi-
cation whatsoever. In other words, here gonzo presents the sexual performance as a
hyperbolic attraction that is expressively staged in order to be read as such by the
viewer. Nevertheless, the two dialogue scenes we have briefly described seem to certify
the documentary truth of what we see, since they frame it as an actual experience,
lived by an actual person, with her own actual emotions, and so forth. This ‘added
value’ encourages the viewer to interrogate the text in terms of authenticity as well: we
can read the (sexual) scene not only as spectacular, but also as factual.
 PORN STUDIES 345

We could define such mixed configuration as factual spectacle. This configuration

especially characterizes those films in which either a director-operator or a performer-
operator records the sexual scene with a hand-held camera, in a nondescript space (gen-
erally a villa), and according to a conventional structure – the first sequence with a ‘tease’
or ‘interview’, the second sequence with sex. These materials represent the real industrial
backbone of contemporary gonzo in terms of volume of production; moreover, this model
is often the privileged choice of award-winning directors such as Mason, Mike Adriano,
and Jules Jordan.
Other typologies of gonzo films, although still stressing the spectacular nature of the
sex shown, present themselves primarily as documentation of actual events, happening
‘for real’ outside the domain of representation – that is, sexual acts, no matter how hyper-
bolic, which could have happened even if there was no one there to record them. In this
sense, gonzo can be considered as the feigned documentation of a staged reality. We
propose to define this semio-pragmatic configuration as (pseudo)documentary.
To better understand this point, we draw on the notion of ‘feigning’ that François Jost
(2003) has adapted to the study of reality genres from the original concept developed by
Käte Hamburger ([1973] 1993) within the field of literary theory. According to Jost, ‘feign-
ing constructs a certain discourse as authentic when it is not, acts as if’ (2014, 2; original
emphasis). More precisely, Jost identifies three different typologies of feigning: profilmic
feigning, based on the ‘empirical’ presence of the cameraman within the scene, as an
‘ocular witness’ who sees and records the events; narrative feigning, based on the pres-
ence of a ‘first-person protagonist or spectator of the action’ who lives and ‘tells’ the
events (1995, 168); and enunciative feigning, which mimics (and forges) the form of docu-
mentary genres ‘through a particular use of audio-visual rhetoric’ (1995, 171). We argue
that all three of these typologies of feigning operate in some gonzo productions, often
forming stratified relations within the same film.
In this sense, then, in a (pseudo)documentary regime viewers are encouraged to read
an otherwise staged performance as a bona fide sexual encounter, although they
obviously know they are watching a porno film. A perfect example of this semio-prag-
matic strategy can be found in the early work of gonzo pioneer John Stagliano. The
Vegas sequence of Buttman’s Wet Dream (1994), for instance, opens with Stagliano as
Buttman walking the streets of Las Vegas with his shaky hand-held camera. As he
spots a beautiful girl (Anna Malle), he starts following her, zooming in towards her back-
side, and commenting to himself on her beauty. As the sequence proceeds, he addresses
her, politely asking some questions, although still exploring her body with the camera
and zooming on her breasts and ‘cameltoe’. After she excuses herself and leaves, he
tails her into her hotel and then sneaks into her room; once inside, he hides and observes
her as she puts on a very sexy outfit; pretty soon she finds out he is in the room and
almost immediately he talks her into having sex with him. In the brief sex scene that
follows, Stagliano performs while still holding the camera; the sex is shot in point of
view, often directing the camera towards a mirror, in which we can see Stagliano’s
body reflected in its entirety. Shortly into the scene, they are interrupted by the arrival
of two male strippers (Alex Sanders and Jay Ashley), supposedly to stage a private show
for the girl. In a few moments, the strip show turns into a threesome (Malle, Sanders,
Ashley). Different sexual acts (oral sex, vaginal and anal penetration, double penetration)
in a variety of positions follow, ending with a double ejaculation on the girl’s face.
346 G. MAINA AND F. ZECCA

Stagliano is still holding the camera, recording the sex without verbal or physical inter-
action with the trio. Anna from time to time looks at him directly and smiles, reminding
us of his presence. At the end of the sexual performance, Stagliano starts talking again,
cheerfully commenting on what he has just seen, and laughing: ‘Wow, it’s a nice little
afternoon here in Las Vegas … ’.
As we see from this description, the whole sequence is characterized by a rhetorical
strategy that mimics specific non-fiction, reality-based forms (such as reportage, travelo-
gue, and diary film). In other words, this sequence presents itself as a feigned ‘lived’ experi-
ence through the (deceptive) employment of particular expressive and narrative codes:
shaky camera and zooms, natural lighting, unproduced environments, off-screen com-
ments, unexpected encounters, explicit geographic placement, and so forth. Such codes
create the overall impression of an immediate and ‘raw’ recording of real events happen-
ing in a specific here and now, thereby transforming what is indeed an out and out indus-
trial product (a pornographic film by a famous auteur) into a form of authentic filmic
memoir. This sequence is therefore constructed as if Stagliano-Buttman was recording
all those ‘actual’ events by chance and for the first time, disguising the necessarily
staged nature of the objects, places, and persons he sees through the eyes of his
camera and wants us to read as real: such an operation ‘consists in making a more or
less intentional arrangement of reality, i.e. the profilmic, look like a state of the afilmic
world’ (Jost 2014, 4; emphasis added).
During the video era, this (pseudo)documentary configuration was the dominant
semio-pragmatic strategy of gonzo, although not always reaching the complex formation
and the ‘travelogue’ quality of Stagliano’s early Buttman series. Other directors, such as
Rodney Moore or the father of British gonzo, Ben Dover, employed less elaborate (and
sometimes more self-parodic) structures, usually involving a man with a camera walking
(or driving) the streets of several American cities and documenting his ‘raw’ encounters
with beautiful strangers – or, at least, viewers were encouraged to apply this kind of
reading by convention.
With the advent of the digital revolution, this (pseudo)documentary configuration has
been partly superseded by what we have described above as factual spectacle; however, it
has been rearticulated in other gonzo forms that employ a conventional narrative frame in
which a woman (or more women) is lured into having sex in exchange for something
(money, a modelling job, a taxi ride, etc.), generally finding out that she will never
receive what was promised. Websites such as Bangbus, or those belonging to the FAKE-
hub.com network,7 employ technical and enunciative strategies clearly derived from an
impoverishment of Stagliano’s model: that is, the presence of an observer-witness, thema-
tization of the camera, ‘random’ encounters with ‘real’ girls (sometimes literally) picked up
from the street, presence of a first-person protagonist that tells the story (the fake agent,
the fake cop, the guys in the van), mimicry of expressive and enunciative features typical of
the reality show, and so on.

Conclusions and new directions

In this article, we defined gonzo pornography as a stylistic model; that is, as a semiotic and
aesthetic (textual) system, in which a particular representation of sex informs (and is
informed by) expressive features and modes of production of meaning. Taking an
 PORN STUDIES 347

integrated approach enables consideration of different interrelated dimensions – sexual

content, filmmaking techniques, enunciative strategies, semio-pragmatic modes – in
order to highlight the complexity of gonzo, as well as its specificity; thus going beyond
other interpretations that reduce it to either a genre based on degrading sexual practices
or a filmmaking form based on an active and acknowledged camera.
Of course, the study of gonzo as a stylistic model could be developed in several possible
directions, first of all taking into account the different creative choices, production prac-
tices, and industrial positions of specific studios, authors, and performers. Is there, for
example, a signature Evil Angel gonzo? What are the differences between Jules Jordan
Video and Elegant Angel? Or between directors such as Mason and Manuel Ferrara? Or
between performers such as Belladonna and Asa Akira?
A second direction might concern the study of the economic, legal, and social contexts
of gonzo. In other words, what is the relation between the textual systems of gonzo por-
nography and its material conditions of production and consumption? To what extent, for
instance, do the industrial constraints of gonzo (budgetary requirements, marketing strat-
egies, etc.) influence its thematic, expressive, enunciative, and semio-pragmatic configur-
ations? Are there any substantial budget differences among products? Do these
differences influence the representation? How might governmental (and more generally
social) regulations influence, for instance, the depiction of specific sexual acts? In what
ways is gonzo permeable to the influence of specific market niches or pornographic cat-
egories (BDSM and amateur for instance)? Is there an ‘alternative’ gonzo?
Lastly, another interesting area of inquiry would be to trace the historical and geo-
graphical variants of the model: how can we relate this (synchronic) model with the (dia-
chronic) development of the history of pornography? How has gonzo been influenced by
technological evolutions? What are the differences between the video era and contempor-
ary digital landscape in terms of expressive choices? Is it possible to circumscribe a set of
contents that might define gonzo in terms of nationality? What are the transnational cir-
culations of imageries, repertoires, techniques, products, directors, and stars?
Further research needs to be done in order to answer such questions. However, we
believe that considering the stylistic model of gonzo both as a coherent and hetero-
geneous system, and at the same time permeable and ‘resilient’ – in that it maintains
its coherence notwithstanding potential interpolations – could be a good way to start.

Notes
1. Whereas features ‘are sex films with some sort of claim to the ordinary narrative: characteris-
ation, storyline’ (Amis 2001). For the dialectics between gonzo and feature, see also Zecca
(forthcoming).
2. Although we find the idea of a ‘talking camera’ compelling, such expression runs the risk of
being ambiguous, in that it does not correspond to any particular concept employed in
either filmmaking practice or film analysis. The use of the term ‘talking’, in fact, might
reduce the enunciative articulation of gonzo to the verbal/physical exchange between the
(subject behind the) camera and the (subjects within the) scene. As we will try to demonstrate
in this article, gonzo derives its complex construction of subject relations between the camera,
the scene and the viewer from documentary and other reality-based genres. In order to
account for such complexity, we think that other elements should be considered besides
the actual interaction between the off-screen and the on-screen.
3. All texts in Italian and French were translated by the authors, unless specified otherwise.
348 G. MAINA AND F. ZECCA

4. The relation between genre and style, however, is more complex than this. Our theoretical
perspective understands styles as somewhat ‘broader’ than genres: as Leonardo Quaresima
states, styles ‘cut across’ genres (2007, 537), in that the former include and shape the latter,
remodelling their semantic and syntactic (Altman 1999) properties in various ways. In other
words, genres can be seen as clusters of components – thematic patterns, narrative strat-
egies, aesthetic choices, and so forth – that aggregate within the broader dimension of
style. Our proposal here, then, is to consider gonzo as something more than a genre:
being a stylistic model, it subsumes different genres and sub-genres (based on specific
sexual acts, body types, ethnicity, age, etc.), informing them with its own distinctive
characteristics.
5. While in feature they also need to fulfill other requirements related to the role they are asked
to play (a specific physical appearance, ‘psychological’ characterization, etc.).
6. André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning use the term ‘monstrative attraction’ in relation to early
cinema, in order to stress that its basic components have more to do with visual power rather
than with a narrative appeal. See also Colón Semenza and Hasenfratz (2015, 31).
7. Fake Taxi, Fake Cop, Fake Agent, Fake Hospital, Public Agent, Fake Agent UK, Female Agent.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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