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Acknowledgments

First and foremost: for all the patient help supervising, and absolutely invaluable arguing, Id like to thank Dan North, who has (in)directly shaped most of my main argument. Hopefully the thesis finally works. Extra thanks to James Lyons personal tutor extraordinaire, frequently generous marker, and with whom Ive had many a useful chat leading up to the punchline provided here (I know its crazy, but porn.) and Sin Harris, for more fantastic advice and for labelling me The Porn Guy, which is already proving hard to shake off. Another thanks to the University of Exeter and its library; well-stocked in Surrealism if not porn. And many thanks to the night porters, who are always great to talk to and have been just as good to me at 4am as a Red Bull. Its also worth acknowledging, of course, the English and Film department, whose general open-mindedness has only been an encouragement not only in exploring this topic, but also for the past three years of study. Infinite thanks to my friends Chris Davies, Dan Orton, Mike Evans, Sam Osman, Tom Bond, David Brake and Katherine Hyland who have proofed, advised, questioned, acted interested and been generally, genuinely supportive. Cheers to my parents, who have been similarly helpful throughout the researching and writing of this; and finally to Jessamy Queree, the perfect embodiment of a wannabe Surrealists wildest fantasies somehow turning up a fully-formed reality.

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Introduction

Surrealism, from its 1924 inception to its much-disputed collapse sometime in the 1940s, always remained an underground theory. Though some artists enjoyed mainstream popularity such as the ubiquitous Dal such playful populism under-represented the true objective. True Surrealists, to be sure, were labelled anarchists, cultural dissidents; while contemporaneously acknowledged, their attempts at transforming everyday life were treated by the masses as empty avant-gardism. This essay will examine Surrealist influence on another, contemporary, form which has remained in its perceived obscenity just below the cultural radar: internet pornography. I will prove that this precarious status in the public eye, as well as the sexual attitudes both forms propagate, contribute to a sense that Porn 2.0 a user-friendly cybersex-community is inadvertently a strong continuation of the Surrealist cause. The Surrealist aim was always a morality of revolt, a term coined, tellingly, by reluctant participator Georges Bataille (53). Despite the brawls and fall-outs of the revolving Group members, it is this singular agreed-upon ideal that permeates Surrealism, and the movements works from Andr Bretons inaugural Manifesto of Surrealism through to the works of wayward members such as Paul luard, Louis Aragon and Luis Buuel, to name but a few. In this essay I will show that the Surrealist revolt is highly sexualised, evaluating the theory as essentially pornographic. The Surrealists, emphatically intending to transform life itself, believed Imagination alone offers the same intimation of what can be, and this is enough to remove to some slight degree the terrible injunction (Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism 243). J.H. Matthews explains that Surrealism makes an impassioned appeal to those impulses in man which come from a predisposition to cast off the restrictions of the rational universe (6). I will thus show that the Freudian-Surrealist harnessing of the
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untrained, unconscious mind is resolved frequently into a preoccupation with specifically sexual drives and desires. The releasing of such desires creates what Breton termed surreality, where waking and unconscious life are merged, dissolving the classic real/imagined divide and freeing humankind from socially-constructed norms. This angle is essentially a more deliberate, politically-driven, version of the inherent nature of pornography something which Linda Williams terms on/scenity. As I shall expand later, both forms, despite differing intentions, are concerned with bringing the dirty secrets of human sexuality onto a more public forum. The obscene is brought on scene, as it were. Once we also consider notions of amateur content, the message that internet pornography sends seems highly Surreal: societys surface squeamishness is actually an arbitrary even hypocritical form of power-control, suppressing the true human drives nestled in the id. Affront is a front; professional porn acknowledges this in its business intentions, and amateur, user-generated uploading explicitly proves it. Explicit sexuality may be kept just off-scene, but it is still a wide concern. The Surrealist message, for all its psychological depth-plumbing, is remarkably simplistic: society is driven by desire, and must acknowledge this to attain Marvellous freedom both personal and social (Breton Manifesto of Surrealism 244). When applying this notion to modern mainstream works which otherwise gesture towards the theory, one notices that much so-called Surrealism is actually reticent in its erotic imagination, stopping short of the total revolt of the mind that characterises true Surrealist activity (ibid 247). To echo Michael Richardson, current popular misunderstandings of Surrealism would define it as merely strange, Daliesque for instance, rather than seriously revolutionary (2). I will explore this problem later, arguing against the presence of Surrealism in prominent current culture. The issue reinforces the notion that internet-based pornography is the only true home of Surrealism in the 21st Century, uniquely straddling as mentioned the popular
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mainstream and the murky underground, all the while engaging in an entirely explicit sexuality found nowhere else. If this is indeed the case, then what is the point? Pornography in general is clearly popular: Hollywood makes approximately 400 films a year, while the porn industry now makes from 10,000 to 11,000. [] Pornography revenues total between 10 and 14 billion dollars annually. This figure, as New York Times critic Frank Rich has noted, is not only bigger than movie revenues; it is bigger than professional football, basketball, and baseball put together (L. Williams, Porn Studies 1-2). More specifically, the internet boasts a $4.9 billion revenue, with roughly 30,000 people viewing explicit sexual content per second; 25% of all search engine requests are pornography related, literally making sex the number one concern (Tech Addiction). Of the two hundred most-visited sites, eight are explicitly pornographic; seven of these are tube hosting sites, meaning even more little-known pages are being visited through these charting ones (MostPopularWebsites). Such numbers mean one thing: if internet pornography is mirroring or channelling Surrealist values, then its impressive cultural pervasion and its much-discussed cultural perversion is fast proving the theorists assumptions correct more thoroughly than they could ever dream. To begin, I will examine Surrealism as it originally was, and was intended to mean. I will show what I have already mentioned: that Surrealist theorys main concern is to expose the latent longings of humankind and so create a sort of personal freedom. I will move onto questioning whether Surrealism, contemporarily, actually exists in its traditional sense. As I will show, truer forms of Surrealism exist but do not possess enough common cultural currency to accomplish any goals, while those works that do engage the mainstream fail to
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satisfactorily address a blended surreality, content only to perpetuate anti-Surreal reality/dream divisions (Richardson 169). Finally, I will discuss internet porn as an inadvertent manifestation of pure Surrealism. While apparently contentious, due to porns more literal aesthetic and lack of political motivation, I will contend that cyberspace, in many ways, functions as a physicalized collective id, the explicit works it contains merely the latent meanings behind dream-content. Sex is always, no matter what else is on display, bubbling under the surface, ready to appear in a dubious pop-up or in an otherwise innocuous game of ChatRoulette. Furthermore, if internet porn in general lacks a political dimension, this only serves to make it a purer representation of the Surrealist goal a matter I will clarify later. Only by being completely free of all such concerns can a pure state of Surrealist transgression be attained. Pornographies, in their intended status as total entertainment, are in fact therefore the perfect manner in which to present the Surreal. Through this argument, I aim to prove that Surrealist theories are not only still relevant, but are actually, more than ever, being gradually confirmed.

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1. Surrealism and its Pornographic Imagination

Andr Breton founded Surrealism in 1924, as a successor to the anarchic Dada movement whilst borrowing from Bretons other loves: Freud, Symbolism and Marxism. In this first chapter I will explore Surrealisms central engagement with personal desire specifically manifesting latent sexuality. I shall then discuss Surrealist sexual representations, arguing that for these artists, conventional erotica is insufficient; rather, sexuality in all its purity must be presented hyperbolically. The erotic becomes, through Surrealism, pornographic. Finally, in anticipation of my analysis of filmed internet pornography in chapter three, I will briefly examine the Surrealists cinematic theory in relation to sexuality and the moving image. Surrealism, as a theoretical body, is best defined through Bretons 1924 and 1930 Manifestoes. The former outlines the movements general remit while the latter places these aims in a more explicitly political context allowing a deeper understanding of their revolutionary intent. Surrealism, simply, is a total revolt of the mind, working towards the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, [] into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality (Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism 247). The objective is clear: using a cursory knowledge of Freud and the reality principle, the Surrealists could utilise the latent content of the unconscious to reveal inner truths of the self and, by extension, the reality of society. Dreams are fluid, illogical; society is structured, conventional. Breton seethes: forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices (244). Revealing the surreality of life could be a catalyst for Marxist revolution; whilst destabilising societys conventional, conscious reality initial violence would resolve into utopian freedom. Mary Ann Caws has explained it thus: surrealism regards itself as a revolution more profound than communism because it claims to affect not only the material universe but
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also the universe of the mind (39). In the Surrealist revolt, the reality/fantasy divide is collapsed, allowing for total widespread freedom. It is to this basic ideal that all revolving members of the Surrealist Group adhered, striving for a representation of the unconscious that bled into and could alter the experience of everyday life. The Second Manifesto accentuated Bretons affinities with Communism, with which Surrealism shared an uneasy relationship. Many of the Group were proud card-carriers, but believed their revolution was more all-encompassing; in turn, Communist intellectuals such as Michel Marty were deeply shocked by Surrealist views on sexual liberty and sadism (Josephson 336). Hans Richter suggests that Surrealism was a socio-political programme, opposed to anarchism as embodied by Dada, the more playful anti-art movement which counted several future Surrealists as members (176). The Dadaists were contrarians without the explicitly affirmative aim later expounded by Surrealism.1 They had used automatic techniques, emphasising random chance, but to create and present mere chaos rather than the Surrealist liberation for the people. Where Dada was rooted in a psychology that devalued all ethical and erotic values, Surrealism proposed a revolutionary model based in the affirmative world of Desire, eroticism and love the Marvellous (Waldberg 13; Richter Dada 36). The Surrealists view of Desire differed from Dada in two ways: firstly, Bretons notion of love and the Marvellous as a general attitude was immediately more positive; secondly, where the Dadaists saw only a void in chaos the Surrealists regarded Desire as a governing principle present in everyday life, creating a state of confusion between the real and the marvellous (Aragon 204). Breton, Aragon and Soupault were all given space in Tzaras
1

Dada was, in its 1916 inception, defined by the two ideological poles of the nihilist Tristan Tzara and the idealist Hugo Ball. Ball soon renounced Dada activity to become a hermitic spiritualist; Dada, from then on, became less playful and more dangerously anarchic. Tzara, the new leader, later ran into conflict with the Surrealist movement, finding in Breton a man who echoed Balls opposition to nihilism but with higher capacity to complain. In Bretons attacks on Tzara we clearly see the Surrealist drive against meaninglessness.

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Twenty-Three Manifestos of the Dada Movement (1920), which they used to make outrageous pronouncements such as No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians [] no more anything, nothing, nothing, nothing which entirely contradict their later preoccupations (167). Aragons words here particularly clash with his later activism on behalf of the Surrealist revolution and later the French resistance. As Dadaists, the writers were posturing pseudo-anarchists; as Surrealists, they found in the staid hypocrisies of life an opportunity for Marvellous change, bringing unconscious, unbound natural Desire into a society which would suppress it. To examine key works of Surrealism is to discover that Desire is indeed a governing motif. When revealed, and conciliated with lived existence into surreality, the Surrealist revolution can be accomplished: the Surreal world (actually the real one), according to these thinkers, is one entirely driven by sexuality. The (nude) female body is a constant motif throughout Surrealist works from Breton and luards sexualised Virgin Mary in The Immaculate Conception to Dals Yellow Manifesto. Jacques Prverts poetry speaks to the conventionally unacknowledged normalcy of sexuality: The zip slid over the base of your spine [] And your dress as it fell on the polished woodblock floor / made no more sound / than an orange peel falling on a carpet (768). Bretons own poetry, moreover, creates a fascinating world of nudes, embraces, eyes, breaths, beds and sex, as well as more fetishistic totems such as linen and blindfolds. His Vigilance presents a stream of evergrowing nudity as I hear human linen being torn like a great leaf [] there remains of them only a piece of perfumed lace A scallop of lace that has the perfect shape of a breast

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I touch only the heart of things now I hold the thread (65). Vigilance begins with Breton setting his bedroom on fire, and ends with the passage above. The piece systematically strips down everything associated with sex: from destroying the bedroom to get to the lovers, through stripping their clothes to get to their skin, before finally, as above, tearing the skin the human linen finding at last the essence, the perfumed lace and heart of things, the pure sexual drive. It is a frenzied and virile demonstration of sexuality as ever, politically-driven and therefore speaking to an important Surrealist mode of sexual representation: subversion of academic erotica. For the Surrealists, sensual erotic art is mere sublimation a process identified by Freud as transforming raw sexual drives into socially approved activities, which is in essence repressive and therefore opposes the Surrealist goal (Belsey 93).2 In an echo of Gustave Courbets 1866 attack on the Paris Salon, The Origin of the World (fig. 1), the Surrealists aimed to bring true, grotesque sexuality to the fore in a widespread transgressive act of pornographising the sober erotic. This is shown literally in Max Ernsts collage-novel Une semaine de bont, which takes ordinary printed pictures and reconfigures them into wild scenes of sexual and sadistic fantasy. For Robert Hughes, this collection is much like pornography, with all the aesthetic aggression of that explicit form (225-227). It is easy to see why. The first plate (fig. 2) sets the tone and target: a decorated baron is lion-headed, and clung onto by a pawing lioness. All formal appearances are fabrication; man is beast, with animalistic drives and, in the (nude) lionesss kinetic, fluidic body language, in a perpetual orgiastic state. The rest of the book returns constantly to women in states of undress, usually subjected to hallucinatory fates within the artists manifested fantasies such as floggings, rapes, stabbings and mutilations (fig. 3).
2

Of course, for Freud such repression is largely healthy; sublimation and the reality principle allows a workable channel through which desire can become normalised. The Surrealists take exception to this; why should the true, latent, ab-normal become, artificially, merely normal in its manifest state?

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The manifest/latent divide here is interesting the images are at once both manifest dream-content (that is, abstruse surface imagery) and very clear representations of the latent. In Freudian terms, the dream imagery should be much less overt, allowing for deeper psychoanalytical interpretation. But Ernst, in his manifest content, already presents those dark corners of the psyche on the surface. The novel is a Surreal collapsing of the id, destroying the divide between apparent and implicit, making what should be implicit completely apparent. This gesture, which we see across the Surrealist canon presenting oneiric ambiguity explicitly, almost literally is complex in Surrealist terms but can be described in one word, coined by Linda Williams: on/scenity. On/scene is a term supposedly reserved for the functions of hard-core pornography, but Williams definition accurately describes the Surrealist goal: the gesture by which a culture brings on to its public arena the very organs, acts, bodies, and pleasures that have heretofore been designated ob/scene and kept literally off-scene (Porn Studies 3). The desirous, sexualised works of the Surrealists speak entirely to this the theory is, effectively, porn with a point.3 Ozenfant and Le Corbusier observed: There is an artistic hierarchy: decorative art at the bottom, the human figure at the top (151). While Dada largely subverted the bottom, it can be said Surrealism went for the top attacking, through on/scene representations, the highest artistic form culture held dear. I will elaborate more in chapter three on how hard-core pornography and Surrealism are related even kindred but for now am content to observe that the Groups libidinous upending of convention is reflected later in the century by a populist genre with vastly different purposes. My argument thus far shows that Surrealism has always been concerned to safeguard the most vulgar virility and

It is also useful to note here the Surrealists debt to the Marquis de Sade, the Surrealist in sadism claimed by Breton in his Anthology of Black Humour as an important influence on the movement (45-58). Sade acts as another indication towards the Groups preoccupation with transgressive sexualities and their representations.

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transform erotica into pornography, all in the name of socio-political upheaval (Bataille, Absence of Myth 28). As the 1920s progressed, the Surrealists became increasingly receptive to film, a medium they believed held the greatest power for achieving their goals. As a more immersive world of light and movement, the filmic image could draw its audience even further than writing or static artworks into a Surreal realm of sexuality and debasement. This attitude was fully realised cinematically when Buuel and Dal released their films Un Chien Andalou (1929) and Lge dOr (1930). These films act as kinetic versions of Ernsts collages, channelling sexual desires and fears in oneiric landscapes which seem determined to bring latent interpretations to the fore. It is the reality principle on film and both works, in their treatment of sexual frustration, speak clearly to Freuds deferred gratification. Both films depict desire bestially, as with Ernsts hybrids. Chiens characters indulge in an everyday dramatic bust-up but represented in terms of unconscious impulses, as the male protagonist switches between placidity and beastly lust, chasing the female around her apartment, a man possessed (Short 86). Lge, meanwhile, prefigures its action with a documentary extract about scorpions and their poisonous stingers. This opening vignette places the central tale of two frustrated lovers in a decidedly base context; as the scorpion is driven only by a violent desire to survive, the human is driven by a violent desire to live sexually, by erotic instinct constantly frustrated by oppressive social reality. As Buuel wrote, in a rigidly hierarchical society, sex which respects no barriers and obeys no laws can at any moment become an agent of chaos; in these films, as with all Surrealist activity, the drive is towards a conciliation of staid reality with the chaotic unconscious (quoted in Short 54-55). Surreality is sexuality. There is little representative difference across media in Surrealism; I have simply shown that the moving image is here inescapable from the language of desire, which in turn should
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inform my argument later. Film can become an outlet for the surrealising of everyday life, proving, as with most Surrealist representations, that beneath everything there is always Desire.

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2. A Lack of Erotic Imagination: Surrealism in the 21st Century

With this libidinous definition of Surrealism in mind, we can begin pinpointing exactly what relevance the revolutionary movement still holds. One of the Surrealists toughest obstacles to transforming the everyday aside from the disagreements and hypocrisies was the issue of subverting life whilst remaining relatively unnoticed. Surrealism needed to be a part of and yet apart from mainstream culture. Maintaining the balance proved difficult: Breton was already wary that Dada was in imminent danger of becoming respectable, as Duchamp flirted with MoMA and La Nouvelle Revue Franaise published sympathetic reviews (Matthews, Andr Breton 5). Josephson suggests that To be tolerated [] spelled danger to Breton (130). Yet to go too far the other way was anathema; the Surrealists abhorred their fellow avant-gardists as much as they did acceptable littrature, because to be on the avantgarde, by definition, is to be decentralised, fringed. To remain relevant, therefore, to instigate their total revolt of the mind, Bretons group had to negotiate the tightrope between popularity and curiosity; an issue that prevails when discussing Surrealism in the 21st Century. To speak of 21st Century iterations of Surrealism entails these two sides: the obscurantists and the populists. It is not necessary for an official encompassing group to accomplish Surrealist aims - Bataille, in 1946, noted that when the Surrealist Group ceased to exist, I think the failure had a greater effect on the surrealism of works. Not that works had ceased to exist with the group: the abundance of surrealist works is as great now as it ever was (51). Without a group, Surrealist activity can still continue albeit with diminished impact, although the spiritual authority that surrealism embodies is [] not limited to the few people closely connected with Breton (55). The latter statement is certainly true,

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clouded though it is by bias:4 traditional Surrealist methods, championing Communism, group mentality and absolute reality, should be universally accessible. Still, Batailles concern that Surrealism without a group ceased to be connected to the affirmation of a hope of breaking the solitude is prescient (51). While many individuals, or handfuls thereof, have since the 1940s channelled Surrealist concerns and aesthetics, there has been little success in reconciling the two areas that define Surrealist impact. As with merging the conscious and unconscious, Surrealisms success relies entirely upon merging the popular and the hidden, into a sort of pervasiveness which can subtly overthrow established norms without becoming acceptable. Unfortunately, broadly speaking, the plastic artists Ernst, Mir, Masson, Tanguy, Magritte and Dal were the purveyors of surrealism to the world at large, while the audience of the theoreticians, poets and writers was almost completely restricted to their own country and, indeed, to a minority in that country (Waldberg 20). There were Surrealists on both sides of the public fence. Individuality, moreover, was important; the works of, for instance, Mir and Pret would have existed regardless of Bretons group.5 Batailles comments are therefore correct: while the burgeoning surrealist does not need group support to create, it is that group nature which allows a certain power to the artists, promoting a certain collective aim. Nowadays, while there is an impressive number of artists hinting at Surrealist visions, they are dissipated: we have entered the era of diffuse Surrealism (Passeron 17). Passeron coined his summative phrase in 1978, but was not the first to comment on diffuse Surrealism. Josephson writes of his Wall Street friend, Sherwood Anderson, who as

Bataille was a frequent and vitriolic critic of Bretons near-despotic exclusivity. As such, while many of his outsider interpretations of the movement prove insightful, certain critiques of their leader can be unhelpful (2842, 68-80, 155-7 etc.). 5 These two, as with many who joined the Group throughout the 1920s, were essentially discovered and appropriated by Breton as representative of his theories. While neither as reluctant as, say, De Chirico, their initial artistic aims were quite independent of Bretons polemics. Mir in particular announced the death of painting long before Surrealist participation (de la Beaumelle 21).

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early as the 20s, inspired by the Parisian Surrealists, quit his own profitable advertising business to live a full life sexually as a child of nature (257). In 1971 Waldberg lamented the takeover of popular Surrealism, while in later decades Conley placed Surrealisms historic ending in 1969 (4). The word diffusion is perceptive: Surrealism, in the 21st Century, seems to have lost all power and relevance. Those whom Richardson identifies as carrying Surrealism through later decades Jorowsky, Borowczyk and vankmajer, among others have remained mere cult concerns, while more popular proponents such as Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, as well as music videos and that most capitalistic of educational enterprises, modern advertising, provide only light hints at their artistic heritage (Conley 25; Linden 51).6 Surrealism has diffused both into the realms of less-accessible High Art and the concerns of the Pop, adopted by trendsetters in fashion and entertainment (Eggener 31). Leaving aside the authentic, yet over-obscure, Surrealist artists of today, I would like to briefly interrogate the failings of those whose cultural currency should allow them to more substantially fulfil Surrealisms theoretical aims: mainstream Pop Surrealists. There is no reason to disagree with Richardsons analyses; however, his frequent references to modern-day misunderstandings about surrealism remain largely unsubstantiated (2). While suggesting that recent filmmakers such as Breillat and No represent little more than empty fashion, and in other areas of popular culture surreal has gained currency as an idea [] used to describe that which are non-surrealist or even distinctly anti-surrealist, Richardson and other critics have failed to systematically prove Surrealisms diffusion with demonstrative examples (168, 165). With this in mind, it would be useful to briefly discuss a few such examples. Recent popular works such as the films

The argument is still maintained when acknowledging non-filmmaking visual artists such as the Chapman Brothers, Gary Baseman and Joel-Peter Witkin, all of whom similarly court occasional wide notice but within the safe confines of Culture. The list, sadly, continues.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry 2004; hereafter abbreviated to ESSM) and Inception (Nolan 2010) both deal heavily with subconscious states and their effect on the protagonists diegetic reality, gesturing towards Bretons surreality. The issue with both films, which, in line with Richardsons, Waldbergs and others description of surreals current accepted meaning have both been identified as such, is that neither sufficiently blur the real/fictive boundary (2-3, 165-69; 12). Inceptions much-debated final shot, for example, denies the audience any definite conclusion, implying that its diegetic reality is in fact still a dream echoing Shorts argument that film is naturally ambiguous; all events can be presented as equally real (11).7 However unlike, for instance, Buuels oneiric works, each successive dream presented is clearly separated. To suggest that our reality is imaginary is not Surrealist; the Group were not concerned with simulacra, more the resolving of conscious and unconscious. It does not matter, theoretically speaking, if our perceived conscious is simulated, as long as it is distinct from, and can be reconciled with, a perceived unconscious. The same Surrealist-informed criticism can be made of ESSM, which despite its more confusing boundary-blurring is nonetheless concerned with a clear demarcation between conscious and subconscious, ego and id. Again, whatever discontinuities and disequilibria have been experienced by the audience are ironed-out by the end; for Gondry and co-writer Kaufman, life and love may be circular, potentially unreal, but there is still a separate unconscious so reality can be almost rationalised. Eggener, writing on American responses to Surrealism, observes: populist analyses tended to efface whatever menace or mystery Surrealism might have held for American audiences (37). These films, as well as others of the 2000s including Donnie Darko (Kelly 2001), The Machinist (Anderson 2004) and Alice in Wonderland (Burton 2010), ultimately rationalise rather than confuse or

The character Dom Cobbs totem a spinning-top whose eventual fall usually proves to Cobb that he is definitely awake is spun as the story concludes at his home. In this closing shot, however, Nolan cuts to black before the audience find out whether it topples. Ambiguity reigns.

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surrealise the barrier between reality and the mind, and so present the Surrealist vision as classical equilibrium (Richardson 9).8 The films intend to transform the audiences vision of the world rather than the world itself, stopping short of constructing surreality. This diffuse Surrealism diffused both across and within (pop) culture is effectively Surrealism drained of its political content and reconstituted as entertainment (Eggener 32). Related to the above discussions of divided, rather than interlaced, worlds is a sense that modern near-Surrealists are reticent in their erotic imagination. Dreams and fantasies, in many current quasi-Surreal works, are used as vehicles for vague existential questioning rather than explorations of desire and the marvellous. While not necessarily a fault in the films intentions, the general lack of erotic desires, or any meaningful hint at latent transgression, points again to a disappearance from mainstream culture of proper Surrealist values. The Surrealist blending of conscious and unconscious is, as argued above, inspired by the Freudian manifest/latent divide and reality principle, therefore rendering these issues inextricable from representations of explicit desire and eroticism, something which these movies shy away from. Both ESSM and Inception depict love interests who, again, gesture towards the sexualised Automatic Woman, but of course do not quite fulfil this type. ESSMs Clementine and Inceptions Mal are idealised by their respective partners, and both embody certain eccentric or even psychotic tendencies reminiscent of female Surrealist figures Nadja, Gala luard/Dal, Leonora Carrington et al. However, they are characterised almost generically (the manic pixie dream girl and femme fatale) and partake in relatively conventional, halfway chaste, cinematic relationships. While deep characterisation is no doubt preferable to fetishistic objectification, the almost total lack of sexualisation for these

While Lewis Carroll enjoys Bretons citation as a proto-Surrealist, Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton have inexplicably delineated his vignette-filled novella into a quest narrative (Anthology 137-148). Furthermore, the aging of Alice for the film, taking her down the rabbit-hole for the second time as an adolescent sequel, cements her Wonderland as a real separate world rather than the more Surrealist vision of a young girls oneoff illogical dreamscape. Both issues transform Carrolls surreality into a diluted, 21 st Century anti-surreality.

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women is, at least from a Surrealist perspective one corroborated by Conley a severe shortcoming. Clementine and Mal, as with many other female characters in current quasiSurrealist films, are defined more by straightforward emotional connection with their equallyflawed male counterparts than by any personal desires to match the romantic preoccupations of the men. L.R. Williams has argued that By the new century [] classification statistics [tell] a story of the decline of explicit mainstream sexual representations and story-lines, even that in the twenty-first century, mainstream Hollywood sex scenes are rare, fully naked sex-scenes even rarer (417). Williams who places this downturn in popular eroticism firmly in the mid-90s supports my theory that mainstream characters just dont have proper sex anymore. To try and locate any true Surrealist heritage in modern culture is difficult on the one hand, we have avant-garde obscurantists whose very commercial nature prevents them from having any particular effect. On the other, we have a mainstream suffering from such a lack of erotic imagination, of sustained Surrealist intention, that whatever influence it has through the anti-Surrealist means of box office receipts, ad-influenced commercial sales, etc. is decidedly different to the total revolt of the mind that their stylistic forebears intended. To see how Surrealism metamorphosed from one thing to another, we need only refer to M.F. Aghas quote:9 It can be easily understood if we remember that surrealism deals primarily in the basic appeals so dear to the advertisers heart. It capitalizes fear, disgust, wonder, and uses the eye-catching, bewildering devices which we all know were the basis for many a sound advertising campaign (quoted in Eggener 31). The cultural legacy of Surrealism nowadays lies precisely in Aghas warped interpretation: it is entirely superficial, never mixing with its untapped erotic imagination. Surrealism, apparently, has eaten itself. With this in mind, I will now examine where I believe its resurrection lies. In the final chapter, I
9

Artistic Director of magazine publisher Cond Nast (New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair), 1929-1943.

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will argue that there is only one form which enjoys supreme popularity uniquely augmented by its cultural concealment: internet pornography.

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3. Reimagining Pornography

Pornography is a notoriously slippery concept, encompassing as it does even more diverse forms and appearances than Surrealism. In this final chapter, I argue that internet porn fulfils the standards set by the Surrealists through its presentation of sexuality on a public level. I have delineated the aims of Surrealism; it is now time to question the meaning of pornography and show why it, more than any other current form, continues Surrealist practices. A note on my methodology: I discuss internet porn here with little reference to aesthetic. As with Surrealism, I would argue that diversities and differences in what we see across works is connected by a single, underlying theoretical concern. One does not sit down with some girl-on-girl action thinking how Surrealist it all is. Rather, the question as with Surrealism, which as I have argued is driven by a certain social aim is of porns sociopolitical functioning: its public status and relation to viewers. Porn, then, can broadly be broken down into three interrelated definitions, the most obvious of which poses an instant problem here: that is, pornographic art, in any context, is produced specifically to elicit a sexual response, aiding sexual gratification (or the desire for such) (Mirzoeff 481). Surrealist art is obviously not for this purpose; pornography whether gay or straight, soft or hardcore, misogynist or feminist etc. is, at its most basic level, intentionally titillating and masturbatory for its reader or viewer while Surrealism presents only the psychological functions of arousal, or its creators own erotic tastes. This opposition is reconciled, however, in the second definition of pornography: obscenity. Many critics, particularly within conservative groups, label explicitly sexual(ised) works as obscene a cry regularly levelled at both pornography itself and the anti-art

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Surrealists.10 The highlighted difference in representational perspective is therefore reconnected by a mutual transgressive spirit the deliberate creation of inappropriate works or, specifically, when either form takes the culturally-acceptable idea of the erotic and amplifies it. If Surrealism leans towards the pornographic, then outright pornographers find kindred subversives in the Surrealists as with long-time pornographer Robert Rosen who claimed to embrace the idea that pornography and transgressive art could be one and the same (4). The third definition relates to porns public status. Pornography, correlative with its intent to arouse, is produced for an audience. It has no existence outside society; in the same way that transgressive Surrealist work cannot serve its purpose without public recognition. My argument hinges on the fact, already alluded-to, that both Surrealism and pornography specifically its currently most public existence on the internet function through on/scenity. Internet porn channels the Surrealist goal through its revelation of widespread sexual desires as both catering for and created by an expanding on-scene public, and its successful navigation of the boundaries between accepted fact-of-life and ungodly transgression an ideal the Surrealists attempted, but never successfully achieved. How do we pin down pornography? As the classic epithet would have it, after all, one mans porn is anothers erotica, or even Erotica is merely what you like and pornography is what you dont (Anon., quoted in Stammers 9). Pornography is what is considered obscene, a buzzword applicable, perspective-dependent, to forms from lingerie ads to intimate conversations to anal sex videos. Film classification board BBFC can take issue with non-specific sex references while the MPAA feel the paternal need to warn
10

Lyndon Bowring: CARE [Christian Action Research and Education] wrote to 3,000 church leaders about this issue [] 97 per cent indicated that they believed pornography to be a serious problem (x). See also public reactions to the Kinsey report, as well as the Lady Chatterley trials: Public libraries [] are here transformed, by the spectre of paperback pornography, into disseminators of vice and immorality (Nead 489). Pornography has always revelled in subversion kindred to Surrealism.

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audiences of some sexuality. Lynda Nead helpfully describes porn as a zone of disorder and irregularity, while Dennis Waskul makes much of its status as stigma (491; 7). The majority view, then, would label pornography as that which is largely concealed from the public eye. This is why mainstream sexual representations, in their acceptability, are antiSurrealist; shying away from deviant practices and grubby secrets, the sexuality of humanity would seem, on this level, to be a non-issue (Gournelos and Gunkel 11). A simplistically tame view of sexual desire rarely slides into true gratuity, stopping at the Erotic: what you dont get, [] how the mind goes beyond (Rowan Pelling, quoted in Stammers 11). Pornography, by explicitly revealing human fantasy in all its filthy glory and accessing the realm of the forbidden, becomes subversive through its relative psychological truth (Nead 486; Attwood xvi-xvii). It uncovers societys secret shames, depicting a world of purely gratuitous non-reproductive fornication; sexual desire becomes the drive behind the entire world, an undiscriminating and sexually motivated society where pure pleasure has taken over the more honourable, conventional, notion of sex as species-beneficial (Gournelos and Gunkel 11; Nead 487). Public squeamishness towards pornography echoes in this way Michel Foucaults history of sodomy: devoid of any homosexual connotations, the act has been historically suppressed for its non-reproductivity (11-12). When sexualities and sexual acts as socially abnormal as those championed in pornography encompassing for instance popular website xHamsters pages for Gay/Men, Transsexual, through Anal, Femdom, Handjobs, Shemales, Squirting and so much more are brought, as they are in such internet porn tube sites, to the fore, an entirely sexual way of being is shown. Performers and characters are literally defined only through sexuality which, to echo Buuel, can only be cause for social chaos. Through this vision of the sexualised world, pornography challenges the assumed myth of obscenity, strategically placing on-scene what should ostensibly remain hidden in the
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psyche. A familiar concern by now, no doubt. With this politico-Surrealist angle in mind, then, internet pornography poses an active challenge to safe notions of private sexuality. The aesthetic of hard-core porn not only places desire right at the fore, but extends it to all demographics (L. Williams, Porn Studies 2). The focus is, like Surrealist film, not on characterisation but on specific fetishized objects and disparate situations, including genitalia, various positions and improbable fantasy scenarios.11 Hard-core does not try to be too specific, with many films both long and short presenting many combinations of these. One five-minute film, for instance, Cougar has interracial mmf threesome, features, despite its brief running time, a woman having sex with two men, from missionary to reverse cowgirl and with specific motivated close-ups of vaginal and anal penetration, fellatio, the actress fondling her own nipples, plus point-of-view from one of the men. Hard-core functions, in its contained diversity, as not just one mans porn; it caters for as wide an audience with as many preferred scenarios as possible. Internet porn disorientates not just through its explicitness, but also through its exposition of sexual truth (Hardy 17). As Gaddam and Ogas have comprehensively shown, popular pornographic sites such as XVideos and PornHub reveal such a multitude of sexual desires that to glance at internet searches is to see an entire collective unconscious on view (1-44, 252-5). This discussion is further informed by a current rise in amateur pornography on the web. Unlike the older home video or dirty magazine markets, internet porn is not limited to studio and professional production. The twenty-first century Web 2.0 affords more participation in a widespread action of Surreal on/scenity, as in websites such as SubmitYourFlicks and MyHomeClip, which rely on user-generated pornographic content. If business-driven porn merely reflects societys sex drives, then amateur content millions

11

More so on the internet, where stag film length has become re-popularised. Now one is more likely to find brief (6-20 minute) outbursts rather than long-form narratives. Internet video porn, as I shall expand later, is like a lucid dream showing the same frames of interest over and over again.

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choosing to share the most private aspects of their lives actively shows them. People choose to define themselves by a more sexualized self than would be present in real life, wannabe pornographers photographing or videoing partners, friends or themselves frequently not for profit (Neely 108). Such representations come to signify empowerment in contemporary culture, as people upload for kicks, either for the sexual thrill of showcasing their intimate activities or just to reassure themselves of their sexual existence (Neely 111). Internet amateur porn presents swathes of the population as willing to bring their innermost fantasies to a public forum: creating a surreality. Tube site PornHub the fourth most popular porn site and seventy-ninth most popular website on the net bills itself as a sex community (MostPopularWebsites; PornHub). Implicit here, as with other sites where the amateur meets the professional, is again this sense of cyberspace as collective id; a fantasy realm where entire sexual lives can be constructed and performed. Commentators such as Geoffrey Batchen have emphasised the internets virtual reality aspects as an interconstitutive relationship involving both a viewer and a thing viewed, a never-resolved assemblage of virtual and real (277-8). Neely observes that an exaggerated or invented self can be constructed online, leading to a decentered subjectivity reminiscent, I would argue, of the dream-self (107). Tim Guest emphasises the non-reality of cyberspaces such as Second Life and Naughty America, stating: people who have online sex dont see it as cheating. Its morally okay, a pocket they can put those desires into where they wont threaten their real-life relationship (quoted in Brown 142). The internet avatar reveals a tension between the virtual and the physical. As these writers show, the virtual self is inherently related to the real: behind a Second Life adulterer, a masturbator on ChatRoulette, or a gonzo couple uploading to PornHub is always a real person who is merely projecting their sexual desire or habit onto a supposedly less real self.

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Indeed, the explicit sex community of PornHub allows such a sexualised self to come into being. Like Facebook, wherein members can construct a representation of their self their personality, tastes and lifestyle PornHub states that upon becoming a free member, youre ready to fully participate in the PornHub community. Upload your favourite videos, interact with other members, rate videos and start growing your reputation as a Porn King! (PornHub FAQ). It is, however, only one area in a multitude of sexual pervasions on the web, the moments when the ultimately private is projected onto and merged with the totally public. Even ostensibly non-pornographic sites can become invaded by sex, such as DeviantArt and Tumblr, with a (by now, barely) surprising amount of user-uploaded sex artworks and stories, and the aforementioned ChatRoulette, where approximately one in eight webcam users can be found engaging in lewd activites (Moore). From the comfort of ones home and under a dense veil of anonymity, an enormous range of sex is available at ones fingertips, whether that sex be produced for or by the user (Waskul 4). The internet may be unsafe for moral sensibilities, but it is certainly a safe haven for exploration of sexualities.12 The virtual self of, in particular, PornHub allows users to become either/both a Porn King - participating in ratings, comments, forums, tweets and blog posts, uniquely free to discuss personal tastes and preferences with anyone in the world or simply define themselves entirely around their own appendages, becoming an erotic performer in their own right (fig. 4). Cyberspace is a physicalized id which offers many different and more innocuous manifest contents, constantly underlined by the prevalence of sexuality: it is, when thinking surrealistically, a collective dreamscape, one in which any clear separation between the real and the representational has collapsed (Hardy 3).

12

Gaddam and Ogas study A Billion Wicked Thoughts supports this theory in its comprehensive analysis of sex-related internet searches as neurological study. The writers use online sexual habits as an exploration of the human mind and its functions, much in the same way as Surrealisms Freudian harnessing of the unconscious to reveal crucial erotic drives.

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The internet and the dream both constitute realms of desire, spaces for the playing-out of wild fantasies; bringing sexuality decidedly on-scene. More so than furtive masturbation in a backstreet theatre, or one-on-one with a VHS or phone sex hotline, the internet is a forum wherein the public can actively engage with their own sex and that which they see onscreen. Pornographic forms are, of course, literalised aesthetic across pornographies is inherently manifested rather than left latent, but it is the Porn 2.0 service afforded by the internet that brings these revealed desires to total public fruition, thereby fulfilling to an extent the politico-Surrealist goal. Moreover, internet surfing seems to specifically replicate the lucid dream, in which the experiencer can wander from scenario to scenario, choosing to replay and re-see what they want. The boundary the internet occupies between reality and the virtual, the private and public, mimics the lucid dreams juncture between waking and sleep a Surrealistic merging-point. Explicit human desire then is no longer confined to the head or to age-old private entertainment forms; it is depicted and played-out in a public space of comments, uploads and likes (population: billions), one which is now, it seems, so vital to human subjectivity that the UN declared it a basic human right in 2011 (Kravets). The internet, through its status as liberated collective id, is an actualised surreality that it faces such widespread, worldwide issues with censorship just cements its importance as a source of uncomfortable, controversial sexual truths. The outstanding contradiction here is simple: while the Surrealists were actively trying to influence everyday life, pornography, both profit-driven and amateur, makes no such claim. As Breton made clear, however, the perfect embodiment of the Surreal ideal would be unaware of its status. Two influential Surrealist figures, Jacques Vach and Nadja, speak to this. The former, a war friend of Bretons, is cited in the Anthology of Black Humour as not only an influence on Surrealism, but also himself a text despite not even being an artist or writer. Says Breton: His refusal to participate is absolute, and takes the guise of a
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purely formal acceptance pushed to the limit; Vach is important to Surrealism as a living embodiment of transgression (347). Breton meanwhile spends his novel Nadja reflecting on the titular woman and his attitude towards her as the extreme limit of the surrealist aspiration, its furthest determinant (74). Breton does not reciprocate Nadjas love, rather romanticising her as pure symbol, her madness magnified into a higher enlightenment through Bretons eyes (Polizzotti xviii). Like Vach, Nadja represents for Breton an oblivious incarnation of the Surrealist cause: a muse, perhaps. This attitude corroborates my view of pornography as inherently Surreal. It does not try to mean anything, allowing it more space to do so anyway. It is in that sense basic Surrealist automatism: unconsciously meaningful, accidentally significant. The internet and its pornographic depth, then, inadvertently becomes the perfect platform for Surrealist activity and political transgression. Whether it means to or not, sexual content infiltrates much of the web, often presented in that 12% of sites as purely pornographic. The form of porn, through its intent towards gratification, brings erotic or hardcore desire to a viewable public level; one which is frequently contested, as the alleged obscenity of unconscious drives faces attempted suppression. This in itself underlines the Surrealist notion of widespread, society-driving sexuality. Its specific cyber-relationship to its dissipated audience, furthermore, not only helps propagate said theory but actively promotes the construction of surreality: bringing the unconscious desirous mechanisms of the id to bear on physical life, whether that be through the merging of dreams and waking, or just cyberspace and corporeality.

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Conclusion

The intention of this dissertation has been to discuss the lingering existence of a short-lived body of political-cultural theory, one which may show on-going influence but has become, effectively, diffuse. I have not seen it as necessary to compare hard-core pornographic aesthetics to those of Surrealist writings, paintings and films; it has proved far more fruitful to note the remarkable way the internet allows the same revealing of sexualities as the Surrealist search for the Marvellous, its placing on-scene of previously only latent desires, its total liberation of the mind and all that resembles it (Bataille 46). There are, however, intriguing similarities between Surrealist art and pornography which are worth briefly highlighting in an effort to both underscore my argument and provoke yet further discussion. For instance, Linda Williams discussion of hard-core narrative trajectories heavily channels and reconfigures Richard Dyers identical writings on the Hollywood musical (Hard Core 160-175). Such a comparison of the acceptable with the obscene is an interesting parallel to Surrealisms use of conventional erotica one form is a transgressive mirror of another. Furthermore, Short invokes Aragons belief that the [cinematic] close-up allows the isolation and magnification of the object, taken out of its usual context, stripped of its utility and rendered over to a world of fantastic connotations, which draws a direct line between the fetishized Surrealist object and its more explicit pornographic equivalent (14). More generally, it can be said that if the Surrealists prized the kinetic filmic image as suitable for drawing its audience further into an unconscious-like world of dark impulses, then porn, with its intention to move [viewers] closer to the lived reality of sex, is always fulfilling even surpassing the ultimate goal (Attwood xvi-xvii).

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If this comparing-and-contrasting of aesthetics seems tenuous, it is not for lack of conviction; I have merely found, through writing this essay, that the more important issue at hand in reclaiming modern web pornography as a continuation of Surrealism is the way its online existence has, more substantially than ever, come close to achieving the Surreal state. To discuss a porn film as merely a direct inheritor of, for instance, Une semaine de bont would be to fall into the same traps I outlined in chapter two. There are clear similarities but enough differences to simply become another example of diffuse Surrealism. The way an entire network of explicit sexualities online creates a mass cyber-id is much more fruitful in proving the enduring, subtle existence of the Surrealist method. In theory, of course, it was never so much the works of the Surrealist Group that were important so much as their collective goal. We clearly see that sexuality is such an insidiously far-reaching aspect of the web, itself a similarly large part of culture as a whole, and this trail always leads back to that point the Surrealists were working to prove: that beneath all culture is pure, lascivious, Desire. Taylor Marsh writes: Porn is a black-and-white issue with little gray area. You either enjoy participating in the act of voyeurism or you dont; are aroused by seeing naked bodies overtly exposed or you arent; find human beings locked in a game of sexual power titillating or you dont (238). Marshs carelessly-put argument actually speaks volumes from a Surrealist perspective. Indeed, you either believe Freuds theories or you dont, for instance; his influence is nonetheless undeniable. Porn, and the base sexuality it represents, is for a Surrealist a vital part of society both despite and because of these polarised views it creates: porn has affected the lives of everyone who uses the Internet whether theyve ever gazed at a salacious photo or not (Perdue 259). To acknowledge the importance of pornography, and the influential presence of porn on the world wide web, is to realise that the Surrealist drive for on-scenity as a revolutionary cultural comment is arguably stronger than ever.

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To finally conclude this essay, I will make a note about the title. The phrase an enormous effort to keep a straight face is from Breton and Soupaults The Magnetic Fields and refers with characteristic obliqueness to some convicts to whom the anonymous addressee must not talk about those supernatural abductions, an unexpanded-upon reference to some extra-human experience (94). I believe it summarises my argument twofold: it refers both to the Surrealist view of life, in societys tense effort to keep a straight face when balanced on the precipice of the unconscious and sexuality; it also relates, paradoxically, to my attempt to give pornography a straight face and analyse it as a serious form of Surrealist practice. In so doing, I have aimed to show that internet sexualities and hard-core are, no matter how seriously it all takes itself, the perfect challenge to another straight face a societal one - in a manner that should undoubtedly be taken up by any aspiring Surrealist looking to subversively uncover the frenzied eroticism that lies beneath the surface. Hopefully presenting such an argument with an entirely straight face is the perfect Surrealist act.

Word Count: 8,769.

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Appendix

Fig. 1. Gustave Courbet, The Origin of the World, 1866.

Fig. 2. Max Ernst, Une semaine de bont, plate 1 (3).

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Fig. 3. Max Ernst, Une semaine de bont, plates 2, 3, 17, 29, 73, 126, 147, 198.

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Fig. 4. Screenshots of Porn Hub user-upload page compared to self-indulgent individuals on Chatroulette.

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