What is a book titled "Pornocopia" about? The worditself means nothing, except it hints that the book is aboutpornography in abundance and variety..." All this is true about "Pornocopia," but the subtitle, "Porn, sex, technology and desire" is misleading..." I can imagine a book about porn without "sex" and "desire," but the inclusion of those words seems more to confirm that yes, we're talking about the regular usage of the term "porn" and not some non-sexual metaphor. But "technology" is the twist. The book must be about the nexus between porn and technology. Don't be fooled by the cover. It isn't.
Laurence O'Toole is an unabashed porn consumer advocate. His goal, with "Pornocopia," is finally articulated in the closing words of the book: "Legal change is unlikely to come about...without a continued and far greater shift within the mainstream towards a brighter, more informed view on porn. Hopefully this book can feature as part of this cultural change" (p. 350). The "legal change" O'Toole seeks is an easing of restrictions on porn, especially in the United Kingdom...O'Toole imagines a world where reliable "mainstream" publications review porn so consumers can make better choices, where the law comes down on the side of the porn consumer rather than the anti-porn activists, and where the content of porn is debated for its potential to arouse rather than its moral implications...In trying to change culture, his enthusiasm damages his credibility. We get the point early on that he likes porn and doesn't think much of the arguments of porn's critics. He dismisses the traditional objections with this statement: "it is possible to expose the moraltarians' ideological position as unacceptable to most people...their doctrine is refutable if you decide that you don't want to live in a theocratic state..." (p. 26). That's about it for the "moraltarian" view (although he later addresses laws conceived of by such under-explored views). Instead of the addressing the traditionalist objections, O'Toole promises to focus on the objections of some feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon...O'Toole starts to with vigor, but then he trails off into a brief history of the porn industry...
The history is one of the strongest sections of the book. Here, basically factual information is conveyed in a linear narrative. The logical next chapter would have been about the state of the industry today, but instead O'Toole veers off again, this time with a chapter that gripes about the lack of an industry in Britain...O'Toole jumps between only two countries, the U.S. and the U.K. The U.S. story is interesting, the U.K. story is not. I'd imagine that even a British reader would share this opinion, because this is essentially the author's point. The problem is that too much time and attention is spent proving how boring porn in the U.K. is...
But the weakest chapter of "Pornocopia" is the one that actually is devoted to technology. Up until "The perils of cyberspace," O'Toole's approach was basically to argue that "it's not as bad as you think."...But by the time O'Toole gets to "cyberporn was not so 'pervasive' or 'ubiquitous' after all," (p. 248) everything that came before seems suspect...There is a lot of porn on line, and it is almost impossible to miss it. That fact does not imply the rightness or wrongness of the state of affairs, but any argument based on the opposite premise is very weak.
O'Toole's writing only gets weaker as the book draws to a close. What exactly he's trying to do is very unclear...The resulting "Vox"- lite is worse than you're imagining and what it is doing in the book is anyone's guess.
"Pornocopia" manages to make an inherently interesting topic very dull...O'Toole's position is not untenable. Far from it. He simply over-reaches, lets his enthusiasm get the better of his argument, and covers too many angles with too little depth.
