No country for old Men? Stratégies d'érotisation du corps âgé dans la pornographie contemporaine

Historically, aging has not sat well with pornography. Since its emergence in the early 1970s as a “legitimate” cinematic genre (Williams 1989), in fact, pornography has built a universe mainly inhabited by “gamine supermodels and designer-trained Adonises” (McNair 2002, 108) involved in long-lasting and “hyperbolic” sexual activities (Paasonen 2011; Zecca 2013). After the so-called digital revolution, however, things have (partially) changed. As noted by Peter Lehman, in fact, the Internet “has opened the sexual representation of male and female bodies to a much wider variety of age, race, body types, and range of features in regards to cultural norms of beauty [and youth] than previous forms of porn” (Lehman 2006, 13). As a considerable consequence of this deep transformation, today the allure of youth has simply become a part – although still the largest by far – of a more complicated and diversified pornographic offer, which now also involves and “commodifies” the aging and older body. In fact, pornographic sub-genres such as “mature”, “granny”, “cougar”, “MILF” – or tags as “oldman”, “older-women”, “youngandold” as employed in porn tubes – reveal that the aging body is widely represented within the contemporary pornographic field, catering to both the generalist porn audience and specific market niches. Objective of this chapter is to provide a first investigation of the meanings and purposes performed by the aging body in contemporary pornography, with a particular attention to the discursive strategies and affective modalities through which it is represented and “delivered” to the viewers.