"Porn" watch 2

Months have passed since my last post on "porn" but God knows the "porn" never stops, people. You might want to get yourself something to drink before proceeding.

Geek porn has several distinct meanings. (This term has been around at least since 1999, which makes me think it might be older than "food porn.") Geek porn can refer to pornographic material in which geeks appear or in which the performers use computers or other techie items as props. But better yet, it can refer to pictures of computers that have been "undressed" of their casings to expose their guts. And even better yet, to cultural products such as Star Wars movies that get geeks all excited. But as we shall see, usage of "porn" tends to move from the edgy to the anodyne pretty quickly. Like food porn, geek porn now also refers to pretty pictures, in this case pretty pictures of geekery like computers and phones. Porn in this case signifies little more than "arousing desire." Thus geek porn arouses desire in geeks, while food porn arouses desire for food. "Porn" works either way, though my sense is that "for" is more common than "in."

As zp pointed out in the comments to my last "porn" post, there's also something called "war porn," which would seem to refer to fetishized, phallic or otherwise sexualized representations of missiles, guns, ammo, and other martial paraphernalia. Here's a juicy, context-deprived quotation from the linked article: "my husband, though an early modernist, has an anal obsession over first-world-war aircraft." An early modernist, just think! Unlike geek porn and food porn, war porn is an unambiguously negative term. It's not cool to get off on death and destruction (which isn't to deny that some people do).

My most recent discovery is "continuity porn," and this one is going to take a moment or two to explain. On fan sites like TV Without Pity, some forum discussants praise shows that include references to earlier episodes for having "continuity." Shows do this all the time--for instance, soap operas have continuing storylines that span weeks, months, even years. But the fans have something more specific in mind: small details that demand that the viewer be attentive enough to remember related details from earlier episodes. This can be as little as an article of clothing that a character re-wears or as significant as a major piece of the character's motivation, as in last night's Veronica Mars in which Veronica gets a classmate to confess to stealing an exam by threatening to reveal his participation in a secret society a whole season earlier. It's like the show is reminding us, hey, remember that episode a long time ago? We do too! This rewards fans for paying attention, for being fans.

"Continuity porn" began, apparently, as a term Star Trek fans used to describe contradictions or inconsistencies between details in the various instances of the Trekiverse. I am so little acquainted with the Trekiverse as not to know even such basic things as who Scottie is and why anyone would want to be beamed up by him. But I think I get enough to understand that when the Trekkies say "continuity porn" they are referring not only to the object under discussion, the textual inconsistency, but also to the activity of pointing out the object under discussion. Continuity porn can mean bad continuity, as when different Star Trek texts are in mutual contradiction. But it can also mean obsessive curiosity about inconsistency with the hope that it will be rectified. This passage (from the linked site) refers to inconsistencies in the ridges or lack of them on the foreheads of Klingons:

The ridged foreheads are just enough of a turn-on to keep us lusting, but a full-on resolution of the issue within STAR TREK's canon would absolutely send us through the roof, and cleaning up the mess of proper time-period characterizations might go a long way toward satisfaction.

These kids really would cream their pants, wouldn't they?

I have reason to believe that fans of other shows use "continuity porn" differently from the Trekkies. The Veronica forums contain various usages but I'll try to explicate two that seem most prevalent. Some fans use continuity porn to distinguish a bad kind of continuity from a good kind. Bad continuity occurs when a show makes extensive reference to events of past episodes in ways that are gratuitous, confusing, unnecessary, or otherwise unsatisfying to the viewer. The show used in one discussion of this is Lost:

On Lost, Jack found out Kate killed somebody and was angry. In the very next episode - the VERY next - they were back on friendly terms. Why? Who cares. Their plot is boring.

On VM, Veronica found out Duncan was taking meds and two episodes later found out what they were. And not only that, when she was finding the file, she also found Abel Koontz's file - the mysteries are interconnected, so continuity is interconnected as well.

On Lost, with every mystery they solve (which is not many), new ones are added. The monster, the frenchwoman, the Others, Ethan, the Black Rock, Walt's powers, Claire's baby, why Locke isn't paralyzed anymore - none of them have been answered.

On VM, mysteries have been answered: we now know why Lianne left, we have a maybe reason why Duncan broke up with her and what Lilly's secret was. Comments made in the very first episode have come back around. Now that is good continuity.

So in this usage, continuity porn is not inconsistency between past and present representations. Rather, it is a term of aesthetic judgment. If you like the way the show integrates old and new, that's good continuity. If you don't, that's continuity porn. (The fans, ever the neologists, coined the term "ConYay," short for "continuity yay" as a synonym for "good continuity.")

That was last year's continuity porn. This year, the term has done a full turnabout and become an autoantonym, or word that means one thing and its opposite. Now, like geek porn and food porn, continuity porn just makes you happy. Last night's VM ep occasioned this praise from one forum writer: "That was like total continuity porn." In other words, I liked the way the show integrated the details from past episodes into the present one. (I should note that fan lingo tends to change and adapt a fair bit and that I could be missing some important details of usage.)

Just as the culture gets pornificationed, so does the language. I could now launch into a discussion of the contrast between "porn" as good (geek porn) and bad (war porn) and about the implications of "porn" shifting between good and bad (continuity porn, food porn) but I think this has gone on long enough. That's enough "porn" porn for one day.

UPDATE: Car crash porn anyone?