Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"

This is an easy to read, comprehensive analysis of visual pornography. Williams is thorough and openminded, and clearly shows that this isn't a homogenous and stereotypical genre. On the contrary, she maintains that all trends visible in other types of movies exist in pornography as well. An interesting read.

This book changed my my mind about I saw pornography. This is a smart and sexy book that dispels many ideas we have about pornography and how the feminist anti-pron rhetoric not only endangers the First Amendment with their calls for taking this protection from porn, but retains the patriarchal concept of female purity that promotes a sexual double standard. This books opens a dialogue and forum for women to talk about pornography. I only wished I hadn't read it ten years earlier, because my copy doesn't have pictures.

I never thought that this would happen to me...but I must share my pleasure with "Hard Core" in an online review. The author takes up a discursive thread generally reserved to the letter columns of Adult Entertainment mags, and develops a unique anaylsis that provides the reader unfettered access into the manifold issues of power given in the presentation of human congress onscreen. If Max Weber had written on porn, this would have been his work!

I am only 16 and haven't really seen much pornography, but after reading Linda Williams book I am enthusiastic about learning more. She writes about pornography in a way that is clear and easy to understand, even for a high school student like me. I learned alot about how complicated a porno movie can be and the pictures were great!

Linda Williams gives a scintillating evaluation of the politics of porn. Her detailed and insightful analysis goes beyond mere recitation of plot points and totaling of body parts to an in-depth engagement with the semiotics of pornographized couplings. The pictures were really helpful in conveying the cultural work done by this underevaluated art form. Porn-tastic!