What happens when a confused teenager starts hanging out with a veteran pornographer? Well, suffice to say that every conversation they have revolves around sex. But what is sex in the end? Is it the required intercourse to get the female partner pregnant or is it something far more complex and symbolic? Michele Foucault wrote on his
The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure that there are two clearly differentiated sexual stages. The first one is, of course, sexual intercourse; but the second one applies only for humans, and that is masturbation; masturbation inspired, or spiced, by fantasy.
In the Victorian age, as Foucault so aptly explains, sex was a concern, and masturbation was deemed as an illness, an unnecessary expenditure of vital forces. But what was even more distressing is that it was fueled by fantasy, and masturbatory fantasies, of course, would not bode well against the rigid moral codes of society.
Is masturbation no longer a taboo? Wes probably wouldn't think so, as he gets fired for jerking off during work hours. The teenage boy feels absolutely ashamed when his father finds out about this incident. Now, with more free time Wes decides to accept Dusty's invitation to have a few beers.
When Wes partakes in Dusty's hobbies, he understands some of the inner works that make the pornography industry thrive. Ultimately it all boils down to one thing: fantasy. In the same way that Wes's father finds bondage an arousing practice, Wes is unable to achieve self-satisfaction without borrowing his father's adult magazines. Dusty will explain it to him better, coining the term possession; Dusty literally says in one scene "possession of the image of the ass".
The possession of the image and nothing else. Because the human mind needs fantasy, even if there is another human being in front... What Lacan calls the phantasm is also expressed in the obsessive search of Wes's father: his vast collection of pornography has but one trait in common... the porn actresses share some resemblance with Wes's mother. The phantasmatic image is there to fill a void, a lacking that can never be truly replaced. And that also explains why the father has had no sex in over two years.
Wes is tired of being a virgin, and his horniness translates into highly erotic stories he writes and shares with Dusty. The boy wonders if he might be able to get into the adult magazines industry; and Dusty advices him to have sex first so that he can write more authentically. Of course, Dusty is homosexual, and Wes, having some homoerotic encounters with a friend his age, cannot be sure what is it that Dusty wants from him. When Wes talks to Vera, a specialist in "sex phone" (again another sort of fantasy that reinforces masturbation) he admits that anal sex turns him on. Perhaps dusty crosses the boundaries when he asks Wes and Vera to star in a home-made porn video. But ultimately, it is a necessary requirement, after all, what can be more masturbatory than that?
