Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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!

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!

It has been quite some time since I have had the chance to read such an enlightening tome...I found this to be a veritable porn-ucopia of information, not to be missed by Hard Core fans...

The writing is jagged, superfluous and constantly filled with statements on what the author is intending to say in the book without actually saying it. This book is boring, hard to get through and organized in a questionable fashion. Unless you need to read it for a college course I strongly recommend against it. Frankly I don't understand the other reviews on this page praising the book.

I should probably look more closely at the covers of the books that I am ordering online. Any reasonable individual might naturally assume a book entitled "Hard Core" would contain information regarding the apple harvesting industry; however, such is most clearly not the case with Doctor William's book.

Despite the initial mix-up, I found this work to be quite titilating. Prior to reading Hard Core, I was only familiar with pornographic films (or "pornos") as an avid viewer. Hubby Rick and I now devote a significant amount of money and time on pornos in the hopes that we might one day fully appreciate, as does Linda Williams, the pornographic film. And our marriage has never been better!

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!

Hardcores author like to use big words and confusing dialog to get her point across. This is a good book if you can get through all the muddle and crap to get to her point. The book definetly reads like a college textbook and it does get tediouse at times. A good book if you have patience

Williams' claim is that all porn is not the same, but her book title is very specific which would lead one to believe she will make claims about only hard core and not about the attendant debates over all of porn's place in society.

You have to be suspicious when the majority of reviewers of an academic book have not graduated high school. I can barely get my university students to read academic writing.