Slashdot Mirror
William Gibson's Neuromancer Staged With Porn Star
destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine 'Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction,' but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. 'In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me: "I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about."' And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. 'Gol' dang! It's news to me!'"
What's "Loser Porn"?
It's "I can't even dream of having sex with a girl as pretty and intelligent as Sasha Grey, so I'll just call her a skank and call her work 'loser porn'".
Well, the interest of mainstream contemporary art in a cyber-punk novel may be deemed of interest to /.ers. But I agree with you that this publication is too close to "Drop William Gibson's name and I'll slashdot you".
The first time I had ever seen Sasha Grey was in The Girlfriend Experience. She was awful, probably ruined the film (if it wasn't the writers who ruined it first). Anyway, it was a complete snooze fest. Also who hires a pron star to play a prostitute and has her keep her clothes on for 99% of the film?
That kind of uncritical asinine blather never ceases to tweak me. Middle class anyone, Gibson, you tool. It's amazing that people spout (and think) racist shit like this, and it is left bare, unchallenged, validated by silence thus tacit approval. Fuck that. The assumption is what? If you're middle class but not white that your perspective is different? GMAFB. If you're middle class and white, like me, you can't possibly know about destitution? (I came from it).
Idiocy.
I agree the race dropping was uncalled for, but he also was giving this response in an interview, where we can't always pick the perfect words for what we're trying to say. If he was just trying to draw a distinction between middle class in the privileged (and largely white) West versus the middle class in, say, India where by US standards you're still desperately poor, I don't think it's entirely illegitimate.
I hope not.
the contrived outrage: well-played sir
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When you take into account the mindless sex-doll career of the character Molly, Sasha Grey is an apt choice for the part.
Liberty has a very low calorie content and you can't burn individuality to keep you warm during cold winter nights.
I'm not saying they're not valuable, but they're also pretty far down the hierarchy of needs. There's a lesson to be learned here: if you keep people well-fed, sheltered, clothed and socially stable you can actually foster liberty and individuality (and innovation, creativity, etc) because the base needs are met. If you want to oppress people, make sure they don't have enough food to get up off their knees.
It's very interesting that, throughout history, periods where the middle class grows coincide with leaps in "social betterment", while strife and stagnation are lockstep with polarization of rich and poor. You'd think we'd have figured this out after the first few cycles, huh?
--srj/mmv
trolling trolls trolling trolls.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Lol.
What is missing from most porn (old and new) is the seduction.
I've never found people screwing to be erotic (even if both are female). There was one I saw back in the late 80's/ early 90's tho-- I think it was directed by a female (back before females became so much more masculine) and she had two people, fully dressed, standing talking in front of a fireplace for about 5 to 10 minutes that was one of the most erotic things I've ever seen. Both were good but average looking without makeup.
They went from casually talking to credibly aroused and there was the electric moment when both realized they were going to do something. I can't even recall the sex scene after but I still remember that scene two decades later.
Sex is usually about rubbing one spot a lot. It often looks goofy. The seduction is the part that is interesting to me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Except in 1984 if you were in Somalia, you were pretty much part of a slave caste and your conditions wouldn't have changed regardless of who owned you. You were worth less even than the proles. [Rant] I wonder how many people that reference 1984 actually have read it, much less remember it. People talk about heading into a 1984 society where everyone is monitored and having no freedom but by and large the majority of the population did not experience this in the book. The proles like you and I were just disregarded and left to our devices unless we spoke up or showed some prowness towards helping Big Brother.[/Rant]
I have a friend from college who is doing fairly well as a porn producer. He says that there's another factor preventing people in the porn industry from having sexual relationships with people outside of it: most people have tremendous hang ups about sex. As a result, it's very difficult to maintain a relationship with someone who is not a porn star when you yourself are, so people in the industry tend to date other people in the industry.
[Must remember to check "Post Anonymously" box.]
What I miss are the cutaways to the guy's face during the sex scenes. Especially right before the pop shot.
Seriously, am I the only dude that edits out all "guy only" shots from the scenes?