Porn, the critique goes, is all utility and no symbolism. There's not much metaphorical meaning, few references, little mystery, just straight-up boot knockin'. Like a magic trick consisting only of denouement, pornography is all reveal, all the time.
Because of this purely visual nature*, every viewer has a personal relationship with pornography that's not arbitrated by a common set of symbols or framework for discussion. We can define around pornography but we can't define it. Thus it's hard (though less hard in recent years, thanks to the net's glut o' smut and the mainstreaming of XXX culture**) to have conversations about porn without giving offense. "One half of the world," Jane Austen wrote, "cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
Then there's Porn for the Blind, a site that's garnered some popularity recently for its recordings of everyday people dryly describing the content of porn clips. No video. Each recording is read by in a dry monotone with unvarying cadence. For example:
This is a minute and 2 sec long preview clip it entitled Gina's Big Tittie Tune Up and it can be found at http colon slash slash w w w dot bigs tits round asses dot com slash t1 slash r e b s equals no inert slash free underscore movies underscore big tits round asses slash b t r a 3912 dot htm. The top of the web page has the big tits round asses logo along with still pictures of girls with large exposed breasts. The background is a light green with what looks like a gothic fence border design. The clip begins with a woman sitting in her car as she consults with what appears to be a male auto mechanic. The camera is situated in the passenger side facing the driver's seat, our angle thus keeping her fully in the frame. She informs him of an unknown problem with the car. The scene breaks and we see the woman looking down at the handbrake. Sounds like it could be a problem with the injector the mechanic says.
By overexplaining the technical aspects of the clip, PFTB reveals the overproduced absurdity of the scene and strips it of titillating value. Porn relies on salacious spectacle. Porn for the Blind is more like an Ikea instruction manual. The effect's hilarious in a way not unlike hearing a white man recite rap lyrics.
Beyond the comic value, PFTB also puts interpretive distance between the viewer and the ostensible object. We can now discuss porn, stripped of its prurience, at leisure.
Coincidentally, this phenomena was also one reason why the Two Girls One Cup reaction videos were so popular. Besides the obvious comic value of watching surprised revulsion, the response videos allowed us to discuss scat pornography without watching the originating video itself. With both 2G1C and PFTB, we're defining around something in that thing's absence. But 2G1C is oblique, not the thing but the effect of the thing. With PFTB, we're simply removing the effect altogether.
* Semiotic theoreticians, orthodox feminists, Lacanian acolytes, etc should feel free to disagree in the comments
** btw, how anachronistic is the xxx rating these days, right?
Yesterday, courtesy 
A former Broadway playwright and actress has uploaded to YouTube 
I don't normally highlight TV ads. But. 
The star of lonelygirl15 is 
Steve Bryant has been covering online media for five years. He lives in New York. 
