Feminist Gazes in Virtual Reality: The POV Aesthetics of Pornography

This paper proposes a feminist analysis of VR pornography focusing on POV as its most recurrent stylistic model. To grasp the aesthetic complexity of POV porn, the analysis shows the diffraction of this subgenre from traditional audiovisual 2D technology through virtual reality, claiming that media discontinuity can be matched by some continuity of theoretical issues within a feminist framework. The first part of the analysis argues for the inadequacy of feminist readings crossed by reverberations of the Mulveyan theory of the male gaze, thus clearing the field for a different feminist canon able to shift theory beyond the binary opposition of an active subject facing passive objects of vision. The second part examines content and formal features of POV porn by focusing on the affective encounters between the organic and inorganic bodies of users, images and technologies within a neo-materialist framework. Finally, the paper highlights some relevant issues related to the effects of POV in VR porn that could constitute productive theoretical avenues for a feminist understanding of the aesthetic dynamics ongoing between human subjectivities, environmental images and VR material devices.