It takes about ten minutes to become a porn star these days. I should know, I set up my own webcam.
To be perfectly frank, it was simply a videolog of an empty room. Every so often, my friends would walk by the screen and things would get interesting … for half a second.
I didn’t make any money (not enough cleavage). I also didn’t solicit random strangers with my body. So, yes, I suppose it was a totally nuanced take on pornography.
Even if I didn’t use the webcam in quite the same way Jenna Jameson might have, the ease of setting up what could easily have been a haven of voyeuristic sexual expression was astounding. It’s indicative of just how much the sexual landscape of America is changing for the better.
Of course, there are certain ways of looking at the proliferation of self-produced pornography as oppressive, especially to women. Countless feminist critiques of pornography have focused on the power of the gaze: The viewers (typically men, though not always) have the power to create the identity of the women they watch behind the screen. This amounts to voyeurism, the act of receiving gratification from viewing others secretively, as a one-way interaction.
This no longer needs to be true. At the very least, it need not be looked at in such a pejorative light. We have entered an age of user-generated content ““ and thus an age of user-generated aesthetics ““ in which power can belong to the subject as well as the viewer.
In his book “Voyeur Nation,” which details America’s increasing voyeuristic culture, Clay Calvert argues that sexual voyeurism “indicates a quest on the part of audience members for reality in an increasingly mediated world.”
While he argues that this quest is misguided and violates personal privacy, he never acknowledges that the blurring of the private with the public is part of what makes sexual expression culturally significant.
What was once an impersonal, oppressive practice now becomes highly relatable and human.
This is, of course, not true of all online voyeurism. Webcam culture lends itself to certain abuses (by minors, etc.), but it also increases the transparency of such abuses.
So instead of providing a lens through which to strip away women’s rights, the use of the webcam as a mode of exhibition actually reveals the identity of those “camgirls” and “camboys” who wish to reveal themselves on that level.
This is because the agency ““ the conscious choice to transform reality into performance art ““ rests with the exhibitionist, not with the voyeur.
It’s also significant to look at the specifics of manufacturing this experience. I only had to take two steps to create my webcam world.
First, you buy the webcam (if you have a Mac, you can skip this step entirely). Then you choose “capture software,” such as Webcam32 or Evocam. All you have to do here is to check all the necessary little boxes that pop up on your screen (e.g. “Hey, I want a photo taken of me every 30 seconds,” or “No way, that’s pansy stuff, give me full-on streaming video”).
But there is also a possibility for a third option in the process, which would catapult the entire experience from oppressive voyeurism to something more akin to theater, in which the audience respects the exhibitionist for his or her performance. And then masturbates to it.
Unfortunately, the state of mainstream voyeurism on the Internet is still far from this ideal. Anyone who dry heaves whenever they hear the words “two girls” and “one cup” paired together knows that the depiction of sex on the Internet is in the sewers, quite literally. This spectacle could not be further away from enjoyment and respect.
But there is certainly room in this medium for the personal expression of sexual identity. And that possibility, in and of itself, is powerful. The increasingly personal and artistic development of a webcam culture allows for the creation of a persona that incorporates a self-worth that is sorely lacking from the current popular content.
The women and men who share their lives via webcam in both sexual and nonsexual ways create an avenue for change in our once close-minded view of voyeurism as perverse and oppressive.
It takes minimal time and effort to set up a functioning webcam, and at its best, this is a wonderfully democratic way to explore one’s sexuality with a number of willing, respectful participants.
Then again, at its worst, you have two girls and one disgusting cup.
If you’d like see round-the-clock footage of a real-live living room, e-mail Jones at cjones@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.