FREE ESSAY ON PORNOVIOLENCE BY TOM WOLFE

PORNOVIOLENCE BY TOM WOLFE

Judging by your most unfavorable reactions to these conversations, I can tell that you
don?t like what you hear. Well, what you just heard were the first six paragraphs, the
introduction of Tom Wolfe?s 1976 essay entitled Pornoviolence.
This story that talks about a convention of tabloid authors begins with those banal
introductions. Wolfe felt as if names were obsolete, as the authors that submit these
stories are ?stringers? or correspondents from around the country and as a result, they
are all known by their stories? titles. 
Wolfe provides a definition of pornoviolence by distinguishing it from the ??old
pornography.?? He argues that the media previously attracted readership of magazines and
tabloids with pornography. Instead, he claims that today pornoviolence is stimulated by
violence that puts television viewers in the position of control, and he supports his
position using examples of programs that contain the pornography of violence. Basically,
he says that pornoviolence is the pornography of violence; only the weirdest, grossest
stuff would be considered as usable material.
Video games like the Mortal Kombat series, Perfect Dark, or James Bond 007 and ?slasher
flicks? such as Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
are excellent examples of gratuitous violence that have been released in the past several
years. Inadvertently, Wolfe poses a question to all of us: Do we as people evolve along
with the TV violence, or are television producers just giving us what they think we
want?