Yesterday's New York Times has an excerpt from the first chapter, "Big Red Son," of David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster. The chapter is about the adult film industry. Wallace writes: "The thing to recognize is that the adult industry's new respectability creates a paradox. The more acceptable in modern culture it becomes, the farther porn will have to go in order to preserve the sense of unacceptability that's so essentially to its appeal." He adds: "Whether or not it ever actually gets there, it's clear that the real horizon late-90's porn is heading towards is the Snuff Film. It's also clear--w/ all moral and cultural issues totally aside--that this is an extremely dangerous direction for the adult-film industry to have to keep moving in. " And, he concludes: "At this point, anyway, porn's own internal contradictions (e.g., constantly offending mainstream values ---> the billions of $ that attend mainstream popularity) look to be the industry's most dangerous enemy."
