Trouble ahead: Pleasure, possibility and the future of queer porn

This article provides a genealogy of a recent wave of cinematic pornography and situates ‘queer porn’ at the nexus of subversive art practice, hardcore pornography and sexual and body politics. The analysis is rooted in a close reading of Courtney Trouble’s film Nostalgia (2009), contextualized within the discourses of porn studies (an area of academic focus in film studies and visual cultural studies), feminism and queer theory. The four ultimate claims are that queer porn is characterized by (1) citationality (i.e., playful references to previous porn films); (2) multiplicity and variety of bodies and genders (trans, genderqueer, modified, fat bodies); (3) perverse and alternative pleasures (e.g., female ejaculation); and (4) queer audience address and community formation.