Beyond Sex: Pornographic Journalism, Violence, and Politics in Argentina’s Transition to Democracy

Abstract

After 1983, with the end of the military dictatorship and the return to democracy, nudity and sex became ubiquitous in Argentina. As society was eroticised and sexuality politicised, a debate about limits, excesses, correctness, and standards arose, in which pornography was central. In addition to the increasing production, access to, and circulation of sexually explicit materials and the debates and tensions around it, the pornographic pervaded culture in more unexpected but no less conspicuous ways during the transition to democracy. Pornography, as a disruptive genre and transgressive cultural construct, provided a flexible and dramatic allegory to address difficult and pressing subjects that were unrelated to sex. This essay examines the concepts of “pornographic journalism”, “pornocracia”, and “pornographic democracy” and explores the use of “obscene” in descriptions of the dictatorship, state repression, and the Catholic Church. The analysis shows how commentators at opposite sides of the ideological spectrum conjured the conventions, tropes, leitmotifs, and expectations of pornography to make an elaborate interpretation of those institutions and voice harsh criticism against them.