Opening Pandora's Box: pleasure, consent and consequence in the production and circulation of celebrity sex videos

Abstract

The celebrity sex video is now a well-established part of contemporary audiovisual culture, although it attracts little attention as a phenomenon in itself. Any attention is primarily generated by the profile of the individuals involved, in terms of their relative degrees of celebrity and previously established public persona. Despite the increasing ubiquity of the phenomenon, issues concerning the production and dissemination of these videos are more complex than may first appear. Indeed, celebrity sex video production and distribution constitutes a contemporary media practice with distinct ethical and legal implications. This article provides an analysis of celebrity sex video production as a subset of personal sexual representation and attempts to characterize some of the ethical issues involved. A range of examples is used to illustrate the intertextual and broader contextual issues arising from the material's production and circulation.