Annie Sprinkle Analysis

Annie Sprinkle’s works in the Post-porn- Modernist (1990-5) captures the workings of the sex industry as she works to desexualize it through her use of feminism and postmodern techniques. Sprinkle captures the audience in this autobiographical performance of her transformation from shy, suburban, girl Ellen to the adult film star and sex enthusiast Annie Sprinkle. As the performance develops we are able to witness her development through the industry of sex. She shares her experiences of being a sex trade worker, activist and her personal life in her various professions of; prostitute, porn star and burlesque dancer. She explores the formally taboo topic of sex and the female body most notably through her performances; public cervix announcement, 100 blow jobs, Men and women I have loved and the Bosom ballet. “Her exploration of female sexuality, sexually explicit subject mater, and use of her own body as a vehicle for, and of, investigation places her in the forefront of postmodern feminist performance,” (Anniesprinkle.org, 2014). Sprinkles controversial style allows her to perform subject matter in a unique and radical format, allowing her audience to have an experience unlike other performances.

Sprinkle’s use of compositional styles, of high and low forms of the female body, to critique modern cultural characteristics through her use of pastiche in her performance of Bosom ballet. Pastiche is the modern practice of ‘blank irony’; it relies on diversity and is used to create new meaning within a diverse society, not relying on a set norm. Sprinkles’ uses this in her performance of the “Bosom Ballet”; she blends the high-class styles of classical, music and modesty, with low class forms of sexualisation and strip tease. This...

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...r she challenges us to interpret the ideas she presents in our own way according to our own reality. Sprinkle demonstrates throughout the performance although she makes her self slightly vulnerable at times through her dialogue or actions she remains in control of the audience and makes herself vulnerable on her own terms. She displays this power of great importance to her ideas as she once again challenges our values and the values of society in concern of sex and the female body. She does this by constantly working to desexualize her self, creating a clinical image of her body, with this working to create reality that there is no shame in our bodies. Sprinkle thus uses this performance and the dramaturgical techniques I believe to encourage us to deconstruct these meanings of the female body to destroy this patriarchal and sex negative society that we live in.