Where to begin?
I have to confess that I’m feeling a little unsure where to begin with this blog. See, Tony’s got the whole burning hellfire zealotry thing going (and yeah, he’s like that at home too!) which… I don’t quite share. In fact, if I had to describe in one word, my feelings on the subject of porn*, it would be “ambivalent.”
I don’t find most porn offensive nearly so much as baffling. Shuttling through an award-nominated gonzo release with Tony not long ago, the thought actually crossed my mind that I might be an alien from another planet. Seriously. It would go a long way toward explaining how utterly removed and distant I feel from the portrayals of sexuality I see in the world around me.
I just don’t get it.
Since getting involved in Comstock Films with Tony, and learning more about the technical aspects of production, it’s become easier to see some of the things common to porn that build toward that reaction. Sometimes we pick things apart like John Madden with a telestrater — Tony will pause a DVD mid-scene and we’ll play “what’s wrong with this picture” (it’s a really sad commentary on the state of porn that I find that much more entertaining than anything happening between the performers grunting and banging away on the screen.)
And while it’s helpful to have some handle on the more concrete, or technical aspects of what’s lacking in porn, I know that those things are merely physical manifestations, symptomatic of a far deeper and more entrenched problem with how we as a culture deal with sexuality. I don’t really mean that in a flaky utopian “oh, if only we could all just grow up and be enlightened and shit” way, either.
I’m not entirely sure what I mean by it, frankly. Maybe I’ll use this blog to try and figure it out.
*I’m talking about moving image porn, now, not written smut which I quite often love — but that’s another post for another time.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Hi Peggy
This is my first comment in this blog… nice to read your thoughts.
You’re asking one of The Big Questions About Porn, which is:
Why does mainstream porn suck so badly?
It’s a question that I often wonder about. It think part of the problem is the cyclic, chicken-and-egg issue of “what do the punters want”? The producers think the customers want cheap, dodgy, stupid porn because they buy it. The customers buy it because that’s all there is. Around it goes.
I also think much of the porn industry is stuck in a creative vacuum. It reuses cliches invented 20 years ago and when innovation does occur, it’s usually as part of the “race to the bottom” theory of “harder, nastier, crueler, more extreme.”
I think you guys and the various online indie people are part of the circuit breaker. At least, I hope so. The optimistic part of me still likes to believe that the mass porn consuming public will gladly accept positive, sensual, realistic, non-sexist erotica if they can find it.
At least, that’s what I think on a good day. Don’t ask me my dark thoughts when I see how well “trick the girl into sex” reality sites are doing…
March 30th, 2006 at 5:26 am
“I will accept anything in the theatre . . . provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home.” Noel Coward
I feel a bit like Noel. Or I start worrying that something’s broken and doesn’t work any more when I have absolutely no sexual reaction to folks fucking on film.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Well, yeah, right? The assumption becomes that there must be something wrong with you. Because there’s all this stuff out there — it strains credulity that it’s all really that bad. How could there continue to be a market? And yet…
March 30th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Thanks! I have fond memories of editing your quote to put on the cover art of Xana & Dax.
As to the chicken and egg nature of the porn biz — definitely yes. People are desperate enough (and shamed enough) to buy whatever crap is available because clearly there is a hunger for explicit material. It just seems amazing to me that so much of it is so, so bad.
I too hope that there is a little underground brewing, and I’d be happy to be part of it. Let’s hope so anyway, huh? The alternative is too sad to think about.