Have you every noticed that talking/debating about porn is (mostly) more engaging than actually watching it?

Anyway, Ms. Naughty, just back from bushwalking and wine-guzzling has added her two cents to the porn/blowjob/feminism debate in a post entitled Boring Blowjobs and Feminist Facials. This is the part that jumped out at me:

“Can a facial ever be “feminist”? My answer is yes. As always, context is everything.”

I agree. Context is everything. I’d even go as far as saying context is the only thing. Porn is often criticized for being fake and/or lacking context, but this is utterly untrue.

Porn is vividly real and hypercontextual. The very essence of photographic pornography is the depiction of actual sex, and it doesn’t get more “real” than two people actually fucking.

The problem is that (overwhelmingly) the reality depicted and the context in which it’s placed is utterly unappealing if not downright offensive. But when it comes to photographic images of sex, like the words “porn” and “feminism”, “reality” and “context” are at least as slippery.

Is “reality” the degree to which the viewer becomes engrossed in the narrative conceit of the film, or does “reality” extend to how well the narrative conceit jibes with the particulars of the production?

Similarly, is context limited to the moment when the house lights go down to the final fade to back? Or does it include the director’s Q&A after, or the Behind-The-Scene on the DVD? Or how about an e-mail exchange between the film’s director and a disappointed viewer? This is a post I made back in September of 2005 entitled Real Porn (No, Really):

Two days ago I received a note from a fellow who, although he liked many things about Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax, was rather disappointed that both love scenes ended with external ejaculation. Here’s a bit from his note (used by permission):

These videos have what I have been looking for that is missing from the usual “porn” videos with one exception. You claim that these represent real sex but in both cases the man pulled out prior to cuming and we were shown proof that he came…

Maybe these couples actually have sex in this way but I doubt it. If they do I suggest using some couples who do not as well. This was a particular issue in the Xana & Dax video where he spent some time masturbating himself to climax. Why miss out on the wonderful sensations of being in your woman before cuming unless you are not able to do so for some reason. That, to a large extent, ruined the movie for me.

Also, my wife does not often watch explicit videos because she misses the loving relationship aspect of sex that makes it good for her. There is much in these movies that I suspect she would enjoy but I am sure she would be put off by this as well. She has made similar comments about other explicit videos.

He was also concerned that this might also be the case in Matt & Khym, which he had on pre-order. I wrote back:

Dear XXX,

Thank you for your thoughtful e-mail. It very succinctly addresses some of the vagaries of shooting sex scenes of people having unscripted and and undirected sex. With your permission I’d very much like to use your letter in an upcoming blog post. FYI, Matt and Khym’s love scene ends with Matt ejaculating inside of Khym. No particular effort is made to “prove” that he ejaculated, but afterwards Khym does reach down to catch a little on her finger and taste it.

Yours,
Tony Comstock

This seemed to (mostly) satisfy his concerns:

From your response I take it that Xana & Dax and Marie & Jack choose to handle the men’s ejaculation without any direction or suggestions. If so I wonder if that is how they normally have sex or if they did it that way because they thought that it might be expected, maybe from watching “normal porn”. You might want to make it clearer to those you film that they don’t have to do things differently, especially that.

I am not complaining if that is normal for them. It just seemed faked because of the way men’s ejaculation is handled in most porn.

The “might make it clearer” comment reminds me of the conversation I had with Desiree in the weeks prior to shooting her and her husband Ben.

“Oh, so you don’t want him to cum all over my face then?” she asked in response to my saying I just wanted them do have nice normal natural sex.

“Um well,” I stuttered, ” I don’t want you to do something you don’t enjoy when it’s just the two of you just because the camera is there, or because you think we want or need you to do something like that.”

“Oh no. I love having Ben blow on my face. I think it’s great, we do it all the time!”

“Well okay then. Please don’t let our being there inhibit you!” (It didn’t. Desiree had three orgasms that were very nearly disturbing in their intensity.)

Meanwhile, a tempest in a teapot seems to be swirling over similar question about what is and isn’t real over at SuicideGirls.com. Between kids, station wagon, suburban tract house, and a BMI of 26, I’m not really an alt kind of guy, (and even when I was young and broke and played my guitar too loud, I still wasn’t wasn’t an alt kind of guy) so I don’t really know that much about SuicideGirls, besides the fact that the chicks have downtown hairstyles, tats and piercing, and the photography style tends toward the deep focus/small focal plane style that I don’t really dig.

I do know what I thought I knew about SG, which was that I thought it was some hip, alternaporn site, run by technologically empowered female scenesters who were using the internet and cheap digital cameras to deconstruct the traditional pin-up. Okay, that’s cool in concept, even if I don’t really dig it as art, let alone as stroke material. Now it turns out that maybe SG is just some site run by some guy who’s making money off a lot of 18 year old girls’ yearnings to be a little less anonymous in the celebrity-obsessed world that we inhabit. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite so hip.

So what’s it all about, Alfie?

Back during that internet thing, people would sometimes say, “Content is king,” and the inflection they used seemed to indicate they thought they were offering a pearl of wisdom. Well here’s my pearl of wisdom, at least when it comes to making sex films: Context is king. Context is king, and when you use ‘reality’ as your conceit you walk a fine line. Most audiences are sophisticated enough to know that “the truth” is not the same thing as what you would have seen if you were on the set that day. But they’re also sensitive enough to know when the “reality” you try and present is too far way from what they would have felt if they had been on the set.

I don’t know what the “truth” is about SuicideGirls. The truth about Comstock Films is that all the way along there is a conspiracy between me and the couple I’m working with to present a very idealized portrait of their sexual relationship. It’s no more (or less) real than the nightly news or a novel.

Before their scene I asked Matt and Khym how they intended to enjoy Matt’s orgasm (experience has taught me not to assume that a “real couple” doesn’t enjoy the “so fake” external pop shot). When they told me that he was going to cum inside of her, I made a couple of suggestions for how we could visually signal the audience “yes, it really did happen.” The result can be seen in that lovely Comstock Films button that Mrs.C made for us.

Does that ruin it for you? I hope not.

As a director my ideal is that everything that an audience needs to know to enjoy one of my films should be presented within the confines of the film itself. If any information from “outside the frame” enhances the enjoyment the film, that’s fine, but the film itself should be the essential experience. If a viewer is on the fence until I’ve explained my intentions at the Q&A, or they seen everyone goofing off and having a good time in the BTS, or been given my assurances that it was “real” in a private e-mail exchange, then in my mind, the film has failed that viewer.

But film is first and foremost a commercial undertaking, so as a producer and marketeer, I recognize that creating and shaping an external context for our work is an essential part of the art and business of making films. “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex”; that’s the “frame” with in which we present our “erotic documentaries.” (Of course “erotic documentaries” is yet another frame.)

But for all the effort we put into framing our work, there’s a limit to how much control we have over the context in which our films are understood. By my reckoning, at the very most even a filmmaker like Steven Speilberg only has control over 49% of how any given viewer sees and understands one of his films.

I work on the assumption that I have even less control, so a lot of my effort goes into being mindful of vast space into which viewers will pour their own understanding and life experiences, and recognizing that each viewer is going to create their own context, based on their own understanding of sex, relationships, and pleasure.

Sometimes this works.

A day after last week’s post about porn, feminism and blowjobs I got a note from a freelance writer who wanted to talk to me about porn, feminism, and blowjobs. I did my usual self-important rambly thing, which (for the unfortunate recipient) is sort of like being in my head while I’m writing a blog post, but before I’ve done any editing. I think I kept her on the phone for damn near an hour. One of the things I said was, “There’s no such thing as a feminist symphony.”

A couple days later, on a doc forum, I came across a link to the embarrassing case of Joyce Hatto, who, in the Autumn of her career, along with her husband foisted a fraud upon the classical music world by stealing recordings from talented but unknown musicians and then releasing them as her own:

“It seemed almost too good to be true, and in the end it was. A conscientious pianist who had enjoyed an active if undistinguished career in London falls ill and retreats to a small town. Here she undertakes a project to record virtually the entire standard classical repertoire. Her recordings, CDs made when she was in her late 60s and 70s, are staggering, showing a masterful technique, a preternatural ability to adapt to different styles and a depth of musical insight hardly seen elsewhere.”

Of course it was all a lie, and every word that every fawning critic wrote relating any of Ms. Hatto’s biographical particulars to what they (thought) they heard in the music was bullshit:

“The Joyce Hatto episode is a stern reminder of the importance of framing and background in criticism. Music isn’t just about sound; it is about achievement in a larger human sense. If you think an interpretation is by a 74-year-old pianist at the end of her life, it won’t sound quite the same to you as if you think it’s by a 24-year-old piano-competition winner who is just starting out. Beyond all the pretty notes, we want creative engagement and communication from music, we want music to be a bridge to another personality. Otherwise, we might as well feed Chopin scores into a computer.

“This makes instrumental criticism a tricky business. I’m personally convinced that there is an authentic, objective maturity that I can hear in the later recordings of Rubinstein. This special quality of his is actually in the music, and is not just subjectively derived from seeing the wrinkles in the old man’s face. But the Joyce Hatto episode shows that our expectations, our knowledge of a back story, can subtly, or perhaps even crudely, affect our aesthetic response.”

—–

Peggy and I are both big fans of the movie SUMMER OF SAM, and I’d be lying if I said that knowing it was made by a black man has no effect on how I understand the film, on my aesthetic response, on my emotional response.

We’re also big fans of the TV show THE WIRE. But I’m not so clear on how knowing the series is the brainchild of two white men effects my experience as a viewer. Maybe that’s because there’s nothing unusual about a white man at the helm of a movie or TV show.

In either case, when I watch SUMMER OF SAM or an episode of THE WIRE I am powerfully moved by my understanding of these artists’ (Spike Lee, David Simon, Ed Burns) sensitivity; by their ability to listen, by their ablity to hear, by their courage, by their compassion.

Imagine a world… where erotic films don’t offend, but arouse. Where orgasms are real and filmmakers are independent. Self Serve has curated a collection of filmmakers who aren’t afraid to keep it real, when mainstream porn fails to satisfy. Pornotopia showcases sex on the big screen that is healthy, tender, raw, real and beautiful. In Pornotopia sex is fun, everyone gets off, and pleasure is paramount.

Friday, November 30th
(Assorted shorts from Libido films will be shown throughout the evening.)

7:00pm Annie Sprinkles Amazing World of Orgasms

8:30pm Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract
Director: Tony Comstock

10:00 pm and 12 midnight
The Alibi’s Midnight Movie Madness presents:
Disco Dolls in Hot Skin: A 3D Classic Porn!

Saturday, December 1st

4:00pm The Pain Game description
Director: Cleo Dubois
& Selections from Zeus Productions

6:00pm Talk to Me Baby: A Lovers’ Guide to Dirty Talk & Role Play description
Director: Shar Rednour

7:30pm Herstory of Porn: Reel to Real description
Director: Annie Sprinkle

9:15pm Superfreak description
Director: Shine L. Houston

10:30pm The Alibi’s Midnight Movie Madness presents:
Disco Dolls & Hot Skin: A 3D Classic Porn!

Sunday, December 2nd

4:00pm Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together
Director: Tony Comstock

5:30pm Urban Friction
Libido Films Director: Jack Hafferkamp

7:00pm Hot and Bothered
Feminist Pornography Director: Becky Goldberg
& How to Fuck in High Heels
Produced by: S.I.R. Video
Director: Jackie Strano

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER
As a part of the Cinekink Passion Plays Program
Friday, November 30 9PM
Leather Archives & Museum
6418 N. Greenview Avenue
Chicago, IL 60626
773.761.9200

Last Summer, while Peggy was on her way back from the Second Annual Feminist Porn Award, I started working on a post tentatively entitled “What Do Pornography and Feminism Have In Common, Part 3″.

I started writing it because I was genuinely surprised that MATT AND KHYM received an award. The previous year we had already had our turn at the podium for a heterosexual title, so felt sure if we were going to get an award for anything, it was going to be for DAMON AND HUNTER.

I stopped writing because I didn’t want to seem like an ingrate, and I really didn’t know where I was going to go with the post, other than to say that the criteria for “feminist porn” at The Feminist Porn Awards pretty much disqualified all of the erotic work that my wife and most of her women friends enjoy.

I started in on it again because of things I read on Petra Joy’s Blog, Erika Lust’s Blog, and Audacia Ray’s Blog about blowjobs, pornography, and feminism.

It was a long post, quoting liberally from the chapter “Seeing Around the Edge of the Frame” in Walter Murch’s book IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE. But once again I’ve shelved it.

Again I can’t explain exactly why, except to say that there’s nothing wrong with talking about why or how a filmmaker makes the films they make, but intentions and agendas only go so far.

If you’re a writer, the words have to make it onto the page; if you’re a painter, the paint has to make it onto the canvas; and if you’re a filmmaker, you’ve got to put it on the screen.

As far as blowjobs go, my understanding of feminism is that one of its central tenents is that a woman should be free to enjoy anything a man is free to enjoy. With that in mind, here are Damon and Hunter, talking about sucking dicks:

From DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER

A quick heads-up on an upcoming screening of ASHLEY AND KISHA

ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT
Amsterdam Alternative Erotic Film Festival
Sunday, November 18, 8PM
Cinema OT301,
Overtoom 301,
1054 HW Amsterdam

Our thanks to Jennifer Lyon Bell for inviting our film to screen!

Well something is definately up.

On November 7th, the day after I posted Real Sex, Nina Hartley, and the Googlebot, our Google-driven traffic dropped by 40%, and has stayed there for the last week.

Okay, fine. No one, not even Comstock Films is entitled to high Google rankings.

But while our overall Google traffic has dropped by 40% in the last week, our visitors on the search [nina hartley] have doubled, and that’s on top of the ~400% increase reported in my first post. In fact, [nina hartley] is now our #2 search term, outranking [real sex] or even [tony comstock]. (Meanwhile, our visitors on the search [real sex] have virtually dried up altogether.)

I’m not happy about losing our [real sex] visitors; they were among our best search related customers (second best actually.) But I’m even less happy seeing that once again, Google seems to be dicking around with their sex-related search just ahead of the holiday season, and in there dicking around, they seem to have come up with a picture of our site that just isn’t accurate. We’re getting visitors we shouldn’t get, and people who are probably looking for exactly what we offer are getting sent somewhere else.

I’m a filmmaker, but I am also a merchant, and like any other merchant, this is an important time of year for us. In the last year we’ve done a lot to be less dependent on search-driven sales to make ends meet, but those sales are still an important part of how we’re able to pay our bills. A 40% drop in Google-driven visitors can’t be good for us, and could be very bad.

I spent the weekend in Indianapolis at the 50th annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Mostly it was a very excellent time, with a very good reception for our work. But one thing happened that left me disturbed.

Many of the people who I spoke with were professors who taught sexually or researched aspects of sexuality in a university setting, and several of them were interested in our films, either for use in their classrooms, or in their experiments. This included a professor from an Oklahoma university, who himself was at the conference to present a paper on BDSM.

“I’d really love to use your films in my class, but penetration is illegal in Oklahoma.”

This is the second time in a month that I’ve heard this.

The first time was last month at a trade-show in Las Vegas. A woman who owns a lingerie shop was at our booth, delighted by what she saw.

“Do your films have penetration?” she asked.

“Of course they do. Our films are about sex.”

“Oh, then I can’t carry them. Penetration is illegal in Oklahoma. If you stick your tongue in someone’s ear and it’s sexual, it’s illegal in Oklahoma.”

Of course this is nonsense. Legislators in Oklahoma can no more outlaw the photographic depiction of sexual penetration than they can outlaw the photographic depiction of blue shirts.

Yet apparently they have.

There is variety of expression not seen as worthy of First Amendment protection – obscenity. Throughout the Twentieth Century, what is and is not obscenity has been the subject of a number of Supreme Court decisions, the last being the 1973 case of Miller v. California. With regard to what sort of sexually explicit expression is not protected by the First Amendment, Miller v. California is the law of the land, and defines obscenity by a three-pronged test.

A work is considered obscene, and therefore may be suppressed by the government if:

The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

And

The work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.

And

The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.

What that means is that if a jury decides the answer to any one of these three questions is “no”, then the work is not obscene, and if it’s not obscene than the state of Oklahoma has no power to suppress the distribution of the work.

In theory.

In practice, the threat of an obscenity prosecution is enough to prevent work from being seen, even films recently described as, “Perhaps the most cinematic and pro-social depictions of sexual behavior ever produced.” (You gotta love how sex scientists talk!)

The simple fact is that the Oklahoma professor I talked to this weekend is afraid that if he uses our films in his classroom, he’ll go to jail. The Oklahoma shopkeeper we talked to is afraid that if she offers our films to her customers she’ll go to jail. And that fear is enough to keep people from seeing our films in the Sooner State.

Last year I got e-mail from a reporter who said she wrote for a British newspaper called The Metro. Never having heard of it, I was cautious when I talked with the reporter, and didn’t expect much.

But it turned out The Metro prints about two million copies of each edition and is read by about five million people each day. After the article ran orders from the UK picked up substantially.

Last week another Metro reporter got in touch, wanting to know my take on YouPorn, and how budding internet exhibitionist could put their best foot (tit?) forward. This time the communication was entirely through e-mail, and it offers a good chance to compare what I wrote with what made it into print. Here’s what I wrote:

Tony Comstock’s Tips for Putting Your Homemade Smut Online

Keep these things in mind and you can make pics and vids that are dirty fun, not dirty stupid. And if someday in the future someone tries do get down on you for it, you can say “Yeah, that’s me. I’m having sex. And don’t I look good!”

This is what made into the article titled I Spy with My Little Eye:

Want to look good on camera? Erotic filmmaker Tony Comstock shares his top tips:

*Smile! The most consistently sexy thing a person can do is smile. Yes, pouty can be oh-so- sexy, but an authentic smile shows you’re having fun. it also gives a feeling of reality to the images that commercial porn doesn’t have.

It’s a simple fact of life that these sorts of things get edited for length and style, and overall I’m happy with how The Metro distilled what I said (though I do with they had got more of the gist of my primping tips. I was talking about making sure you don’t have spinach in your teeth more than making sure your twat is well-groomed.)

But it doesn’t always turn out this way. Last month I had a go around with a magazine that had given us some great coverage last year, and came back for “tips” on an upcoming sex article. The magazine wanted me to be their “expert” on how couples might move from smoothly from position to position.

My first thought was “no.” I’m a filmmaker, maybe even an expert in making a certain kind of sex film, but I’m no sort of bedroom advisor. But it’s publicity, right? So I reconsidered and decided that after 10+ years of watching people have sex, and ten years of editing loving-making with special attention to “transition continuity” I might have some useful things to say about how to get position to position smoothly. My underlying theme was (big surprise) don’t worry too much about it.

Big mistake.

When the magazine’s fact-checker showed me “my tips”, not only was it like they had been written by someone else in terms of style, most of the tips completely contradicted what I had said. I referred them back to the original text, but to no avail. The upshot was that I got a terse note from the managing editor that they had found a different “expert” to sign off on the article.

Oh well.

Dealing with “the press” can be a funny thing. On one hand, good press coverage is vital to a small company’s success. Good press relation is the marketing budget at a place like Comstock Films. On the otherhand, there is sometimes an odd expectation that the little guy (that would be us) will be willing to do anything to get in a magazine, or get on TV. Often times there’s a strong feeling that the article is already written, or the “documentary” segment is already cut, now there’s just trying to find some faces to put on their preconceptions. (TV people are by far the worst. We’ve had very odd encounters with HBO, the BBC, and the CBC.)

But what good is it to be on TV or in a magazine if the picture they want to paint isn’t you, isn’t your work, isn’t something you’d be proud to put your name on? So you learn to say no. You think about the spike in sales that came with the last bit of national coverage, then you remind yourself that who you are and what you do got you where you are today, and you say no.

Unless it’s the right time to say yes.

“a love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes… it allows me to burst into tears of pity and love at some slight word…while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red cunt…All I have written above is only a moment or two of brutal madness. The last drop of seed has hardly been squirted up your cunt before it is over and my true love for you, the love of my verses, the love of my eyes for your strange luring eyes, comes blowing over my soul like a wind of spices.”

Guess who?