Erotic fiction almost seems worse because people write shit with minors involved (Harry Potter &c).
I'd rather people write about that stuff than have children in front of the camera. Child/teen porn is out there, and there's no way to stop it 100%, so at least the text is entirely fictional.
"if you want people to enjoy themselves you probably have to be paying better wages and treating people better and having health care for employees and if you do all that, then you probably aren't making porn."
The "looks like they are enjoying this" is out there though it is relatively scarce. I think this is because looking comfortable and having fun on camera requires acting, a very rare talent. Meanwhile, any fool with a camera can record a 15 minute video and sell it or post it online for many thousands of hits to their site.
The reason hardcore porn videos are everywhere today is because they are available for free.
I've always thought the right kind of full-on erotica: beautiful people, brilliant acting, great scripts, could be totally revolutionary and theoretically sustainable. Pretty hard to organize though.
Regarding "for the ladies" and "how could porn not be relentlessly ugly and dumb?", Susie Bright's blog is a good place to engage an informed sex-positive radical feminist/queer/omnivorous conversation. This thread has reminded me how much I have admired her work and I think I'm going to add her podcast and blog to my weekly media mix.
i have been meaning to post in this thread for awhile, but then i get distracted by all the porn on the internets! (just joking. mostly)
but i have an interesting vantage point. I WAS ONCE BRIEFLY EMPLOYED BY THE PORN INDUSTRY. as an editor. true story- a local porn company contacted me years ago (i think it was 2001) in desperate need of an editor. they had a bunch of videos needing to be finished and were in a pinch. i charged them a bundle! it was a great two week job, but then once i got them caught up they went back to their usual slow, and cheaper, editor. BUT ANYWAYS- during those two weeks i edited 5 different movies. two of them were 'real couples' made for female audiences. the other 3 were 'barely legal' teens in their rooms either masturbating or having lesbian experiences with their friends. IT WAS ALL VERY WEIRD. the company was owned by a woman and based out of a McMansion down in West Linn.
the real couple/made for the ladies porn was wacky. it was in fact real couples- found via ads in the back of the Willamette Week and paid $2,000 a 'session.' They came in beautiful and confident, but it was pretty obvious from the raw footage that i saw (i was not present at any of the shoots!) that these 'real people' were super nervous. in one video the guy was so nervous he couldn't get an erection, and his girlfriend got mad at him! it was all very forced and uncomfortable, but the producer commended my ability to understand what the ladies wanted (very sensual, full body, lots of touching and hugging and less pounding close-ups.) - whether this porn was in fact enjoyed by ladies i don't really know, but i trust this female producer knew the market better then me.
J's comment above about acting is pretty much spot-on. acting is really difficult regardless, and i suppose the number of beautiful bodied people who are willing to have sex on camera AND happen to be excellent actors is very few. couple that with the overall challenges of making a decent movie and you can see why so much bad porn is out there. but there is good erotica out there, just look for all those lusty dramas that have been slapped with NC17 ratings. The Lover is a good example- beautiful people getting in on in a serious way, but in a movie that was also nominated for a couple Oscars.
also- are you all aware of xtube? it is essentially an x-rated version of youtube where people upload their homemade porns and related videos. it is not a place to find quality porn (or very attractive people for that matter) but iit is a pretty fascinating 'step' in this whole evolution of online pornography and social networking. it appears there really is a large population out there who wants to produce pornography for reasons other than monetary gain.
(I am enjoying this conversation very much, learning many things and challenging my assumptions/thoughts on this thorny topic, also have to give props to BMA for mentioning The Lover. Henry & June is another high-production value NC-17 classic)
i think nervousness doing something that you want to do is totally appealing and nervousness doing something that you'd clearly rather not be doing is totally not sexy. My very limited exposure to commercial straight porn seems to suggest there's a lot of the latter.
also, who was the weird naked lady on seattle cable access who would get naked and lip sync to tom petty?
this is very very true. many of the early Edison Kinoscopes were naked ladies, and even Edward "Grandfather of Motion Pictures" Muybridge succumbed- after essentially discovering the secret to 'moving pictures' with his horse studies series, Muybridge made several nudie movies. Come to think of it, I believe Muybridge may just have made the first porn flick!
@Kdawg, you must be thinking of GODDESSKring. One of Seattle's most recognizable volunteer public access cable producers from the late- 1980's to the mid-00's. I have a genuine fondness for the half dozen or so people who went deeply into this medium in our town. I suppose every community had/has these dedicated video travelers. In Seattle, the stand outs for me were Shannon Kringen / GODDESSKring, Richard Lee "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?", Reverend Bruce Howard, Mike Hunt, Spud Goodman, and the Gays for Jesus guy.
More evidence of the formidable social power of the lens.
what's that one porn girl who has the noise band and was in that one movie? the porn ive seen her in is really intense shit, like gangbang choking four dicks in the butt at the same time type nasty-ass shit where yr like "woah". like who would ever want to be the subject of that kind of shit that person must be totally fucked up in life and got coerced and must be like some sort of drug addict or some shit to let this happen to them man this is so sad. boner killer. but then she's like got a twitter that is all about like intellectual stuff and she's "actually a smart, aware person" who just happens to like getting filmed being totally brutally fucked? and then she tried to be an actress? i never saw the movie. or heard her band.
Tried to watch the movie (by which I am sure you mean The Girlfriend Experience). Bo-ring. That even though Soderbergh is one of my favorite directors.
Y'all check out this trailer for a porno that has absolutely nothing NSFW in it. It's like it's going to be a normal movie but I guess some humping scenes will be in the full thing?
Comments
good call
The reason hardcore porn videos are everywhere today is because they are available for free.
I've always thought the right kind of full-on erotica: beautiful people, brilliant acting, great scripts, could be totally revolutionary and theoretically sustainable. Pretty hard to organize though.
Regarding "for the ladies" and "how could porn not be relentlessly ugly and dumb?", Susie Bright's blog is a good place to engage an informed sex-positive radical feminist/queer/omnivorous conversation. This thread has reminded me how much I have admired her work and I think I'm going to add her podcast and blog to my weekly media mix.
but i have an interesting vantage point. I WAS ONCE BRIEFLY EMPLOYED BY THE PORN INDUSTRY. as an editor. true story- a local porn company contacted me years ago (i think it was 2001) in desperate need of an editor. they had a bunch of videos needing to be finished and were in a pinch. i charged them a bundle! it was a great two week job, but then once i got them caught up they went back to their usual slow, and cheaper, editor. BUT ANYWAYS- during those two weeks i edited 5 different movies. two of them were 'real couples' made for female audiences. the other 3 were 'barely legal' teens in their rooms either masturbating or having lesbian experiences with their friends. IT WAS ALL VERY WEIRD. the company was owned by a woman and based out of a McMansion down in West Linn.
the real couple/made for the ladies porn was wacky. it was in fact real couples- found via ads in the back of the Willamette Week and paid $2,000 a 'session.' They came in beautiful and confident, but it was pretty obvious from the raw footage that i saw (i was not present at any of the shoots!) that these 'real people' were super nervous. in one video the guy was so nervous he couldn't get an erection, and his girlfriend got mad at him! it was all very forced and uncomfortable, but the producer commended my ability to understand what the ladies wanted (very sensual, full body, lots of touching and hugging and less pounding close-ups.) - whether this porn was in fact enjoyed by ladies i don't really know, but i trust this female producer knew the market better then me.
J's comment above about acting is pretty much spot-on. acting is really difficult regardless, and i suppose the number of beautiful bodied people who are willing to have sex on camera AND happen to be excellent actors is very few. couple that with the overall challenges of making a decent movie and you can see why so much bad porn is out there. but there is good erotica out there, just look for all those lusty dramas that have been slapped with NC17 ratings. The Lover is a good example- beautiful people getting in on in a serious way, but in a movie that was also nominated for a couple Oscars.
http://www.retronaut.co/2012/01/exotic-dancers-1890s/
(I am enjoying this conversation very much, learning many things and challenging my assumptions/thoughts on this thorny topic, also have to give props to BMA for mentioning The Lover. Henry & June is another high-production value NC-17 classic)
also, who was the weird naked lady on seattle cable access who would get naked and lip sync to tom petty?
this is very very true. many of the early Edison Kinoscopes were naked ladies, and even Edward "Grandfather of Motion Pictures" Muybridge succumbed- after essentially discovering the secret to 'moving pictures' with his horse studies series, Muybridge made several nudie movies. Come to think of it, I believe Muybridge may just have made the first porn flick!
More evidence of the formidable social power of the lens.
"I like all types of porn, except rap and country."
Also, I liked the smoothie joke, but now I can't remember it.
I missed Mikey K.
the porn ive seen her in is really intense shit, like gangbang choking four dicks in the butt at the same time type nasty-ass shit where yr like "woah". like who would ever want to be the subject of that kind of shit that person must be totally fucked up in life and got coerced and must be like some sort of drug addict or some shit to let this happen to them man this is so sad. boner killer.
but then she's like got a twitter that is all about like intellectual stuff and she's "actually a smart, aware person" who just happens to like getting filmed being totally brutally fucked? and then she tried to be an actress?
i never saw the movie. or heard her band.