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Click me baby! oh yeah, right there! orgasmic groan

09:33 / 17.02.04

I'm headed to bed now, but I thought I'd see if I could get this started and see if anyones picked up on it tommorow.
Bearing in mind that this is just personal opinion based on my own experience.
So.

I have a confession to make.
I have, as has been rumoured, watched porn in the past.
Not only that, I think that pornography is great, but for one tiny problem.

It's all crap.

I have not seen one good porn film.

WHY are porno's so CRAP ?
I wouldn't have thought that it'd be possible, but somehow the world managed to screw up the porn industry.
HOW?
WHAT is the point of the money shot? I appreciate that some people enjoy watching that, fine with me, but
WHO decided that it had to be in every film?
WHERE did it all go wrong?
WHEN did something as fabulous as sex get made so cut and dry?

Okay, so they work in some areas, but they fall completely flat on others. It all just feels so sexless. And given that there's people fucking on the screen, I think that somethings obviously gone WRONG. Howcome, after centuries, we've ended up with this?

Thoughts, theorys, jokes, all is welcome.

09:54 / 17.02.04

What porn are you watching? The way you're talking about it seems to suggest that you think there's only one "porn industry". Try seeking out pornography made by smaller, independent studios/organizations. I can't recommend anything specific, because I don't watch video porn, but other people might be able to come up with some links: I know that, for example, there's a website thru which you can order videos showing, like, "real couples" having "real sex", which would probably be pretty different from videos produced by "the porn industry": particularly because the conditions of production are completely different, with the 'actors' having a say in what happens and how.

And actually I think the conditions of production are pretty important to the content/variety/structure of porn. Drucilla Cornell, in an interview in the journal parallax (which isn't available online unless your institution has a subscription, which by the way it should otherwise parallax will fold) says that "porn would look different once porn sets are unionized".

A unionized porn set would lay bare the imaginary figures of the feminine that must be present to 'prop up' the phallic agenda of the white heterosexual porn films produced by the mainstream porn industry. (Hence, perhaps, fewer money shots?

)

10:33 / 17.02.04

I haven't seen any of them (honest) but I did read an article in a fanzine called "Sheer Filth" a while ago about the films La Ciccolnia (sp?) - you know the one, Italian MP, married to Jeff Koons etc - and some of the film she had made with a certain producer. They sounded a lot more interesting and creative than yer average wankathon, playing around with SM themes and and lots of creative sets and imagery - thousands of feathers being blown all over silk sheets at the erm, "high point", being one bit I remember. The guy who wrote the article had crossed over to Amsterdam to see them.

I saw a couple of great films at the Scala many moons ago with porn elements in them - one was George Kuchar's "Thundercrack" the other was "Cafe Flesh" - both really bizarre and quirky. "Thudercrack" is a weirdo haunted house style comedy (that so doesn't do it justice), Cafe Flesh is set in a post-apocalytic future where radiation posioning means only 1% of the population can have sex, and they have to perform for the others. I wasn't aware the latter had porn in it until they started going at it full frontal, quite a surprise when you see it on the big screen, let me tell you.

I'm sure there are a few more creative examples out there, esp. with the boom in porn in the last couple of 10 years or so. As to why "the industry" produces such cliched crap, well, it's that word, isn't it - when you industralise anything, individuality and creativity starts to get washed out (and no, I'm not trying to start a high/low culture debate here before Fly and all the pop kids jump on me), and when it's something as potentially crude as mastubatory stimuli, I'm not surprised that standards aren't that high.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

12:06 / 17.02.04

WHAT is the point of the money shot?

I'm hurtin' Severanti. I'm hurtin' real bad.

12:13 / 17.02.04

Ha! before i checked yr user name there, i thought you ws refering to the infamous Chris Morris/Jam 'Gush' sketch.....

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

12:20 / 17.02.04

I am not sure which porn you have been watching; but it does seem that after someone has been in that business for a while (1-2 years), they start looking tired and fed up with the while thing. They begin to look like they aren't really enjoying it, that probably comes from working so much. Most of the famous porn stars film hundreds of movies in a year or two. If I had to have that much sex, whether I felt like it or not, it would start to become mechanical. Not to say I wouldn't like to have that much sex, I just think that the jobbishness of the whole thing would wear on one after a while.

Try getting away from the large mainstream companies and check out some of the smaller companies. While the production value may not be quite as good, they will have fresher stars and amateurs who appear as if they are actually enyoying what they are doing.

16:07 / 17.02.04

A friend of mine rents porn from a women's sex shop (made by women, for women)... I've never asked, but I assume it's less money shot and etc. nastiness... might be what you're looking for?

17:54 / 17.02.04

"Thundercrack"

holy shit, thats an awesome name for a porn movie... i only hope its about some kinda lady thor, and not some flatulent lothario.

21:35 / 17.02.04

Severanti -

What would constitute a good porn movie for you?

21:52 / 17.02.04

What would constitute a good porn movie for you?

I was just thinking the same thing. I would think that would be even more subjective than any other judgements about what a good movie was - people agree on matters of plot and pacing and so on at times, but few people agree on the details of their sexual fetishes, and that's going to have an impact.

Perhaps the porn industry has an interest in making films boring? I was reading True Porn Clerk Stories yesterday, and she talks about how the customers went wild for "New Porn Day". You don't want to make the films too interesting, otherwise people will just watch them again and again and there'll be no new demand.

You could say the same thing about mainstream cinema really.

23:03 / 17.02.04

>>What would constitute a good porn movie for you?

>>I was just thinking the same thing.

Me too actually. As I was going to bed, I was wondering, "what would I do differently?". So.

First off, I know there's bound to be people out there already doing this, but this boy club attitude is pathetic (again, I'm just going off of personal experience here of what I've seen). If you like that sort of talk, again, fine with me, but I just don't think it should be the norm. Something worth of note is I've only really seen U.S "product". Is this actually more of a American issue?

(I'm sneaking this post in on the school computer, so won't be back for a while. I'll think of more ways to make porn "better" while I'm gone.)

Oh, and a gazzilion sorrys M$. I just shoot off my mouth to much sometimes...

trouser the trouserian

04:44 / 18.02.04

I remember seeing a porn film with a 'plot' once. Can't remember the title, actors, or owt like that; only that it was a wild-west brothel kind of thing. There was a scene where the church-goin' decent folks picketed the brothel (and naturally, one by one, they slipped in for a quick shag) and another scene where two of the young folks got married. It was funny in places, and dare I say it, occasionally 'sweet'.

But that's a rarity. Plots and porn somehow don't go together. It's not about being interesting, it's sticking to a formula. Sorta like McDonalds - the same shit in new packaging (although I must admit I would rather watch the crappest of porn movies than eat in McDonalds).

Of the porn I've seen, for the most part when the directors have attempted to have a plot, it's been done so badly that I wished they just hadn't bothered. Take for example The Vampire of Budapest. Two guys walk into a deserted loft. Guy 1 "duh, this place is spooky" guy 2 "yeah, it's creepy in here" guy 1 "blow me".

05:02 / 18.02.04

(Another) friend of mine did a number of papers in university on porn. She said she found some that were quite good plot and taste wise... all I remember was one where the plot involved a water nymph that travelled through the pipes of an apartment building making love with everyone, until one guy fell in love with her and tried to convince her to be monogamous... it sounded like a halfway decent plot really...

08:36 / 18.02.04

Try here (Link not work safe. Duh.)

From their "propaganda" page:

Some things that you will see in our work are absent from most porn. Some things that are standard for porn are incidental to ours. Our female performers have real orgasms. It's the #1 requirement. Our male performers do too, but they won't necessarily pull out and come on their partner's face — unless that's what they want to do. You'll see anal, but it is as likely to be the boy's butt as the girl's. You'll see fisting. You'll see female ejaculation. You'll see beautiful, real bodies.

I haven't seen the videos,* but they sound like a possible alternative.

*partly because the advert for their girl-girl video is, like, "Behold! The Three Stereotypes Of Lesbianism!" (Sara Hardcore & Alyssa are cute punk dykes in love; Divina & Tara do a beautiful tantric ritual; Annika & Sara P are growling, sexy, orgasmic she-bears)

17:21 / 18.02.04

Don't any of you people get the Good Vibrations catalogue? With the special "sex-positive" rating for the videos?

22:12 / 18.02.04

What would constitute a good porn movie ?

I suppose its just that certain air thats lacking for me. There doesn't seem to ever be any great desire in the actors. It's just a job, like Histrionic said. They may be enjoying it, but you also get the feeling they might enjoy themselves just as much playing a game of lawn bowls (So sue me, lawnbowls are fun).

New question for everyone: What does good porn have have in it for YOU ?

Goodness Gracious Meme

00:33 / 19.02.04

urgh Deva, far too accurate. These days you might also get couple four: Daddy Debs and Baby d are perfect pervs...

Buuut on a perhaps less depressing note, I'm not much of a one for video porn but Sir Video are worth checking out ...Starring owners and partners Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano, (amongst others) who also make hysterical sex ed videos/ run workshops. Bit of story/characterisation/imgination/style, people who look like they're really enjoying themselves, *and* have a sense of humour...