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SBR: Porn in The Ideal World (Possibly NSFW)

  
 
Princess
02:07 / 29.05.06
Well, sparked by references to an "Angelic Porn Niche" in a late-shift thread, I started to wonder what niches there might be. In a perfect world, where anything you wanted was possible and you could make the film of your dreams, what film would you make. Just interested to know where the erotic fantasies of Barbelith are. Possible disection of the whys and wherefores of the fantasy? Make it as confessional or contrived as you want, give me your fantasies. I'm hoping this will turn into an exploration and disection of fantasy resulting in greater knowledge of self and each other rather than a "let's share wank foder thread", although I suppose the two are inevitably going to overlap somewhat.

I'll start.
There is an angelic porn niche, it's me. I want to see two stunning angels come together under the intense soft-focus. For set I want a chez longue (sp?) against two yellow marble collums witht the suggestion of clouds in the background. One angel would be a fallen angel (black wings obviously) and the other would be not so fallen. They proceed to have sex. I'm not sure where I fall on the whole "do angels have genitals\poopholes\equivalentsexflesh?"debate, but it's largely irrelavant to the film I'm shooting. The brunt of the film would be close ups of the face, arms and hands. No talking in the whole thing, everything is expressed through physicality. No music either, just the sounds of the actor's breathing and moving. The relationship would start as a pretty strong sub/dom one, where the fallen angel holds, controls and overwhelms (consensually) the other angel. The dynamic would switch slowly until the "good" angel was dictating what happened in sex. The dynamic continues to shift, and the focus is really on the dynamic rather than the acts. As orgasm approaches (angels orgasm, I decided) the two fall into an intimate position where one is cradled by the other. The "dark" angel is probably the one being cradled as that fits with the (completely cliched but pleasant) evil+love=good equation that is in a lot of Children's films.
As the darker angel comes there is only a face shot, (Beautiful Agony anyone?) and when that finishes he is alone, abandoned and beseamed (possibly)

Possible reasoning:
Well, Angels do kind of remove some of the awkwarness of sex, they are, by definition, perfect. Angel's don't fart when they lift their leg or accidentally lean on your hair. If you want perfect then "Angel" is probably the easiest way to go. Also, angels are hot and muscular and play off all kinds of kinks I have for strength\untouchability. Also, angels aren't really gendered, so the film would be all about the intensity of emotion rather than on "HUGE COCKS IN SCREAMING TIGHT PUSSIES" etc etc. Also, androgens are hot.

As for the focus on faces/arms etc, well I suppose thats because I really dig physical theatre and also I have been to (NSFW) Beautiful Agony which is te most erotic thing ever.

As to the sad ending, thats because a lot of my relationship to sex is centered around the idea of power and vulnerability. If the powerful angel allows themself to be vulnerable to another, and is then abandoned then it does something to show the risk involved in sex. Not that I fetishize being abandoned, but the risk of losing yourself in someone else is that they might end up not caring. I like the idea that the one angel is playing his game so well that the naughty angel can't tell he's a bastard till he's flown off. That kind of skill is hot.
Also, I think that a film where there is no resolution, where the climax is deliberately dissapointing, can make the feelings of the film more intense. The watcher would desire resolution/closeness for the naughty angel all the more because it had been denied.

So...
critique/analyse my futureporn and add your own. I kinda wanted to start this thread as an experiment in whether it could work, so mash it up as you see fit.
 
 
Saturn's nod
06:44 / 29.05.06
Well, in my ideal world it would have vanished like all other forms of systematic hatred.

"...commodifying a human body is the base principle for all forms of systematised cruelty: trafficking in women, selling slaves in the Sudan, using violence against another group, identified by race or gender or national identity or class." Dworkin, 'Why women must get out of men's laps'.

"When I ask men who are sex addicts if they would want their wife or daughter to be in porn, 100 percent say, 'No.’ They want it to be somebody else's wife or daughter. They know this material is damaging." Dr. Mary Anne Layden

"For the last 30 years and more, I have watched liberals in America…try to repackage pornography and prostitution as a hip and groovy thing, a liberating thing, something novel and progressive and good for us all, men and women alike. Allegedly Leftist, Progressive men declare their loyalty (both as customers and partisans) to one of the biggest and most exploitative sweatshop industries of them all. Men who would not be caught dead wearing Reeboks or Nikes, or drinking Starbucks coffee, can still kid themselves into thinking Larry Flynt is some kind of People's Hero." D.A. Clarke in Not For Sale

Story from a former porn star explaining the abuse which preceded her involvement in porn and the impact porn had on her life and her daughter's life.

"When you suffer from childhood sexual abuse or were severely abused as a child, you usually repress those memories. You are unable to say, ‘I am doing this because I was abused as a child and this is all I know how to do. This is all I know how to feel.' I think a lot of the women are in denial…and they don't realize what post-traumatic stress disorder is. You either totally go a whole different direction and turn your life around and get as far away from that abuse as you can – or you re-live the experience, and a lot of these women are re-living what they know how to feel." ex-porn performer Carol Smith, in Not For Sale

"I don't believe that one can simultaneously fight against sexism in one's public life while commoditizing women's bodies in one's private fantasies. None of us compartmentalize as well as we imagine; no man can, I believe, seamlessly transition from masturbating in front of his computer to images of "exploited teens" to seeing his female co-workers, students, bosses, friends, and lovers as full and complete human beings with needs and desires of their own." Hugo Schwyzer, pro-feminist blogger

'Not for sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography' U.K.Amazon, U.S. Amazon

Apologies in advance if further replies on this would be welcome from me, I am going to be away & busy for a few weeks.
 
 
Princess
07:19 / 29.05.06
While I agree that Pornography can be dehumanising I don't think that is inherentky so. Why is sex performance mre dehumanising than other performance? Is a dancer as "commodified" as sex-worker on film? Both are payed for the movements of their body.
Have you read Annie Sprinkle. Annie is a sex-performer and sees her work in a very positive light, there is an argument on the site between her and an anti-porn feminist. Whilst the dialogue does contain the words "Ah yes, good laughgasm", there are some interesting points raised about the different uses of pornography. And yes, while I would argue that "Filthy Teen Sluts" might have a an aspect of objectification, I see no reason why all erotica should be branded so.
I embrace the erotic, I take pride in myself as an erotic object. If I wish to showcase that, to satisfy my exhibitionism and a desire to spread eroticism across the world, am I being marginalised? Why is sex-work more dehumanising than office-work? I think a lot of it comes from the idea that "no-one wants to be a prostitute", and so by funding a sex-worker we are participating in their misery. Well that's a wrong assumption, I wan't to be a sex worker. I can't see why being payed for sex is intrinsically different than being payed to fix photocopiers. Many jobs are dehumanising, not so many pay as well as sex, or have the potential to be so liberating.

As an aside, would erotica like BeautifulAgony or the story I told above be an objectification of it's subjects? The focus on faces and emotion has an intensley humanising effect. It is the feelings of the person/character being filmed and not the bodies. Is it more or less dehumanising because we are selling the soul as well?
 
 
Cat Chant
10:08 / 29.05.06
Saturn's nod: what you're talking about seems to be the treatment of women workers in the mainstream American 'porn' industry (exploitative sweatshop industry) and the commodification of women's bodies (you use the term a couple of times). I agree that there's a problem with the commodification of women's bodies, although I'm not sure whether it's possible to be completely free of it (and of course this is absolutely not something which is restricted to pornography, as your first quote points out). I also agree that the working conditions for many people who work in the porn and sex industries are very bad, and that this is a terrible thing.

Quite how this relates to an imagined video (no-one is actually working in a sweatshop to produce it, and it would be perfectly possible to produce swashbuckling's video without ) of ungendered/masculine bodies is unclear to me, though. Does the commodification of women's bodies under capitalist patriarchy and the poor conditions in many (though by no means all) sectors of the sex/porn industry mean that all sexual representations are inherently bad? How are we going to create and circulate non-commodified images of sexuality if we can't represent sex? How are we going to learn to do sex if there are no representations of sex in our culture? Or if we're going to have 'how-to' manuals and sex education for children, how are we going to guarantee that it's totally anaphrodisiac? And why should we?

Swashbuckling: I don't know about porn on video, I've never seen any that I liked. I like written porn, which has a lot more point-of-view and makes it a lot easier to integrate the physical with the emotional and the intellectual transactions that are going on, which is something I like in porn. It has the added advantage that you can put anyone you like into it, and I write/read a lot of slash, because I tend to get off on relationships rather than acts: so I'll be attracted to a particular relationship between two particular characters, and then see how that plays out sexually. But to answer the question in your abstract: the thing that I most yearn for is seeing boys kissing. Any of the pairings that I slash. Kissing. That's it.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
11:45 / 29.05.06
The commodification argument is nonsense, in my view. As pointed out above, most forms of work in all industries involve the commodification of the human body in some form or other; my employers pay for the skills of my hands; they pay me to spend several hours each day using them. There is no fundamental qualitative difference between that and sex. It's quite possible that the commodification inherent in most human employment is wrong - perhaps in an ideal world we would all do not just jobs that we can do but jobs that we want to do - but to suggest that it's limited to the sex industry is to miss the bigger picture.

On the other hand, I agree entirely that the mainstream sex industry appears to be ludicrously exploitative, not to mention crass and poorly made in the extreme.

I guess my personal preference, in some idealised future porn, would be to see (and having thought this phrase, I rather like it) ordinary people fucking for fun on film. And I'd surely volunteer to be one of 'em.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
12:51 / 29.05.06
Keywords:Porn,Erotica

What's the difference?
 
 
petunia
13:23 / 29.05.06
Keywords:Porn,Erotica

What's the difference?

£15
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:27 / 29.05.06
There is no fundamental qualitative difference between that and sex.

We're not talking about sex, though. We're talking about porn. Quite different. For example, your workplace almost certainly has a large number of regulations involving health and safety. If you are knackered and demoralised after a long shift, you are unlikely to be offered illegal substances by your employer in order to pep you up. Working the job you are working is unlikely to make you unemployable for other jobs.

Now, none of this needs to happen in pornography. However, pornography plus capital exchange, plus the enormous suitability of pornography to, for want of a better term, offshoring makes it extremely difficult to say with any confidence that the pornography one is consuming is "free trade".

How much of this is relevant to this topic I'm not sure - in effect, this is not about pornography but about masturbatory fantasy, which can and (the thread presumes) does exist entirely outside the usual range of available pornography.

Anyway, prior art on porn:

Porn free: Head Shop discussion.

A stub, but with some potentially interesting links.

Best assume none of this is SFW.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
23:13 / 29.05.06
I think the concept of porn in the ideal world is interesting, but I'd read into the title of this thread something that wasn't explicitly there in the first post, i.e. as an invitation for people to try and imagine what pornography would be like in a general utopian society. One in which, for example, there might be no capitalism, gender might not be binary or assumed to be determined by biology, the existing power structures of race, class and sex might not be in place... To what extent anti-porn activists would be object to such an exercise arguably would depend on whether they were motivated by a desire to end the injustices, inequalities and exploitation which can be found in the current actual existing pornography industry, or just full-on puritans through and through. Mind you I suppose if anyone tried such an exercise on Barbelith (or anywhere else) it would be inevitable that the influence of existing power structures and the content of existing pornography would show up in people's 'ideals' anyway...
 
 
Lurid Archive
23:34 / 29.05.06
Surely someone might object to porn on the grounds that it is inherently degrading, and so brings back the inequalities this utopia has dismissed? Or someone might object to the exercise in itself, since the assumption that you can simply dismiss all the sexist baggage of pornography might be seen as a move to legitimise sexist representations in the here and now. Not positions I would share, but they are at least arguable.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
00:20 / 30.05.06
Lurid - I just lost a long post thanks to my laptop's inherent shitness, but I suspect (and know for a fact in some cases) that there are people on the board who could articulate either side of the argument more stridently and eloquently than I could. As a starting point, though, I'd suggest it would be helpful to try and break down 'porn' into specific forms of media, etc., to tease out what might and might not be 'inherent' to it.
 
 
Princess
20:18 / 31.05.06
Deva, I also love the slash. It is the only genre where the word "Twincest" can pass unnoticed.
Um, I think the difference between porn and Erotica is largely subjective. Erotica is anything withing the remit of "erotic", so it can be amazingly softcore.The various flake adverts (only the crumbliest flakiest etc etc) are erotica. I think Mary Whitehouse would have to be campaign hard before most people accepted them as porn. But the terms have a big overlap, and (in theory) all porn is meant to be erotica anyway. As a rule "erotica" is what people like and "porn" is what people find tasteless.
Is there anyone who could give a brief history of slash and explanation of slash and it relative merits?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
21:15 / 31.05.06
If you could have any beings (fictional or otherwise) doing any act (sexual or otherwise) in any setting or context, on film, what would you do?

I guess to answer the abstract's question properly, my answer would be "whichever beings wanted to, in whatever context was good for them". I don't think that in my "ideal world", one being would be able to say "You two! Get on the couch!" and have it happen just like that.
 
 
the Fool
21:54 / 31.05.06
I always interject about gay porn in these sort of threads. There always seems the assumption that all porn is hetero and therefore women are being exploited (just the feeling I get and the way various points appear and reappear in this and other threads).

What if you remove women? If its just blokes, is it still exploitive?

Yes, it does have power structures inbuilt. There is still the top/bottom situation. But it is all a bit more flexible. The guy fucking can be the next one to be fucked, and vice versa.

And in the ideal world, comic book porn!!! Live action superhero gay porn!!! ... In the meantime I'll settle for Titan vids
 
 
Ticker
19:42 / 01.06.06
In my head porn is the rolling in the dirt sport with cussing and bad behavior and erotica is the same game with application of rules of civility. Sort of when lot baseball gets placed under the aegis of good game-people-ship.

The acts involved can be identical it's where the focus falls. As human sexuality will always involve some form of boundary negotiation personally and culturally, I suspect it will always have places of transgression. The exploration of which will birth art, therapy, and mucking about shit slinging.

My ideal porn is hentai, which is animated cartoons of horrendous acts of weird sex quite impossible in the real world. It's bad and grabs me, but while it explores triggers in our culture (global) and may potentially do damage to the night sleep cycle of people, no actors are being exploited (that I know of). My ideal erotica is the beautiful and visceral performance of mythic personalities (including slash) getting it on, usually in the written form so I can experience it via a multilayered approach.

...and of course the smut I write serves this purpose rather well!
 
 
All Acting Regiment
20:46 / 01.06.06
no actors are being exploited

Yeah, I think porno loses a lot of it's potential dodginess when it's just drawings. It's a quantum leap from that to actual people doing whatever...
 
 
Smoothly
23:07 / 01.06.06
Is it, though?
I can see how it might lose one dimension of dodginess (various dodginesses surrounding it's production), but how is it better in terms of consumption?
 
 
Ticker
23:56 / 01.06.06
it still plays off of cultural nastiness and it may shore up more nastiness, but to me that's why it's porn and not erotica.

I got handed these icky toggle switches to my libido and while I can modify them to some extent I tend to think they're fairly crystalized. So in choosing where to get my fix I've tried to pick the outlet that best suits me personally. Some of my less savory fetishes* are best enjoyed without the added human actor oppression. But I recognise that if I buy it then I am promoting the ideology behind it and so I try to pick the least heinous of a bad lot.

I'm using this in the classic 'need-it' sense not the 'kinky-fun' sense.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:07 / 02.06.06
it still plays off of cultural nastiness and it may shore up more nastiness, but to me that's why it's porn and not erotica.

I'm always really unsure about this kind of argument (especially the disctinction between porn and erotica), though I'd like to hear it fleshed out a bit more. Part of the reason I'm not sure about it is that we don't tend to apply in other situations. For instance, while I have a friend who won't watch a film which has a main character he doesn't approve of, I think many people who agree that this sort of filter is rather odd. And it does remind me of a time when a housemate of mine found a collection of Preacher comics, was absolutely disgusted, and seemed not to be able to comprehend that I myself wasn't violent at all, yet the comics are extremely so. But I can watch mafia films without supporting, culturally and implicitly, organised crime and I can watch James Bond films while still having a nuanced position on international law...can't I?

Maybe I'm being slow here, but I'd like to hear people (not necessarily just xk) explain this "cultural nastiness" business in more detail.
 
 
petunia
11:39 / 02.06.06
I agree with Lurid here. I think the realm of fantasy is pretty obviously distinct from that of reality.

People often make the kind of 'columbine' argument that 'depraved and immoral' artistic influences and fantasies lead to 'depraved and immoral' acts, but there has never been any real evidence given for this.

A classic example is that of the low rates of sexual violence and rape in Japan, compared to a relatively open attitude to sexual violence (and violence full-stop) in many of its art forms.

We could contrast this with a culture of pornography in America and the UK which is relatively vanilla in the large part, and yet we suffer from high rates of sexual violence.

I tend to stick with the idea that we are better off expressing our desires, no matter how 'nasty' they are. It strikes me that repression of fantasies is more likely to lead to one becoming controlled by them, rather than simply admitting them and enjoying them in a safe and productive fashion.

As for the question of how it is better in terms of consumption... We may be concerned or disgusted by other people's interests and desires (and we probably often are), but unless they are posing any actual threat of nonconsensual violence, degradation or whathaveyou towards another person (or animal!), I don't think it's our place to comment or judge.
 
 
Smoothly
12:39 / 02.06.06
What is it about drawings that make them less problematic? Is it the fact that there is no living ‘victim’ – ‘No people or animals were harmed in the production of this pornography’, kinda thing?

We may be concerned or disgusted by other people's interests and desires (and we probably often are), but unless they are posing any actual threat of nonconsensual violence, degradation or whathaveyou towards another person (or animal!), I don't think it's our place to comment or judge.

I have a feeling that making ‘actual, physical harm caused’ the only legitimate objection doesn’t really do justice to the nature of our moral sense. For instance, *if* it was shown that child pornography did not increase risk to children or cause any extra children to be abused, would it be okay to consume it?
 
 
petunia
14:19 / 02.06.06
What is it about drawings that make them less problematic? Is it the fact that there is no living ‘victim’ – ‘No people or animals were harmed in the production of this pornography’, kinda thing?

Yes. That's pretty much it. Why is there a problem with that? Surely there is a difference between a portrayed act and the act itself? How could one argue differently?

To use Lurid's example of the Preacher comic: Is a drawn story involving massive amounts of homicide and a nuclear weapon being set off in the middle of nevada to be equated with actual events of mass-murder and nuclear explosions? Is this comic just as 'problematic' as the events portrayed?

I have a feeling that making ‘actual, physical harm caused’ the only legitimate objection doesn’t really do justice to the nature of our moral sense.

I didn't say 'actual physical harm'. I said actual threat of nonconsensual violence, degradation or whathaveyou, which (I hope) suggests nonphysical harm as well - degredation, exploitation etc.

While other issues may make our 'moral sense' tingle, I find it hard to support any argument for prohibition of actions which do not cause harm, or cannot be shown to be linked to harmful actions. Here I mean both physical and nonphysical harm.

My contention is that, while actions, fantasies and pornographic material may be shocking and perhaps 'depraved', we can and should not move to dissallow them unless they actually pose a threat to any member of society. Would you argue differently?

*if* it was shown that child pornography did not increase risk to children or cause any extra children to be abused, would it be okay to consume it?

See above. The phrase 'any extra children' suggests that you are here refering to actual child pornography, rather than drawings of such. Child pornography subjects people who are below the legal age of consent to sexual acts. As such, it is a nonconsensual sexual act, which would fall under the realm of 'violent and causing harm', whether that be physical and/or mental. So no, it would not be 'okay'* to consume child porn.

However, if you are refering to drawings of children performing sexual acts, then we are talking about pornography that has not caused any harm (assuming they are not life drawings). As reprihensible as such drawings may be, I'm not sure we could/should legislate against or otherwise try to prohibit such consumption.


*What do you mean by 'okay'? 'Morally right'? 'Ethically beneficial'? 'Legal'? 'Not icky'? 'The sort of thing I would like to do'?
 
 
Smoothly
15:30 / 02.06.06
Yes. That's pretty much it. Why is there a problem with that? Surely there is a difference between a portrayed act and the act itself? How could one argue differently?

That’s cool, I don’t think there’s a problem with that. It was a genuine question, I just wondered if there was anything else.

To use Lurid's example of the Preacher comic: Is a drawn story involving massive amounts of homicide and a nuclear weapon being set off in the middle of nevada to be equated with actual events of mass-murder and nuclear explosions? Is this comic just as 'problematic' as the events portrayed?

Not ‘equated’ necessarily. But just because the depiction of something isn’t the same as carrying out the same in actuality doesn’t mean there is no problem with the depiction. Will probably have to come back to this.

I didn't say 'actual physical harm'. I said actual threat of nonconsensual violence, degradation or whathaveyou, which (I hope) suggests nonphysical harm as well - degredation, exploitation etc.

Sorry, I was paraphrasing (maybe unfairly). Leaving whathaveyou to one side, degradation is interesting. For example, one might feel individually degraded, or one might feel degraded by association. Some things ‘degrade us all’ etc.

While other issues may make our 'moral sense' tingle, I find it hard to support any argument for prohibition of actions which do not cause harm, or cannot be shown to be linked to harmful actions.

Me too. Either our moral sense is on the blink, or we’ve just not located the cause. I don’t think it’s untenable to contend that only actions which cause tangible harm are morally wrong, but it feels insufficient to me.

The phrase 'any extra children' suggests that you are here refering to actual child pornography, rather than drawings of such. Child pornography subjects people who are below the legal age of consent to sexual acts. As such, it is a nonconsensual sexual act, which would fall under the realm of 'violent and causing harm', whether that be physical and/or mental. So no, it would not be 'okay'* to consume child porn.

Yeah, I did mean actual child porn (pictures/videos of actual abuse). But say it was found that the consumption of child porn did not increase one’s chances of committing acts of abuse, and that consumption didn’t create a market (ie. the people who record an act of abuse would have carried out that act of abuse anyway) – would that make the consumption of that ‘record of abuse’ morally wrong?

When it comes to drawings, why do you think they shouldn’t be banned despite it being reprehensible? Just because you don’t think it’s reprehensible enough? What do you mean by reprehensible?

Sorry, this is a bit rushed. I’ll have to come back to it.
 
  
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