Porn could be so good. It could be so simple. There's lots of sexy people in this world having hot sex just for the fun of it. Find some people who already do hot things together, pay them to sign model releases, and point a camera at them. Hooray, you've made porn!
Unfortunately, most porn doesn't seem to work this way. I think the fundamental problem with porn is that it didn't evolve out of the sex world, but out of the film world. As a result, porn producers generally cast performers as individuals rather than as couples (or groups), and they contrive scenarios rather than capturing scenarios that already happen. I've seen porn casting calls; they ask if you're willing to have anal sex, not if you enjoy anal sex. (For a variety of reasons, 98% of them fucked up, anal pays more.) Most porn seems to be desperately--often unsuccessfully--attempting to manufacture sexiness when there's so much sexiness in the world already.
I don't think it's inherently wrong to pay someone to have sex, but when pay is the only reason they're agreeing to the sex, a can of worms pops open. And it only gets wormier when there's a stigma attached that performing in porn marks someone for life as... um, a porn performer, but for some reason that's icky and bad. I'm not going to claim that all porn performers are drug addicts or trafficked women or whatever--for some of them it's conscious iconoclasm and for many more it's just a job--but they're definitely at risk of financial exploitation and sexual coercion. I'm not ready to declare that conventionally made porn is always wrong, but it's... wormy.
And frankly, it's often just ugly. When people are having sex that doesn't turn them on with partners whom they're not attracted to, it shows. Not only is it no fun to watch, but it's the worst role model imaginable. When you watch porn and you're not experienced in real sex, it's easy to come away with the impression that sex isn't supposed to feel good, that hollow moans and joyless pounding are how normal people do it.
The last time I had sex with Rowdy, he pulled my hair, bit me hard enough to leave a bruise, held me down while he fucked me... and at the end we were kissing and giggling. I wish I could see something like this in porn. What I'd like to see isn't sweet soft sex necessarily, but sex with humanity, sex where people are being rough because they both get off on it.
Some "amateur" porn already fits what I'd like porn to be, and things like RedTube and alt-porn are advancing that as well. Not always as well as I'd like it--the porn producer idea of "amateur porn" often seems to be "amateur women"--but there's definitely real sex getting put on video out there. But you know who really does this well? Comstock Films. What they do isn't just amateur porn but documentary porn, and it's awesome.
I don't think people consume porn like movies. It's a running joke that you don't watch it for the story and you often don't even watch it the whole way though. So why is porn made like movies? If porn doesn't need plots or drama (and based on the few "dramatic" porn films I've seen, it really, really doesn't), then porn doesn't need actors. It just needs fuckers. And people already do that for fun.
0 comments:
Post a Comment