The Future of Porn

I. Love. Humans. Bow. Chicka. Bow. Wow.

The jizz bizz changes fast and unlike music or mainstream movies, people are prepared to put up with a lot to get their rocks off. If there’s a new technology which is difficult to use, breaks down a lot and offers only marginal benefits over what already exists, someone will stick a pair of tits on it and make some money.

In the last ten years the movement has come from the Internet, but there’s a parallel change of tone taking place which is going to have an impact of what porn is, as much as how it’s delivered.

Jurassic Porn

Back in the good old days every porn studio had an in-house funk band and you went to  see skin-flicks on a big screen surrounded by guys dressed like Inspector Gadget (”Go-go Gadget Oh! Uh! Urrrrgh! Tissue? Anyone?”)

Porn was subversive because it was explicitly sexual but most of the sex shown onscreen was not radical. Deep Throat caused a sensation largely because people were (stop me… please) blown away (screw it) by Linda Lovelace’s ability to suppress her gag reflex. Had none of these people ever seen a sword-swallower?

With no amateurs on the internet, no HBO and no MTV, porn in the seventies and eighties had little competition. If you wanted to see sex you had to watch porn. Even a few minutes of fucking in the middle of a bad movie about pool cleaners and pizza boys was enough to guarantee success.

Then things changed.

The Porn of Christmas Present

Basic Instinct brought anal sex and vagina to mainstream cinema, giving porn some serious competition. Showgirls, Striptease and almost everything on HBO made it easier in the naughty nineties for people to see sex without watching porn than it ever had been.

Suddenly, just showing people having sex wasn’t special. Even porn’s exclusive on explicit penetration (which Hollywood still almost never shows) was hard to get excited about if the people doing each other didn’t look as good as Elizabeth Berkley in Kyle MacLachlan’s pool.

Hollywood went into competition with the San Fernando Valley, cranking out product that looked better than porn and was explicit enough to throw yoghurt over. That left producers with lower budgets, average looking talent and no desire to make narrative movies with one option. Get more explicit.

It would be misguided if McDonalds added a hamburger patty to all their burgers, to stop Burger King from stealing their customers with bigger sandwiches. More does not mean better.

Despite this, some adult content producers began to think the only way to differentiate their product was to push things further. When they did, it sold well.

First movies lost the pretense of any plot and became ‘wall-to-wall’. Gonzo happened, built around the idea of a spontaneous sexual experience had by a guy with a camera, and ‘reality’ porn appeared where a great effort was made to suggest everything being shown was ‘unplanned’ and ‘real’.

Then the sex got more intense. What was once unusual became normal and when that became mundane, producers started to think of new things to do (’How about 500 guys and one woman?’, ‘Where’s that speculum?’, ‘Donkey!’)

The hard stuff continued to sell in record-breaking quantities and porn had found a road that Hollywood wouldn’t follow it down. A sexual arms race began, changing viewers expectations and what’s expected of performers.

Today female performers are assumed to be bisexual. Anal sex is only conspicuous by its absence, and sex with two or men simultaneously is common. Double-vaginal and double-anal penetrations are not hard to find. The language used to describe female performers is frequently deliberately degrading and spitting, slapping and verbal abuse are no longer considered the sole-preserve of BDSM.

Expectations have changed for male performers too.

Pills have removed the biological barriers to becoming a professional pork-technician and straight porn has become increasingly homo-erotic. Men frequently perform acts they on camera used to reluctantly endure only in private boys schools, prison or during shore leave:

• Gang bangs - a bunch of men masturbating while they wait in line to have sex with someone (pretty gay).
• Multiple single-orifice penetration - two or more men rubbing their penis’ together until in one women’s vagina, mouth or rectum (super gay).
• Cream-pies - a number of guys trying not to drown in each others sloppy seconds. In the recent ‘65 guy cream-pie’ I don’t think ’seconds’ really does it justice (gayer than ‘Build-a-Bear’ stores).
• Bukkake - a bunch of guys masturbate together and then ejaculate on a woman in a room packed with horny naked men. (as gay as musical theatre).   

(NB: Before anyone accuses me of being homophobic let me state for the record that you’re wrong, I’m not.)

Porn to the future

Unless the low-gloss end of the market (matt? eggshell?) graduates to Roman showers (Google it sicko) and snuff, we’re approaching the end of the road for extreme sex.

We’ve put everything in every hole already (at least I have) and explorations of how many of what will fit where are of limited appeal. The aggression show, by and toward, performers is starting to turn as many people off as it is on.

Fans care about adult performers, relate to them and have crushes on them identical to the one I have on Jennifer Connelly (Jennifer if you’re reading this email me directly - I’m very discreet). The industry’s big secret is that the cliche’s true, women have sex with the men they fall in love with, and men fall in love with the women they have sex with. Porn stars only become famous when fans love them as much as they want to sleep with them. 

The best selling adult material trades on this. Ask the guys who publish Maxim, or take a look at the bestsellers on any major DVD site. The mild-center (that’s folks into watching the kind of sex they have with the people they love) speak with their wallets. What they like to see is beautiful people, looking gorgeous, having intense sex that looks loving.

Loving doesn’t mean tame. Rocco Siffredi is as hardcore as anyone, but almost all his movies convey that his passion is motivated by love more than hate and women love them. That can’t be said for some other male performers. The most extreme porn’s assumption, that everyone shares a passion for degradation and humiliation, isn’t correct.

The market’s divided, with more extreme content being produced than ever but the majority of sales going to the milder movies and websites. The market for extreme, un-pretty sex, is smaller than the market for idolizing beautiful women. Unless pornographers decide they’re happy to make less money, things will change.

As it gets easier for people to launch websites that look good, are priced aggressively, are easily found, and offer content at a quality that surpasses DVD, the cult of personality will change the way people consume porn.

Websites can offer fans a 1-2-1 relationship with performers. Instead of watching the same movie everyone else has, you can download a clip which your favorite performer made for you. When you’ve watched it you can leave a note and let her know what you think. That clip can be sold to a thousand other people or kept private. The price can reflect whatever the performer and the fan can afford. I know a female performer who sold a VHS tape of her stripping to a fan for $13,000 a couple of years ago. The footage was already available at her website, the rich fan just wanted something no-one else had.

As fans communicate more directly with performers the bonds formed will be stronger than they ever have been. Performers will be able to sell their personality’s, quirks and conversation as well as their bodies. The popularity of blogging’s the start of this trend. The need to compete with other performers will fade when fans see each performer as a unique individual they have a personal relationship with. Performers will be able to sell more to fewer people, which is smarter, and cheaper, than trying to sell a little to everyone.

The big stars will be media ready. They’ll write well, run interesting websites and have personality’s we think we know. Without the ‘machine’ of Hollywood behind them, the internet will allow adult performers to create the strong public personas enjoyed by people like Tom Hanks and Oprah.

Performers won’t need a film company to support them. Freed from the subscription model websites will be able to sell more, more cheaply, than websites do today and make more money overall.

The adult market of tomorrow will be dominated by personalities, selling their particular brand of sexuality, directly to customers. The need to fit ‘trends’ and the importance of studios will be greatly diminished as downloading makes DVD’s irrelevant. Without the need to be based in Southern California (or the US) more people than ever will work in the adult market. Pressure on performers will diminish to zero as they are free from working for anyone but themselves. The value of their work will increase as it lives forever online and they’re paid directly for every sale.

The future could be bright.