125 Magazine.
Writing this blog is getting harder. Not for a lack of content, but as I find it harder to find porn I want to expose my psyche to and share with the public. Porn is broken but Michael Moore’s not about to make a movie about it (and, if he did, who’d pay to see a man whose ass has its own tidal flow talk to pornsters?). Like healthcare, porn won’t cease to be. It’ll just continue to become less like what we want and pay for, and more like an impenetrable profit engine controlled by large companies with little taste, understanding or decency.
It’s not that I have any problem with porn conceptually. It’s the product which is such a disappointment. Stupid people, stupid ideas and stupid attitudes. Sure I could tell myself the old first amendment trope about people’s right to do mornonic things but why bother when the material’s so painful to watch? What about my right to decent entertainment? Where’s the porn for people who don’t think Jackass 2 was fantastic entertainment?
The ‘good stuff’, subject of this and other blogs, isn’t so great either. For every Seska Lee there’s an alt-porner with a blog, an undergraduate understanding of feminism, and a chip on her shoulder about being fat cranking out unwatchable ‘alt-porn’ featuring tattooed hippies with such a shallow sense of porn history they actually believe their doing something new. I’m not jaded. Dave Naz, Comstock (you mouthy wanker) and countless independent websites I salute you, but why should the mass of porn be so awful and the best of it so average compared to anything but major studio dreck?
This attitude, which I used to think was mine alone, is well articulated by Don Hazen in “Pornography and the end of Masulinity” at Alternet. Like me he’s a hungry man, tired of kibble and asking ‘Where’s the beef?’ Why should it be so hard for any woman who’s not actively turned on by being degraded and roughed up to find any porn she’s into and why should not craving violence be seen as suburban? If it were a question of niches it’d be easy to counter. When I go to the movies I can watch something other than slasher pics, teen sex-comedies and sequels but when it comes to porn it’s increasingly a question of ‘…any color as long as it’s black.”
Increasingly I find the most interesting depictions of sexuality come from the mainstream. 125 magazine’s ‘Cinema’ issue has pictures by Rankin and others (shown here) which tell a deeper, sexier more interesting story in a frame than however many unnecessary ‘Pirates’ sequels will ever manage. Anyone without a tabloid brain can think more creatively than the people producing mainstream porn and the audience which loves what they’re getting is vastly outnumbered by those who’ve given up on porn or, like me, find it depressingly hard to sift.
by Rankin
by Rankin
I say it’s time for an Environmentally Friendly Porn label. Some way of knowing that material so labeled won’t insult our intelligence, artistic sensibilities or the people involved in its production. Nothing to do with censorship, just a mark of quality and a rejection of the prevailing younger, harder, nastier sensibility. An alternative to alt-porn, stunt-porn and stupid-porn minus a fog of pretension designed to hide its masturbatory intent.
Who’s with me?
(NB: Bah… humbug. Kids…)
I’m with you. Current porn is one reason I’m a big fan of the “golden age” stuff (granted, not all of that stuff was remotely good by far). Oh, and I’m no fan of [i]Jackass[/i] et.al. either.
Here here. I’ve always been privy to the thought that there is no such thing as good porn, just varying degrees of less bad. And don’t you always fall into the trap that one person’s “good” is someone else’s “gouge my eyes?”
Chris, Edco - Thanks for the feedback. I agree there’s ‘taste’ but most of us appreciate quality even if we don’t like the material. I could spot well produced, acted, conceived gay porn even though that’s not my thing. I wish there was mo’better stuff out there…
One of the big problems I’ve been seeing in the past few years is the length of the scenes. 5-10 minute scenes have morphed into 30-45 minute monstrosities that must be exhausting for everyone involved (heh). With all that time, an eventually-bored viewer gets to notice all the flaws in both the performers and their performance, not to mention any technical aspects.
Chris - That’s because, to use an industry phrase, no one gives a shit. Shorter scenes means more performers and ideas. That costs money…
Honestly, I ca… errr, stumbled upon that conclusion recently. Of course, in the “video age,” there were five scenes per movie, and the movies averaged (I’d guess) seventy minutes. Nowadays, you still get the five scenes, BUT the average length has stretched to two hours, more or less, with some going two-and-a-half to three hours long, depending on the vision/arrogance of the maker of the film. I’m guessing pornsters don’t get paid by the hour, so if you get ‘em for a flat rate, you might as well work them for as long as possible.