That Old Feeling: Porn Again

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A few readers called me on my blanket dismissal. "Just thought since you wrote articles about the old days of porn industry," said one correspondent, "you should watch ones nowadays to have a final say." Michael S. Huff, Jr., offered some suggestions: "The sexual revolution exists on IPB (instant picture boards) today, where we have safe sex & stay healthy as we can! Go see any porno by Rocco ... always European & always way HOTT!" (Thanks, Michael. I've seen Rocco Siffredi, the Italian Stallion, in two films, both artsy-sexy efforts by the French auteur Catherine Breillat.) Others said I wasn't missing much. Lawrance Bernabo finds the later porn films "sexually redundant and repetitive to be sure, but also narratively boring. We are not missing anything as far as I know and have no reason to go 13 minutes in a hotel room out of sheer curiosity. So if you want to say current hard-core films stink, Richard Corliss, I will not say thee nay."

Others don't believe me. "With the knowledge you have on this subject," writes Sam Birtciel, "I get the impression [that] when on the road, you summon up a movie, get in a corner, and beat yourself to sleep. Better be careful, the next time you might be the one in the movie; watching yourself." A fellow who can produce such vivid imagery (why would I "get in a corner"???) ought to be writing movies rather than thinking about other people watching them. But no, I say no, Your Honor, my interest in hard-core is only scholarly.

One correspondent, "Catchley" raises an aspect of porn that hasn't changed in a century: lying about seeing it, or about not liking it. "Although practically everyone is a customer (at least some of the time), it's considered pretty pathetic to actually admit to it. Close friends may joke about their late-night, internet beat-athons, but you certainly couldn't cop to it in a Time magazine article, for fear of pissing off the boys on the board. At least, wouldn't be a good idea. Err on the side of virtue. It's safer in today's hypocrisy/corpocracy we call the USA."

I'm not a hypocrite, Catchley, at least not on this matter. I'm a remnant of the soft-core 60s, a period that established my cine-sexual preferences. As an teen in the early 60s I patronized Philadelphia's "Aart" houses (spelled that way so their ads would run first in the local newspapers' alphabetical listings of movie theaters), where a double feature often paired a serioso foreign-language film —it's where I first saw Godard's Vivre sa vie and Bunuel's Fever Rises at el Pao —with a Russ Meyer nudie or one of the lightly sexed-up imports from Metzger's Audubon Films.

What did the "high" and "low" ends of these twin bills have in common? Sultry women, in various states of arousal, threat and undress. I suppose I received a cinema education from my trips to the Aart Walton, as much from my devouring of Ingmar Bergman and Billy Wilder films elsewhere; but the women were the lure. They got me into the theater, kept me there and have stayed with me. In the early 70s, I even wrote a jaunty memoir of my grind-house days, "Confessions of an ex-pornologist," for the Village Voice (an article that will never, I guarantee you, be anthologized). It was, in its way, a fond farewell to the Fabienne Dalis and Ute Ericksons of my voyeuristic youth, at the precise moment they were being made redundant by the less comely, more voracious Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin.

It's said we are all prisoners of our youth. I know I am, and you know too; this column, with its dewy memories of films, comic books and TV and radio shows from the 50s and 60s is a testament to the cage I cheerfully built for myself then and, to an extent, occupy now. The sight of a woman's body, in all its contours and mysteries, remains a visual enticement to me. A closeup of her vagina is not. The difference between the soft-core cinema of the 60s and the hard-core of the 70s, as any cop could tell you, was the shift in emphasis from a woman's breasts to a man's penis —from an object of contemplation to an object of competition. Why would I want to exit the seraglio and enter the locker room? In a theater showing 70s porn, the actresses underwent their exertions, the actors achieved their workmanlike erections, the camera crept in for a microscopic, medicinal closeup; and I would sit there impatiently, my eyes fixed on the red EXIT sign, wondering atavistically if the ladies would please remove their clothes.

But that's my old-fashioned quirk, obviously not shared by millions of other men. The porn business did fine without me.


10. What's the future of porn?

I haven't been paying attention, so I'm grateful to readers who tell me that, for all the attention paid to sex superstar Jenna Jameson, the next stage is personalized (or do I mean privatized?) porn. Tony Comstock, whose Comstock Films produces a series called Real Life, Real People, Real Sex, writes: "For the last 10 or so years I've been making sex films with one specific goal in mind: to find a way to show people having sex that doesn't make the viewer want to do anything but have sex. I've had some modest success, but the financial realities of porn are constraining to say the least. In the 'porn industry' $25K is considered a workable budget, $250K is an epic."

I entrust the penultimate words to Jack M. Rice of Long Beach. "The paradox of porn is this: judging quality is both objective and subjective. While the quality of a particular work can be objectively tested (I hope it's unnecessary to explain what the test is) the results of the test will vary from one viewer (or reader) to the next, because the testing equipment can't be calibrated from one viewer to the next. [He means that one man's hard-on is another's ho-hum.] Thus, the best porn will of necessity be custom-made. With film, as a practical matter for the average consumer, this was problematic. With video, it is not. The consumer can now easily customize his smut, by making it himself. Of course, production values are a factor, but home video equipment is now so good that it's a diminishing factor.

"Since the porn industry can't compete with the amateur's ability to customize the action, thanks to home video, its only edge is the models, which is why today's porn models are prettier, handsomer and more extreme than ever. Nevertheless, 'amateur' commercial porn, authentic or faked, has been the fastest growing segment in the industry. The minimally attractive —or even not, if they have a special 'talent' —can now produce and market their own porn, the 'studios' having become as much distributors as producers. It's an evolution not unlike Hollywood itself. So in a way, today's porn is better than ever. The difference is that the best is no longer commercial. Isn't that nice, for a change?"

I'll leave that for you to answer, dear reader. To all who agreed with my column, and to those who didn't, my thanks —for sharing your thoughts with me, and for writing this column.

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