At a screening of a porn film, a female critic spotted something in the movie that offended her sensibilities. "Good grief!" she exclaimed, rising from her seat as bodies heaved onscreen. "Just look at those dirty sheets!"
That incident may not go down in history as a turning point in the fortunes of porn. On the other hand, maybe it will. Steffani Martin, who was one of five females among the 30 viewers at the screening that day in Manhattan, says it was a good example of the new female consciousness breaking in on the crude male world of pornography. Says Martin, now head of Womero, an X-rated film distributorship in New York City: "The female consumer is beginning to change porn films. She won't tolerate dirty sheets, low production values and creepy male actors with 37 gold chains around their necks. Women want cute guys who talk like real people and sex with some class."
Like the rough frontier males of the Old West eyeballing the first shipment of schoolmarms from back East, the porn industry (estimated annual U.S. sales: $8 billion) is beginning to reshape itself to accommodate women. The pressure is largely an unforeseen by-product of the VCR revolution. Males who once trekked to sleazy inner-city theaters began to take porn videotapes home. Wives and lovers started to make their opinions felt, and their voices began to affect the market.
One lesson learned by the porn industry is that traditional female repugnance to porn can melt when the product is cleaned up a bit and presented at home, where the woman can feel safe and treat the movie as a prelude to lovemaking. Women account for perhaps 40% of the estimated 100 million rentals of X-rated tapes each year. "The VCR put porno where it belongs: in people's bedrooms," says an executive vice president for one porn house, Essex Productions of Chatsworth, Calif. "I never felt it belonged in theaters. People feel that in the comfort of their own homes, they are allowed to be a little wicked."
As a result, porn theaters and other sex emporiums -- bookstores, peep shows and strip joints -- have fallen on hard times. Manhattan had 121 such outlets a decade ago. Now there are only 42 in all of New York City, and more are likely to close if the city moves ahead with its Times Square redevelopment. There are now about 350 porn theaters in the U.S., half the number of a decade ago. The remaining theaters have trouble getting new X- rated fare, since many, perhaps most, "dirty" films are now shot on videotape and cannot be projected clearly on theater screens.
Sex magazines are declining too, under pressure from the Meese commission, churches, feminists and the easy availability of sex tapes. Says Detective Don Smith of the Los Angeles police department: "All the people now in video were making 8 mm or were in magazines. We're talking the same players; we're just seeing a change in the industry." The customer who cannot buy a soft-core magazine like Playboy at the local 7-Eleven can go next door and rent Oriental Lesbian Fantasies for the same price or less. And he may never go back to Playboy. Says veteran Pornographer Al Goldstein: "There's no way a magazine can compete with a tape when it comes to fantasy."