I have a confession to make: I don’t watch porn. It’s not because I have a problem with the idea of porn, it’s just so amazingly unsexy in execution and I’m not really in the market right now for something to kill my libido. But, to be fair, porn has its moments, as evidenced by the brief TV series Good Clean Porn and the overall jolly nature of “Deep Throat” (yes, I know about that. None of it comes across in the film.)
Tim Dowling focuses on the occasional cuteness of porn in this recent article in the Guardian. His meditation on porn’s “touching dedication to basic narrative constraints” is brought on by Useful Photography‘s collection of stills from opening scenes, where “shorn of their context, the pictures have about them a creepy, cheerless innocence.”
The gallery is well worth checking out, because the pictures are remarkable. They look like the stock photos found in outdated high school textbooks. And, as Dowling points out, they’re probably a thing of the past. As more and more porn is consumed online, any semblance of plot is done away with, and no one bothers with any the non-nude moments anymore.
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Comments
porn often turns me off. it sucks. i used to have lower standards, but as i grew up i started to see all the shittyness. a movie i really liked though was the devil in miss jones 2. it’s silly and sexy. i can never watch the first one again though. i think i didn’t feel horny for a month after watching that one.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:31 pmI think I know what you’re talking about (WARNING – SPOILER ALERT!). Suicide just ain’t sexy to this moviegoer!
Basically, the problem with porn is that much of it, like any other kind of popular media, is made according to a strict formula. Its producers think, somewhat rightly, that this is what men want to see. And so porn fans get the same old thing each time, in a slightly different package. Lesbian porn (the kind meant to be viewed by lesbians and not just fantasy-fueled males) seems to be a lot more genuine if only because playing to a female audience requires pushing different buttons, so to speak. The amateur and swinger sites with their downloadable photos and videos are the height of “genuine”, because even though a lot of the strictly-amateur subjects are behaving according to porn conventions, they usually look nothing like porn stars.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:35 pmLeave a reply :