Like any artistic form, erotic films and scenes are two-way mirrors—a sort of cultural looking glass reflecting some dimension of producers’ and consumers’ desires. There is no way to fully capture what porn means to every person who views and/or creates it, but what might adult content say about wider society and culture over time? After my initial foray into Camp Cuddly Pines Power Tool Massacre, I decided to delve into that question through rigorous research: I watched twenty-nine systematically sampled key adult films in order to explore patterns and trends occurring in US adult content production and development between 1972 and 2010.1
Let me repeat that: I watched twenty-nine systematically sampled key adult films, for science.
Right now, you’re probably thinking one of two things: An excuse to watch all that porn—yes! or You had to watch all the porn—ugh! I must confess that I went back and forth between these two extremes myself as I worked my way through this bevy of boobs, butts, and banging. And there were a slew of other emotions that went into it too, including my being completely lost at the outset.
Once I went through a (painstakingly detailed) process in order to figure out exactly which films to watch, the next question was how to make sense of them all. How do you code all that content, porn or otherwise? Coding is research-speak for identifying themes, looking for indicators of said themes, and keeping track of how often they happen. In other words, how often do “problematic representations of women” transpire—count, count, count. How often do “instances of body modification” occur—count, count, count. All those themes and indicators times twenty-nine feature-length films. Your head hurts already, doesn’t it?
I developed what basically amounted to an elaborate “porn themes spreadsheet” in conjunction with an evolving list of additional (read: unforeseen to my novice eyes at the outset) acts and instances that indicated any one or more of those predetermined ideas and phenomena. Then, armed with a glass of wine and an über-nerdy clipboard, I sat down to code some porn.
At first it was fun. My plan was to watch one film per evening, which basically amounted to a month-long partial reprieve from typing. I decided to skip chronology and, instead, bounce around between eras. That way, I wouldn’t get bogged down by any particular decade or aesthetic. I picked out the titles I really wanted to watch first—the ones I was super curious about, the legends, and those shrouded in infamy. Some were amazing; others were disappointing. After about the fifth film, I started to wonder if my neighbors knew what I was doing. And what they were thinking.
Around ten titles in, I switched to beer—it lasted longer—and started talking to the television. “Ugh, don’t do that!” I would groan and avert my eyes, or “Move your leg! I can’t see.” Occasionally, I would just sigh. I had gotten into titles I was unfamiliar with and was beginning to see things that surprised, appalled, and occasionally pleased me. I knew enough industry history at this point to appreciate the cultural significance of some of these films, but mostly I just marveled at how much people could change their language, their hair, and even their bodies over decades, all while still doing the exact same sexual things. And I continued to wonder about my neighbors.
By the time I reached the final five films, I was drinking Red Bull and watching porn at three in the afternoon. I had learned a lot, but I really needed to be done with this. When the last film ended, I did a little dance and ran outside. I had now watched more porn than anyone else in the entire world—or so I thought.
4
Working the Booth
MY FIRST ADULT ENTERTAINMENT EXPO (AEE) WAS IN 2008.
Though it’s changed significantly in recent years, AEE is still the most recognizable and prominent adult industry trade show held in the US, therefore probably in the world. All sorts of adult companies and performers come to Las Vegas every January to do business and network with their peers. There are also fan days and areas dedicated to consumers, so various adult entities with some measure of celebrity dedicate time to meeting and greeting the public as well. Honestly, it’s not unlike any other professional convention.
But let me tell you, back in 2008, it was s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g to me.
You see, I’d heard about AEE from the mainstream media and from other academics—about the raunchiness, the sex everywhere, the sleazy porn dudes peddling clueless chicks, the weirdo fans salivating over girl-meat. It all sounded so . . . pornographic; and I’m not ashamed to admit that the first year I went I was nervous. But that passed rather quickly.
Yes, there was sex everywhere, but it was in the form of film trailers, content advertisements, and marketing displays. There were also booths showcasing sex toys, adventurous bedroom gear, and fetish clothing. But none of this should’ve been surprising. After all, it was an adult entertainment expo. There was no live, or even simulated, sex happening anywhere, but there were some bits of sexy diversion—pole-dancing demonstrations, fashion shows, ladies handing out penis-shaped lollipops, and fans walking around in various stages of costumed undress. But again, none of this should have been surprising.
Everything I’d ever heard about AEE seemed to be either a gross embellishment or an out-and-out fabrication. The disconnect between what I thought I knew about AEE pre-2008 and the reality of the convention itself shocked me more than anything I actually experienced or saw.
And what exactly did I experience or see?
Well, as I was then in the midst of completing fieldwork for my dissertation, most of what I did involved helping out in the booth.
Like most other major professional adult production companies, the group I was working with had a booth on the convention floor. It took a lot to run that thing, and in order to get to go to the show, I had to help out. My duties included, but were not limited to: making sure the performers who were signing autographs and meeting fans were comfortable and happy; making sure the fans waiting in ridiculously long lines for said performers were somewhat comfortable and happy; making sure businesspeople popping by were appropriately directed (or deflected); answering any number of strange and/ or interesting questions; handing out DVD samplers and other swag; carrying boxes; stacking things; finding lip gloss, brushes, cigarettes, mints, tampons, (sugar-free) Red Bull, and innumerable misplaced cell phones. You know, glamorous, sexy stuff.
Occasionally, there were catastrophes.
Like this one time, there was a display of RealDolls1 in an alcove area of the booth—a little tucked-in side display for fans to ogle as they waited in the autograph line. RealDolls are big and heavy, and each one was suspended in an elaborate display case. We had a gaggle of these giant “Barbie”-like creatures, standing upright in their clear plastic coffins, just beyond a red velvet rope. Disaster was inevitable.
At this particular moment, I was supervising the danger zone: that staging space just before fans get to approach their favorite starlet and the entire queue beyond. I was eagle-eyed at my post, equidistant between the RealDolls and the performers, trying to make sure neither group of ladies was being inappropriately touched or harassed. And though the crowd was thick and the line was long, for a while everything seemed to be going ok.
But then I saw him: a pushy gentleman stepping over the rope barricade, apparently in search of a more intimate photo op. Before I could call out to the nearest security guard—“Watch the girls while I go stop this idiot!”—he had weaseled his way in between the doll on the end and the booth’s canvas sidewall. As I pushed past grumbling fans, I saw him lean into her case, struggling to get close. Then she began to sway. The stupidly heavy, upright doll tipped back and forth a couple of times, gathering momentum before bashing into her closest sister.
And then they all started to fall, in slow motion, like giant sex doll dominoes.
Each one made a horrible crashing noise as she hit the concrete floor. One tipped off to the side, smashing into the booth itself and ripping down the sidewall. The entire interior—supplies, boxes and boxes of product, and everyone’s personal effects—was exposed
to the convention hall, as I stood dumbfounded amid the rubble. The photo-seeking fan scurried off.
It took about an hour for the maintenance folks to gather their wits, pick up the dolls, and repair the damage. In the meantime, I stood at the top of a twelve-foot ladder, creating the illusion of a barricade by holding the canvas up to the booth’s metal frame.
When I returned home after that first AEE, I had the worst headache ever.
For several years following that initial experience, AEE didn’t really change. At least, it didn’t change for me. I would still come home exhausted because I would still do some of the same work—hours and hours spent hunting for lost lip gloss (which was forever MIA) at that very same booth. Because, like any good feminist scholar trained in social justice, I was (and still am) compelled to give back to the community that helped me develop my sociological perspective. Plus, though working in that booth was tiring, it was also pretty dang fun.
I still go to AEE every January. These days, though, I do other things: meet with people who’ve worked in the business for decades (important!), conduct interviews with all levels and types of performers (also, so important), talk to media, and attend educational seminars and discussions, among many other things. I also began organizing and moderating a Women in Adult speaker series in 2012, in which five to six women from various corners of the industry talk about their workplace experiences and share their insights. So far, each event has been a smashing, meaningful success.
But things are changing for the adult industry, which means they’re also changing for AEE. In spite of event planners’ best efforts to mask it, the show has decreased in size every year since 2008. There are fewer vendors and fewer fans, and the event is held at a much smaller venue. Most of the swag and all of the lollipops have disappeared. Even my beloved booth is gone. These days, the company simply cordons off a raised stage area for signings. My help is no longer necessary.
The entire adult industry is in great state of flux—and, perhaps because of online piracy and cultural saturation with sex-related media, one might also say in a great state of decline. Many people will tell you that DVD is dead (read: DVDs have stopped selling), and tube sites—sites that steal copyright-protected content and make it available to viewers for free—have essentially convinced consumers that porn is a free commodity rather than a market good.
The issue of piracy on tube sites is extremely complex, but put simply: In porn, a collection of key tube sites have nearly leveled the entire industry. Watching pirated porn has the same effect on performers’ and producers’ bottom line as watching pirated episodes of Game of Thrones or True Blood—except that because adult industry folks are working with much smaller budgets and smaller profit margins, each individual visit to a porn tube site has a much more significant impact.
These combined cultural shifts have made it pretty difficult to make money in porn these days. But this decline can’t actually be about sex, because sex continues to drive our culture. It’s all over the Internet, and we as a society are becoming increasingly sexually aware. So it must really be about adult entertainment. Maybe we’ve evolved beyond porn-embodied versions of sex and passed the desire to engage our fantasies in person. Maybe we no longer care about meeting our favorite porn stars. Maybe the entire thing has lost its mystery.
It’s an interesting question to think about: Has the time and place for porn expired? Are we all just kinda over it?
5
The Thin Line Between Real and Fake
WHEN I WAS A KID, I WAS A LITTLE KNOW-IT-ALL. I WAS also a ridiculously obsessive planner. I suspect I was rather annoying.
The cataclysmic synergy of these fine qualities came into full bloom during my early undergrad years. I started college “knowing” that I was going to be a doctor (an MD doctor, not a PhD doctor). And not surprisingly, I had my entire course schedule planned the summer before classes began. I even plotted out years’ worth of illustrative charts that had been devised in conjunction with a deep and meaningful study of the UCLA general catalogue. At all of seventeen, I knew everything life had in store.
It was around this same time that I got into a mini-debate with a friend of mine. We were discussing something everyone obsessed over during the nineties: breast implants. I was of the mind that breast implants were horrible, atrocious things that corrupted an individual’s humanity, as well as the overall integrity of wider society. Basically, bad news. Saul, who was ten years older and ten years wiser and getting his PhD in aerospace engineering (so, maybe he wasn’t that much wiser after all), destroyed my argument with two simple questions.
“Didn’t you have braces?” he asked.
“Yes,” I responded. What the hell did that have to do with anything?
“Well, isn’t that the exact same thing?”
“No!” I asserted immediately and went on making whatever silly argument I was attempting to espouse. But Saul was right: Braces on your teeth and augmentations for your boobs are pretty much the same thing. Both are after-market alterations, they’re just perceived differently by a society that holds different parts of gendered human bodies to different standards.
Late-adolescent me would never in a million years acknowledge that Saul had a point, but he did. And it’s affected my thinking ever since.
Like braces and breast implants, porn is not real. At least, porn is not real in the sense that it’s a literal reflection of reality.
Like any other media—a Hollywood film, a bestselling book, or a story on the evening news—porn is crafted. A concept, maybe a script, a director and a crew, lights and makeup, performers, and post-production processing (among many other things) are all required to create fantasy visions of various sexual encounters. Sometimes porn may attempt to recreate an actual social or historical happening, and sometimes porn may take inspiration from existing cultural artifacts, but, in the end, it’s all just smoke and mirrors and a version of a story.
But, though porn is not real, its creation most certainly involves real people. Real people make porn. Porn performers are real humans who engage in some form of physical sexual performance with other real humans, and they all agree to work with one another long before the cameras start rolling. At least, in professional adult content production they do. Consequently, some level of chemistry, even if it’s in the form of chagrined resignation, between work-partnered performers must also exist.
Despite this, people greatly enjoy debating the authenticity of sex in porn. I sometimes find this funny because what exactly is there to debate? Real live people are doing it, so clearly the action—the literal sex—is real. Somewhere, at some time during production, porn sex actually happened. But porn sex is also contrived, happening in positions and lasting for durations of time that would be nearly impossible for nonprofessionals to achieve. The scenarios don’t exist, and taboos are flouted that probably shouldn’t be. (In real life, I mean; imagination is imagination.)
These maneuverings and manipulations complicate things, and, regardless of what one thinks the effect may be, it’s safe to say that most people feel porn may have some impact on real-life sex. May have some impact? Fine, I can get behind that idea. But what confounds me is the notion that porn must have an impact and that the impact must be a significant one. By that logic, all texts in all media forms must have a significant impact on consumers. For example, The Fast and The Furious series of films then also must have a significant impact on consumers’ driving. But no one would ever argue that. I think this notion that porn must impact you is tied into our cultural tendencies and mental blocks related to sex, sex education, and—ultimately—judgment and shame. But that’s a whole other topic.
Getting back to real and fake, what we’re ultimately left with are two aspects of porn—the production that actually happens in real life and the final finished product that consumers get to see. Most times, these are two very different realities. In the case of a Hollywood movie—think of spy flicks, horror films, and car-chase scene
s—we’re pretty aware of the distinction; we understand it. In the world of porn though? Not so much.
The conflation of pornographic reality and fantasy has manifested in all sorts of interesting and problematic ways, from consumers using adult content as a sexual teaching tool to people gauging their selfworth against the images they see in the newest adult scenarios. But it’s not just consumers who are caught up in the tension between real and fake. Producers and performers must also navigate these choppy waters and changing tides, while trying to determine how far they want to take their claims of authenticity. When we’re talking about porn, what constitutes real and what counts as fake? How do these dimensions emerge in content? What specific markers are used to gauge what’s real (and fake), and how do they vary? This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. To me, it seems that, in contemporary porn, a lot of related attention swirls around the two Bs: boobs and bush.
For the sake of discussion, let’s look at producers Elegant Angel. In adult content’s entire collective past and present, nothing compares to this studio’s offerings. Elegant Angel puts out a wealth of sexy-luscious, highly stylized series, as well as an occasional feature film. And though some of the titles may seem off-putting (for example, Big Wet Asses and Massive Facials are two of their more popular series), don’t be fooled. If harder content coupled with a very refined aesthetic is your thing, you need look no further. But this studio and its skilled directors are not immune to the trends of boobs and bush and real and fake currently influencing adult content. Consider their one-off title Natural and their series Bush, both of which came about in 2011.
Exposure Page 5