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DainBramaged

(39,191 posts)
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 02:38 PM Jun 2012

Louis Theroux on porn: The decline of an industry (whooda thunk it?)

On a movie set in an industrial area of Las Vegas, Tommy Gunn, one of America's top porn stars, was describing his ideal woman: "Self-sacrificing and caring and nurturing and wants to have children. Honestly, I'm not going to find her in this business."

In the eight years he's been working in porn, Tommy's done something like 1,200 scenes. Muscular, faintly Latin-looking, with a slight touch of Robert De Niro, he's built a reputation as dependable in an industry where reliability is a man's most highly-prized professional asset.

You can get some idea of the nature of Tommy's films from the titles. Addicted 2 Sin, Call of Booty, Fleshdance.

A few days earlier, at his rented ranch house in the countryside north of Los Angeles, Tommy had showed me the small army of statuettes he'd won for his performances - the porn equivalent of Oscars

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18352421


That was one industry I always thought would be bulletproof.

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seabeyond

(110,159 posts)
6. right. women do less. so unfair to the menz
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 02:53 PM
Jun 2012

One of the 10 scenes in the film begins with a woman and man having a picnic in a park. He jokes about wanting to use the romantic moment to make love to her mouth, and then stands and thrusts into her mouth while she sits on the blanket. Two other men who walk by join in. Saying things such as “Pump that face, pump that fucking face,” “All the way down, choke, choke,” and “That’s real face fucking,” they hold her head and push harder. One man grabs her hair and pulls her head into his penis in what his friend calls “the jackhammer.” At this point she is grimacing and seems in pain. She then lies on the ground, and the men approach her from behind. “Eat that whole fucking dick. … You little whore, you like getting hurt,” one says, as her face is covered with saliva. “Do you like getting your face fucked?” one asks. She can’t answer. “Open your mouth if you like it,” he says, and she opens her mouth. After they all ejaculate into her mouth, the semen flows out onto her body. After the final ejaculation, she reaches quickly for the wine glass, takes a large drink, and looks up at her boyfriend, and says, “God, I love you baby.” Her smile fades to a pained look of shame and despair.

*

I am not suggesting that in every scene in mainstream pornography such expressions of pain are evident. And I acknowledge that I cannot know exactly what the women in these films were feeling, physically or emotionally. I do not presume to speak for them, or for women in pornography, or for women in general. But her is what Belladonna, one of the women who appeared in “Two in the Seat #3,” told a television interviewer about such scenes: “You have to really prepare physically and mentally for it. I mean, I go through a process from the night before. I stop eating at 5:00. I do, you know, like two enemas. The next morning I don’t eat anything. It’s so draining on your body.” Women’s experiences no doubt vary, but Belladonna’s experience hardly seems idiosyncratic.

However, it is not necessary to reach definitive conclusions about the degree of pain women experience in such scenes to make one important observation. In these scenes, all three women at some point clearly appeared to a viewer to be in pain. Their facial expressions and voices conveyed that what was being done to them was causing physical discomfort and/or fear and/or distress. Given the ease with which video can be edited, why did the producers not edit out those expressions? There are two possible answers. One, they may view these kinds of expressions of pain by the women as of no consequence to the viewers’ interest, and hence of no consequence to the goal of maximizing sales; women’s pain is neutral. The second possibility is that the producers have reason to believe that viewers like the expressions of pain; women’s pain helps sales.

*

When the legal restrictions on pornography slowly receded through the 1970s and ‘80s, and the presentation of sex on the screen was by itself no longer quite so illicit, anal sex became a standard feature. Anal sex was seen as something most women don’t want; it had an edge to it. When anal sex became routine in pornography, the gonzo genre started pushing the boundaries into things like double-penetrations and gag-inducing oral sex – again, acts that men believe women generally will not want. The more pornography becomes normalized and mainstreamed, the more pornography has to search for that edge. And that edge most commonly is cruelty, which emotionally is the easiest place to go for men, given that the dynamic of male domination and female submission is already in place in patriarchy. This analysis is not news to the industry. As Jerome Tanner put it during a pornography directors’ roundtable discussion featured in Adult Video News, “People just want it harder, harder, and harder, because like Ron said, what are you gonna do next?” Another director, Jules Jordan, was blunt about his task: “[O]ne of the things about today’s porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, so many fans want to see so much more extreme stuff that I’m always trying to figure out ways to do something different. But it seems everybody wants to see a girl doing a d.p. now or a gangbang. For certain girls, that’s great, and I like to see that for certain people, but a lot of fans are becoming a lot more demanding about wanting to see the more extreme stuff. It’s definitely brought porn somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s headed from there.”

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/pornography&cruelty.htm

 

Zalatix

(8,994 posts)
7. That is the worst possible industry for women to have some "Advantage" in.
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 02:54 PM
Jun 2012

The health risks and psychological devastation isn't worth $100,000 a scene.

 

seabeyond

(110,159 posts)
2. Self-sacrificing and caring and nurturing and wants to have children
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 02:48 PM
Jun 2012

his ideal woman: "Self-sacrificing and caring and nurturing and wants to have children. Honestly, I'm not going to find her in this business." Tommy told me he'd been single for four years. He'd struggled to find a lasting relationship with someone who was willing to put up with his lifestyle - or possibly he found it difficult to love someone who was willing to put up with it. "It's not normal leaving somebody you love to go and have sex with someone you don't," he said. Then, emphatically, he repeated: "That's not normal."

*

For those who live the life, the reality is quite different. For one thing, the wages aren't much - $150 (£97) per scene. You can forget about pensions and health insurance. Not to mention that the act of coition on demand, with lights on and cameras rolling, is not a skill every man is capable of. Or, given the shame and embarrassment and the toll it takes on one's relationships, would want to be capable of. The job is tough at the best of times - and these are far from the best of times.

*

Jon Dough killed himself nine years after that conversation, at the age of 43. Most of the industry put it down the pressures of the business and the difficulties of making a living in a market that was saturated with free product. Several people blamed his death on declining DVD sales. Jon Dough was married to a fellow performer, Monique DeMoan, who is now retired and living 800 miles from Los Angeles. She said her husband killed himself because of drug addictions. Still, it says something about the industry that so many were ready link the suicide to the plight of DVDs.

*

Many female performers also work as prostitutes for extra cash. Where a female performer might make $600 to $800 (£388 to £518) for a straight sex scene in a movie, she can get double that - for less work - by "doing a private". For many performers, the movies are now a sideline and a kind of advertising for their main business of prostitution. While the wages stagnate, and the jobs dry up, the pressure on the performers continues. During my visit, Monte expressed his unhappiness about a scene Kagney had just been booked for, involving a sex act so outlandish it can't really be described in a mainstream news forum.

kelly1mm

(4,719 posts)
4. Why pay for it when you can get it for free? It is ALL over the internet. For some reason
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 02:50 PM
Jun 2012

amatures/semi-amatures seem to have no problem putting up clips. Also, lots of "new style" porn seems to be two guys with cameras just filming. No production values at all - very cheap to produce and distribute (internet only).

 

Zalatix

(8,994 posts)
8. And that's before we get into anonymous non-logging proxies and seedboxes.
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 03:00 PM
Jun 2012

Just the mention of those words drive MPAA execs and porn producers back to suicide therapy.

 

seabeyond

(110,159 posts)
9. and absolutely no knowledge if the girl or girls are willing or being forced
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 03:02 PM
Jun 2012

or strong armed against their will, behind the camera.

LeftyMom

(49,212 posts)
11. I don't think the market's going away so much as changing.
Fri Jun 8, 2012, 03:19 PM
Jun 2012

Piracy and free content on the internet are destroying the market for DVDs (so, I suspect, is high definition and huge televisions- it makes it a lot harder to hide physical flaws,) but the market for video porn at home only started up when VCRs became common, so that's a pretty short time frame to begin with.

I know a few porn actresses (long story) and they tell me that they make most of their money from webcams and stripping. Video they make money on, but it's primary effect on their bottom line is to build up a market for the cams and dancing. Kind of like how bands make some money on successful albums but a lot more on concert tickets and merch.

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