Pornostalgia.
Sep. 11th, 2003 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, I've been early collecting 80's porn recently, mostly from around the first year I went into college and had access to a lot of it. There were rental places near my dorm that freely gave me access to a world of sights and sounds to be found nowhere else. It's kinda neat to watch old names and faces: Erica Boyer, Rachel Ashley, Elizabeth English, Eric Edwards... yeah, even the awful Mark Wallace, whose two claims to fame are that he banged Traci Lords a lot and sweat so bad on camera that... yech. Another man who resembled the Hedgehog, if only in aesthetics.
I'm kinda fond of it. The women were real-- no surgery back then, what you got on camera was the tits nature gave her. The same was true of the men, although you could sometimes see that Eric Edwards desperately needed a fluffer. The cameras were bigger then, harder to get into the really tight corners, so you often got a good look at whole bodies, not just the kinds of images reserved for gynaecologists. There was very little shaving back then-- women had their pubic hair, which these days is a kink all by itself. And there were no condoms in use. It was straight bareback, all the way. Watching those films is a bit like watching innocents at play. Marilyn Chambers pretended interracial sex was a very big deal. So was anal sex. These days those are both simply par for the course.
They had plot, too. Sometimes, rather than being "a fuck film," what you get is a film with a lot of fucking in it. Oh, sure, Rachel Ashley as an undercover police agent trying to bust up a money laundering scheme involving a horse ranch seems ludicrous, especially when you see how badly she handles a gun, but at least it's there. And watching Eric Edwards holding Liz English by the hair while doing her doggy-style is worth the wait. Hmm... I wonder if my taste in porn is reflected in the smut I write. Ya think?
Anyway, I'm just blathering. I find most modern porn so dreary. Susie Bright once commented that most men in porn look "as if they were involved in some grim task." That seems to be more and more true as time goes on. So few people look like they're having fun, or give voice to the fun they're having. Porn from two decades back involved real bodies slapping up against each other in real time; often, the artifical distance the camera demands now for those close-in shots just wasn't there, and when someone made a mistake, the performers just giggled and moved on. It was shot on film, not digital video or even analog tape, it was expensive to do over, and the results had a warm, grainy feeling to them that digital filters have not yet duplicated.
I can't help but wonder if I'm getting old. I think that the crystal clarity of digitally recorded endoscopic viagra-and-meth-fueled nonstop fucking between people we don't know and don't care about kinda misses the whole point of why people have sex in the first place... or, at least, why I want to have sex...
I'm kinda fond of it. The women were real-- no surgery back then, what you got on camera was the tits nature gave her. The same was true of the men, although you could sometimes see that Eric Edwards desperately needed a fluffer. The cameras were bigger then, harder to get into the really tight corners, so you often got a good look at whole bodies, not just the kinds of images reserved for gynaecologists. There was very little shaving back then-- women had their pubic hair, which these days is a kink all by itself. And there were no condoms in use. It was straight bareback, all the way. Watching those films is a bit like watching innocents at play. Marilyn Chambers pretended interracial sex was a very big deal. So was anal sex. These days those are both simply par for the course.
They had plot, too. Sometimes, rather than being "a fuck film," what you get is a film with a lot of fucking in it. Oh, sure, Rachel Ashley as an undercover police agent trying to bust up a money laundering scheme involving a horse ranch seems ludicrous, especially when you see how badly she handles a gun, but at least it's there. And watching Eric Edwards holding Liz English by the hair while doing her doggy-style is worth the wait. Hmm... I wonder if my taste in porn is reflected in the smut I write. Ya think?
Anyway, I'm just blathering. I find most modern porn so dreary. Susie Bright once commented that most men in porn look "as if they were involved in some grim task." That seems to be more and more true as time goes on. So few people look like they're having fun, or give voice to the fun they're having. Porn from two decades back involved real bodies slapping up against each other in real time; often, the artifical distance the camera demands now for those close-in shots just wasn't there, and when someone made a mistake, the performers just giggled and moved on. It was shot on film, not digital video or even analog tape, it was expensive to do over, and the results had a warm, grainy feeling to them that digital filters have not yet duplicated.
I can't help but wonder if I'm getting old. I think that the crystal clarity of digitally recorded endoscopic viagra-and-meth-fueled nonstop fucking between people we don't know and don't care about kinda misses the whole point of why people have sex in the first place... or, at least, why I want to have sex...
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suggestion...
Date: 2003-09-11 09:33 pm (UTC)Once upon a time they were considering doing movies with lots of fucking, and were looking for writers. You could check with the owner.
Prime time porn
Date: 2003-09-12 03:35 am (UTC)Re: Prime time porn
Date: 2003-09-12 03:59 am (UTC)Me too
Date: 2003-09-12 04:33 am (UTC)That's why Zahlman King's (sp?) stuff has always appealed to me. It's very sensual and emotional. There was one, I think from the Red Shoe series, that is a lady DJ talking about a past lover and the pain and lessons she got from that liaison. That's all it was, just her talking, and it was one of the most erotic things I've ever seen.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 06:52 am (UTC)Elf, have you read Sewer, Gas, & Electric by Matt Ruff? Part of the plot, if memory serves me right, involves a militant feminist producing "the best porn film ever" and getting rich...
-Erik
What I Like Is Erotica, What You Like Is Porn, What They Like Is Filth
Date: 2003-09-12 12:55 pm (UTC)I love living at the Haunted. We had a long conversation break out in the computer room (the de facto social nexus of the house) on sex and porn and why most porn is so awful. Lily and I (the main instigators of this) had differing opinions of why porns sucks, but everybody was in agreement that one of the big problems with porn is that nobody looks like they're having any fun. Bad sex is dreary enough when you're actually having it; watching other people have bad sex is much worse. Nobody smiles. Nobody giggles. Blah. And the plot and dialogue... ick. We were definitely in agreement that plot and dialogue in porn is a fine thing, if it's good. Otherwise, why are we bothering when we could be getting on to the reason we're spending time here, anyway? If you've got a lousy script but hot actors who actually like each other, play to your strengths, ok?
Re: What I Like Is Erotica, What You Like Is Porn, What They Like Is Filth
Date: 2003-09-12 04:49 pm (UTC)Re: What I Like Is Erotica, What You Like Is Porn, What They Like Is Filth
Date: 2003-09-12 11:36 pm (UTC)That's a great essay. I don't agree with every particular, but on the whole it's wonderful. Thanks for the link, Elf.