#1 23-08-12 01:50:57

HollyWood

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Registered: 28-07-10

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Porn - Taboo to Trendy

I have a question for all you folks out there. Porn didn't just get 'hip' when trendy bars started playing tasteful vintage porn on projectors and American Apparel began recruiting porn stars to model their clothing (Sasha Grey, Fae Raegan etc).  I think that sex as subject matter has always been trendy (particularly among men because women's speak on the matter has been strongly historically oppressed) because taboo is always alluring.

Why do y'all think porn and sexual subject matter is such a hot topic at the moment/ever?

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blissed

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From: The bus station of the future

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

I think people have always been interested in porn, it's just having to deny that interest that's going out of fashion.

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hartp02

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Registered: 10-05-08

Posts: 85

Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

Yes,look at the waves in history:openminded-surpressed-openminded-surpressed etc.
Compare the Roman world with Puritan England under Cromwell for instance.
A lot has to do with religion anyway.
Note,I'm not an atheist but I do oppose those who bend religious rules for their own good:e.g. the Catholic clergy made themselves being paid well for letting off sexual sins...
On the other hand,though,there are temples in India (e.g.Kajuharo) who promote sexual positions in the statues on their walls!
And who does'nt remember the sailors of captain Bligh who were lured by Polynesian sexual freedom!?
So many peoples,so many ways...
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Exegi monumentum aere perennius

HollyWood

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Registered: 28-07-10

Posts: 130

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

Yes, but I guess there's been a surge recently of popularising porn. Do you think it's just a puritan vs. sexual freedom thing or is it more of an actual trend or topic de jour in the last 10 years or so? If so whhyyy??

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blissed

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From: The bus station of the future

Registered: 17-03-06

Posts: 5,622

Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

It's a broadband internet connection thing That's my hunch. Seems to have happened at the same pace as easy access to porn. I find if I want to analyse why pretty much anything becomes popular I have to subtract the effect outlined in this video below, and then I might be left with nothing, or something like a produict was the best value so it became popular or an idea fullfilled a need.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ

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(Self made tycoon and independant financial advisor to the stars)

hartp02

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Registered: 10-05-08

Posts: 85

Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

It helps,I agree with Blissed,but in Roman days there was a lot of publicity as well:writing  erotical stories and poems, drawing sexual text and penisses on walls,sexual stage-plays,overfamiliar brothels...check out Pompeii!
Ok,maybe it was'nt like the internet-scale,but people knew how to get their things,too...
Reaction was Christianity,puritanism(even among some emperors).in short-:going back to so-called decency.
In my days in the seventies and eighties I remember going to the good oldfashioned,pluchychaired 20-people porn theaters where they showed 16-mm movies,or going to the local sex-shop for renting worn-out super 8'ts...what an era!
In that vieuw Blissed is right:easier acces without public risk...but in the past nothing stopped me watching some good(?) porn!
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Exegi monumentum aere perennius

HollyWood

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Registered: 28-07-10

Posts: 130

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

There's no doubt about why porn is around and why people view it. What I mean is that porn is appearing in other facets of our lives not just for masturbatory purposes and it's an ever-popular subject/imagery of choice for marketing campaigns, tv, music, fashion, film, lifestyle. And this, I think, is a more recent movement (post 1990s). Do you guys think it's just the prevelance of multimedia access to pornography that spurred this on? Or just a natural progression because it's less taboo? Or is it popularized BECAUSE it's taboo? I have no idea.

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blissed

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From: The bus station of the future

Registered: 17-03-06

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

Niether have I I think they're the kind of questions you might need PR conmpany type resources to try and find the answers to.

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Last edited by blissed (29-08-12 12:11:25)

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Gretchin

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

I've just read Jeff Sparrow's Money Shot, in my opinion the most well-rounded investigation of porn in Australia. Having read Gail Dines' rather shrill argument blaming this media for tearing families apart, Sparrow presents the facts without pressing his opinion too hard.
So, having learned from these authors and picking out the good bits, porn in mass culture is no accident. It's a ginourmous industry that has made careful moves to trickle its performers into film and fashion in order to gain even more attention. It is nearly impossible to censor, and therefore easy to slip under marketing sanctions put on tv and print (I'm thinking pop-up ads as well as extreme content).
We are at the zenith of a decadent empire. Nothing can really shock us, we've seen it all (goatse.cx) and we consume tube porn like french fries. It's there whenever we want to jerk off, for free (though when i'm a grownup with a real job the first thing I'm getting is subs for IFM and kink.com), forever.
Why is sexuality hot on the bar stool now? Mainstream porno presents a norm (shaved, toned, tanned, and dumb) and people want to show that they don't fit the mold. Belle de Jour allows us into the 'real' world of a modern courtesan. Fuck I loved that site, I was 18 and gobsmacked that this was a viable, even safe way of earning a living. Blogs from sex workers, strippers, porn actors, producers, give us a glimpse behind the vaseline sheen to reveal smart, politically switched-on, level-headed women and men.
Let there be porn! But let there also be education. Erase the old shame and let people choose wisely in the free market.

haraggan

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Registered: 24-12-12

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

My brain is not working right now because of the death of a very close friend, but remind me to come back to this topic when I'm coherent to add my 2 cents. I was an anthropologist who specialized in popular culture and I wrote a novel (unpublished, of course) on the topic so I might actually come up with something interesting to say.

Cheers,

Matt

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"The song sleeps in the machine"
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aven frey

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

Sorry to hear about your friend Matt.

viva

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

Me too Matt.

Gretchin, welcome x 10000, I love the things you say.

haraggan

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From: Edinburgh

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

Thank you, guys. I'm sorry - I hadn't meant to seem like I was trolling for sympathy. I wanted to be involved in this discussion, though, but wasn't coherent yet. I still might not be, but here goes...

First, there are moments when certain individuals in a ghettoized genre or subculture attract enough mainstream attention to either/or break out of the gehtto, themselves, or lend some credibility to their genre. This has happened in my own field (science fiction) with people like Jeff Noon, Jonathan Lethem, Harukai Murakami, William Gibson. In comics with Neil Gaiman. Interestingly, in some way these fields are even more stigmatized then porn, because eventually what happened is the writers simply stopped being associated with their genre so people can read them while still claiming to hate science fiction (friends of mine, for example).

In porn it has happened a couple of times - once with John Holmes, again with Jenna Jameson, and probably with some others not popping to mind immediately. And it also happened with a fictional depiction, Boogie Nights. That movie probably had a large effect.

But the ability for individuals and artistic representations of a medium to catch on and help "elevate" that medium to a certain level of acceptability depends on currents in culture, and those have to do with consumption. One component of consumption is identity-building. People like to create images for themselves through the things they possess (for instance, if you visit someone's house and it is filled wtih African tribal masks - or stuffed animal heads. In either case, they are not just innocently displaying the stuff they like, even if that's all they think they are doing. They are presenting, even creating, images of themselves they want to be seen).

For many people, what they like to display is borderline "transgressive" things, looking for an edgy, dangerous-but-in-a-safe-kind-of-way image. Sub-cultures are often mined for these sorts of images and identity builders (I'm not trying to ridicule the process; this argument isn't about anyone being a "poser" and I also don't want to imply that using cultural properties in this way precludes genuinely liking them. I'm a former goth - I like the music and the look and I also know I was creating a social image for myself. This is a major feature of social life in cultures of consumption and everybody participates in it to some extent - and, since we all now know that "corporations are people too," that includes institutions like bars, MTV, etc trying to look daring.) Back when I was in grad school, in the early 90s, I was doing my PhD dissertation on professional wrestling in the United States just when it reached this point of being hip, being poularlized in an ironic, post-modern sort of way. Again, certain individuals taking on a celebrity status beyond their little niche were influential (the Rock, Steve Austin, Vince McMahon). At the same time, as a matter of fact, with all this newfound attention, wrestling started to build links to porn to show that *it* was still transgressive.

What happens is that the "authenticity-value" of these edgy, transgressive cultural properties wears out as more and more people use them, and people go looking for new trends to mine. Wrestling faded back into something to be scoffed at. Punk rock became too mainstream. Porn, on the other-hand, has so far hung onto its transgressive identity, in part because of efforts by some within the porn community to keep it that way (not for reasons related to porn's value and use in establishing peoples hip identities - my argument is that porn producers, many of them, have intentionally made porn more raw - the growth of "gonzo" - to combat interst and influence in porn by women). So porn is still available - and pre-eminently available - for this purpose. It has managed to stay available because its increasing visibility has intensified the debate about it. The more people get into it, the more other people scream about it, so it retains its transgressive appeal even with popularity.

Sorry about the long-windedness. I still haven't  gotten over the habit of writing academic essays. And I'm still largely incoherent. I hope I was remotely interesting and not too pompous and scatter-brained.

Cheers,

Matt

Last edited by haraggan (21-01-13 10:16:43)

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"The song sleeps in the machine"
-- Einsturzende Neubauten

Gretchin

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Registered: 01-01-13

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

How do people get to that point when they can be the voice of the new era? Lexi Belle, gonzo extrordinaire, has no illusions of what is happening to the economy in the industry, and is happy to talk about it. Is it her willingness to be vocal that makes her an icon, given that her performances feature humiliation and degradation prevalent in much of the mainstream?

So, because of the number of platforms we as the great unwashed have available to us to publish our every life experience, that we are able to create a version of ourselves that anyone we've ever or never met anywhere in the world can access. Behind a screen it is safe to say  “I'm attending a bondage workshop at Sexpo,” in pictures and links. Edgy enough to get attention but retaining anonymity on a list of online attendees. Matt, is this what you're saying?

I agree on that point, but punk was born from frustration of ideas of talent and good music, a fuck you to pretty much everything. Porn was a really good business idea. Playboy's identity carefully constructed to make its audience feel a little naughty, a little smug, and rather keen for a little more. I guess it is something that one *does* but not something one *talks* about. Now that people are daring to talk about it more, it makes them feel that they are a bit on the edge. I wonder if that was intentional. Are Princess Donna's Hardcore Gangbangs and Lexi Belle's handheld lo-fi projects the new Nacho Libre Wrestling...?

haraggan

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Registered: 24-12-12

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Re: Porn - Taboo to Trendy

I don't think I'm trying to explain how anything is born, just how it is appropriated by certain new audiences. In many cases it's not necessarily the adoption of some sub-culture or other by a large segment of the populace that makes it "hip," at first, but by certain visible institutions: for example rock stars with pornstar girlfriends, crossover attempts with other media (rock videos, premium TV series flirting with pornographich content, Sasha Grey appearing in that movie "The Girlfriend Experience", Jenna Jameson being a talking head on MTV and writing a successful biography) - not to mention the efforts of educators, reformers and popularizers such as Suzie Bright and Tristan Taormino. These sorts of things first lift the curtain a bit, adding enough respectability and visibility for people like me to then keep the porn movies out with the rest of the dvds.

It also helps if there is a cultural need. A friend of mine once wrote an excellent paper on Playboy as a response to threatened masculinity in the 50s. I'll hav to go back and reread it. Perhaps the threat of AIDs, the concommittant new morality leading to institutions like the Westboro Baptist Church, George Bush's assertion that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms" (which was - a bit more subtly - backed up in an essay by Salman Rushdie) - contributed to a cultural moment which made porn an ideal bit of cultural capital to display non-conformity. And as the history of punk shows, non-conformity is often dealt with by being made into another kind of conformity.

How somebody gets put in the postion of being the face of an industry, a sub-culture, a genre, I dunno. A combination of talent, marketability, the right backing, luck, and maybe what Max Weber called "charismatic leadership."

Funny story - I once ran into my therapist at a performance by Annie Sprinkle at NY's Museum of Sex.

Love your closing image.

Cheers,

Matt

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"The song sleeps in the machine"
-- Einsturzende Neubauten