^Thanks for your research. Though I think Girlsway (which I hear is all lesbian) was Bree Mills' first brand, she expanded to also producing more hardcore content such as dp and creampies. She said in an interview that her customer base is about 90 percent men. Her content is so wide range that I don't think she fits into one specific category or genre and I'm wondering how that gender percentage of customer base compares to producers who fit more consistently into the feminist porn genre or companies that specialize in marketing themselves to women and couples such as Wicked Pictures and Adam and Eve. I'm going out on a limb and guessing with all porn production companies, the customer base is mostly men (though some may have closer to an equal balance) and I realize how some men enjoy more feminist, lesbian or "queer" genres.
On this thread, feminist porn has been defined as content where women are enjoying it or where women take on powerful roles. Some of Bree Mills' content is the opposite, including scenes scenes that show men in power and women with little to none, and plots with women acquiscing to men's sexual demands out of desperation, or having sex with men that aren't into because another man pressures them into it for his gain. This may seem anti-feminist on the surface, though I don't think it's that simple. Feminism critiques power dynamics and gender roles, which doesn't mean romantacizing everything and showing women as all powerful. Only the women would know whether they enjoy playing these roles and some may appreciate roles which are more than just "I'm going to use my sexuality to overpower men."
About that figure of 90% of customers being men, that was from an interview about 10 years ago specifically referring to Girls Way, which, as you said, was (and still is) exclusively lesbian porn. The overall Adult Time site (where Girls Way is only a small part), of course, is a more varied. So the audience for that probably is not so overwhelmingly male.
Also, I agree with what you said about Mill's ostensibly more "anti-feminist" content. At the end of the day it's fantasy, it's entertainment. People like watching (and reading and listening) to a lot of things they don't like or approve in real life. Some of the oldest stories we humans tell each others as entertainment are about war (and many such stories continue to be be told all the time). Yet consider this: the USA, which as an all-volunteer military and spends more on the military than probably all other countries combined, has an active-duty military of about 1.4 million out of a total population of 330 million. This is less than half of one percent. In other words, if given a choice, literally 99.5% of people don't want to be part of a war (I know I know not all of that 330 million would qualify, I'm just trying to make a point).
Switching gears a bit, today there's a big article on New York Times about Candida Royalle (someone I think you, or at least someone in this thread, brought up before), titled The Woman Who Tried to Make Porn Safe for Feminism (behind paywall). According to the article, Royalle passed away in 2015, and her personal effects (diary, photos, scrapbook, professional costumes, etc.) became part of a collection in the Harvard's Schlesinger Library, which the article calls "nation's leading repository for women's history, home to the papers of suffragists and social reformers, poets and politicians, the collective behind "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and iconic figures like Amelia Earhart, Angela Davis and Julia Child."
She was active during the "Golden Age" of porn, so it's before my time, and I wasn't familiar with her works, so this is a very interesting and educational read for me. I'll try to summarize some of the things that I find interesting in the article. I'll also include some photos from the article.
1. The "sex wars" of the 1980s. This is something I heard about before. During the 1980s, there were a bunch of debates between anti-porn feminists (often allied with conservative politicians and religious figures) and sex-positive feminists, including some female porn stars like Candida. In fact, the article talks about how this is one of the main motivations for including Candida's effects in the Harvard library, as the writings of some prominent anti-porn feminists were already included (Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon).
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Second Row First from Left
2. The article talks about Candida's personal history with respect to porn. In one section, it's jokingly titled "The V Word" -- not the "V" people think about in porn, but "victim" or "victor." The basic idea is that she is sort of both. On one hand, she started out trying to be a "legitimate" artist. In New York, she tried musical. Even after moving to LA, she tried acting. In both cases, she didn't "make it" despite strenuous efforts.
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On the other hand, her entry into porn was a choice, as she literally wrote in her diary that "If you're not gonna do straight legitimate theater you're gonna have to shock 'em."
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Second from Right
3. During the 1980s, she started writing for some publications about sex. Later she founded Femme Productions, which produced and directed in porn, and tried to make "woman-centered films intended for couples," a distinctly different sort of porn (as the curator of the Harvard library hilariously put it, one without "external male orgasm").
Here it's again a mix of "tragedy and triumph" so to speak. One one hand, it won a lot of professional awards and praise, and in fact the archive includes letters from grateful female viewers. On the other hand, Femme Productions was not a financial success.
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4. Later, interestingly, she seemed to have become unhappy (understandably) with the direction that the porn industry developed, calling it "a trash heap of over-the-top extremities of the most violating acts." Apparently, she really didn't care for Jenna Jameson. Later still, she wanted to write a memoir titled "Sexualized No More: My Journey In and Out of the Porn Business," but no publisher wanted to back it.
^Thanks for the article. I was suprised to see Candida Royalle come up again in the media, especially a major news source such as the New York Times. Really speaks volumes for her legacy.
Kamensky was the Harvard library director who acquired Candida's archive. Interestingly, she's described by the article as a leading scholar of the American Revolution, so a book on Candida Royalle is about a different sort of revolution.
p.s.: re-reading my original post, I think I made it sound like Royalle's "trash heap" quote was directed at Jenna Jameson. That's not the case, at least not directly so. Kamensky merely says Royalle is "frustrated" at Jenna Jameson, perhaps seeing Jameson as an example of someone who is just content to make money in front of the camera, instead of trying to change the industry (as Royalle has done) by going behind the camera and doing something different.
Edited by - blackdragontea on 3/19/2024 1:55:12 AM
There's also a documentary on Candida Royalle made before she passed away called "Candida." Being a star can have advantages, though it can also make you a target of criticism, such as with Jenna Jameson. Many performers seem content just being in front of the camera making money without trying to change the industry and some may be fine with how the industry is. Yet, Jenna Jameson may get mentioned because of her star status. Jenna said she was under contract with Wicked Pictures (an artsy production company known for vanilla sex acts and Hollywood style features, and being women and couple friendly without the more extreme riskier types of sets) and later started her own company called Club Jenna. Thus, she seemed to have it good compared to some performers and wasn't in a position where she had to do double-anal, double-vag creampies or the riskier stuff in order to get enough work or to get paid premium rates.
Not assuming it was perfect or all glamourous for her and I think she did advocate for some change. Jenna posted on this board after the 2004 HIV outbreak in porn saying that she allowed her performers to choose whether to use condoms in an industry where condomless is often required to get work with few exceptions. However, I didn't work for her am not in position to confirm or deny that. I also think she may have supported condom mandates in porn (which were largely opposed by customers, performers, and producers), though not sure.
While I appreciate Candida Royalle's efforts to bring change to the industry and empower women, she also in some ways produced content that can be perceived as degrading women. For example, the one BBW I know of in any of her films was a small role in "One Size Fits All" and her purpose in the movie seemed like nothing more than to fat shame women and present BBWs as unappealing. This BBW went into a vintage shop and expressed interest in a tiny dress. The store owner treated her with disdain and assured her the dress wouldn't fit her. Then, a thin woman entered, expressed an interest in the same dress, and he not only was eager to sell it to her but also fuck her. Not saying this was a bad movie overall and while I appreciate Candida's efforts to provide an alternative to conventional porn for both performers and viewers, this doesn't mean she's above criticism.
The scene above resonates with me because I also was in some "chunky"-themed porn videos back in the early 2000's focused on fat jokes. However, the difference is in these movies, the "chunky" women were the stars on the box covers and the movies centered around us. We're weren't just some sideshow. Yet, this seems widely perceived as degrading whereas Candida's content is considered more empowering.
I had talked about an academic scholar, Heather Berg, and her paper ("Porn Work, Feminist Critique, and The Market for Authenticity") multiple times before. I just realized that she actually wrote a whole book about this in 2021, not just that one paper. The title of the book is "Porn Work -- Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism." At the time when she wrote it, she's a professor at Washington University. You can also find several youtube videos where she got interviewed about this book.
It's an academic work, so there are quite a few jargon and references to other academic works that fly over my head, but at the heart of it, it's really interesting, because unlike 99% of other stuff that talk about porn, she is not at all interested in how porn is consumed, and how it influences the people who watch it. She looks at it strictly from a work perspective -- pay, working condition, relationship between labor and management, etc. The bottom line is that it's neither some hellhole imagined by anti-porn activists nor some romantic empowering experience imagined by others. It's just work, in many respects like other work, though of course with its own peculiarities.
The introduction lays out some theoretical frameworks for the book, but chapter 1 is really fascinating. To write the book, she literally attended some filming. So during this chapter she talks about one such experience, while interspersing it with more general comments about the porn industry, with information coming from interviews with many insiders.
Following up on my previous post about Heather Berg's book, in case you are not interested in reading, you can listen to some podcasts about it. I listened to a few, and I feel like this one with Tristan Taormino, someone who has both performed in some scenes and directed scenes, is the best.
Quite a few of the other interviews are not very "beginner friendly" in that they tend to talk about a lot of theoretical and/or academic stuff, and I feel like Dr. Berg is not the best at communicating with a lay audience. In this interview with Taormino, I feel like this is less of a problem, because Taormino brings up a lot of things that are more directly relatable to a general audience.
Anyway, the interview is about an hour long, divided into three parts.
1. Part 1 is the most "theory heavy" part, where they talk about labor/management relationship, Marxism, capitalism, and the rapidly evolving landscape of porn that puts a lot of those old concepts under heavy strain.
2. Starting at around 25th minute, they transition to talk about what I feel like is a very important point from the perspective of consumers -- authenticity, which at first appears a very straightforward concept ("real passion, real orgasm, real etc."), but in fact is very complicated. Berg in fact uses the term "bounded authenticity" to describe it.
Here Taormino brings up several really fascinating stories. Earlier in her career, she really tried to pursue this notion of "authenticity." For example, she would talk about a very problematic attempt at shooting "reality porn." She would also talk about trying to make "yes list" (you may have heard about "no list" -- a performer can refuse to work with someone else). It's a good idea, but probably not for the reason we tend to think.
3. Starting at around 46th minute, Taormino brings up the idea of shooting scenes between real couples. Naively, we might think that would be for the best for a good porn scene. For Taormino, it's a total disaster. Lastly, Berg would talk about "underwear dialectics" (listen to find out what that is).
