Dave Cummings

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Welcome to the forum.

First off, you say 'our culture'. What is 'our culture'? Are you located in the U.S., Europe, or some other part of the world.

A couple of short articles about porn, and more recent history of porn in the U.S. can be found:

... here

... and here.

However, you might also try entering 'porn' or 'porn history' in your browser search engine.

Porn, or 'erotica' would go all the way back along with the world's oldest profession - prostitution. Including erotica you would have a long history.

Good luck.

DenverDon <<<<[[[[

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By 'our culture' I mean city culture, which is similar in any democraticly run city all over the world I believe. I live in europe and I find it interesting to look at the US and see both a huge adult entertainment business AND extremely conservative organisations. In europe I'd say it's more relaxed, no-one admits enjoying porn, and no-one fights porn, but the influence on the culture I still believe is similar.

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The reason I asked about 'our culture' and where you are located is because you will get quite different reactions depending on where you live.

Yes, as you alluded, you are more relaxed about it in Europe.

The two articles I linked to were near the top of the list when I entered 'porn history' in my search engine. I got minimal responses to offer me free porn. oh well.

if you ever watch indian movies and their erotica, most of their erotica would be classified as totally lame by european and even u.s. standards of porn.

... then try the middle east. flashing a womens lips (her facial lips) supposedly can drive other men crazy with lust. this is one of the supposed reasons that their women are covered up in public.

the history of porn, or erotica, is indeed a fascinating history. some of the pen and ink drawings done during the victorian period in england are hilarious by todays standards, but were quite shocking (titillating) at the time.

go back to pompeii, and there are quite a few graphic images of sexual activity that were made for public display.

im sure that some cave men drew them also, but national geographic may not put them in their magazine.

anyway, good luck.

denverdon < oh well.

if you ever watch indian movies and their erotica, most of their erotica would be classified as totally lame by european and even u.s. standards of porn.

... then try the middle east. flashing a womens lips (her facial lips) supposedly can drive other men crazy with lust. this is one of the supposed reasons that their women are covered up in public.

the history of porn, or erotica, is indeed a fascinating history. some of the pen and ink drawings done during the victorian period in england are hilarious by todays standards, but were quite shocking (titillating) at the time.

go back to pompeii, and there are quite a few graphic images of sexual activity that were made for public display.

im sure that some cave men drew them also, but national geographic may not put them in their magazine.

anyway, good luck.

denverdon << oh well.

if you ever watch indian movies and their erotica, most of their erotica would be classified as totally lame by european and even u.s. standards of porn.

... then try the middle east. flashing a womens lips (her facial lips) supposedly can drive other men crazy with lust. this is one of the supposed reasons that their women are covered up in public.

the history of porn, or erotica, is indeed a fascinating history. some of the pen and ink drawings done during the victorian period in england are hilarious by todays standards, but were quite shocking (titillating) at the time.

go back to pompeii, and there are quite a few graphic images of sexual activity that were made for public display.

im sure that some cave men drew them also, but national geographic may not put them in their magazine.

anyway, good luck.

denverdon < oh well.

if you ever watch indian movies and their'erotica', most of their erotica would be classified as totally lame by european and even u.s. standards of porn.

... then try the middle east. flashing a womens lips (her facial lips) supposedly can drive other men crazy with lust. this is one of the supposed reasons that their women are covered up in public.

the history of porn, or erotica, is indeed a fascinating history. some of the pen and ink drawings done during the victorian period in england are hilarious by today's standards, but were quite shocking (titillating) at the time.

go back to pompeii, and there are quite a few graphic images of sexual activity that were made for public display.

i'm sure that some cave men drew them also, but national geographic may not put them in their magazine.

anyway, good luck.

denverdon [[[[[[

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The UK still has his British Board of Film Censorship^H^HClassification, Germany produces some of the hardest porn in the world, porn by mailorder is verboten, but you can buy it at the gasstation, in the Netherlands everything except kiddyporn is legal and easily available (and I can tell my friends and family what I do for a living, something which many of my foreign colleagues can't), in France some porn gets classified as art and gets into a museum...
Europe has 49 countries or so (I lost count some time ago) and what is normal in Amsterdam might be shocking in Madrid.
So I don't think there is one 'city culture', the regional differences are enormous.

There are some articles and even a few books written about the history of US (or mostly Californian) porn, but I am also interested in the history of porn in other places, so anyone got some good reading suggestions?

Jacco

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Edited by - Lee O on 2/14/2005 2:58:29 PM

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This could be an interesting topic if a bunch of people join in (welcome btw). While I agree with your general premise I think that you also need to factor in the rate of technological advances. These days with computers, the internet & the inexpensive equipment needed to make a video, pretty much anyone (and at times it seems like everyone ) could produce their own porn. Granted, the quality probably won't be that great (compared to a major studio) but it is easily accessible by anyone who wants to do a slight bit of looking for it.

A direct result of that is that the videos tend to get harder/more extreme as a way of trying to set themselves apart from the crowd. As the consumer gets more jaded the shock factor needs to be increased to grab their attention (this applies not only to porn but to virtually any type of media out there). Things that were rarely seen 20 years ago are commonplace & somewhat expected today.

Also with the relatively inexpensive entry costs/ease of distribution it is much easier these days to create something for a small niche/fetish market (which by their very nature are harder than what most people consider "normal"). With the internet you are able to get people from all over the world who share an interest together (such as here at ADT. We don't have a discussion group at my local bar about the latest gonzo releases ). With the ability to get like minded people together, your marketing costs (as a producer) go way down as you don't have to go out & find your fetish audience - they are all in one place. I know that I've bought more than a few dvds based upon the reviews here or discussions in the forums that made them sound interesting. So your chances of actually making money are greater than in the past as well. Of course then it comes back around to setting yourself apart from the crowd (because everyone else has the same idea) and the harder/extreme cycle starts up again.

There is nothing new under the sun. It is just that these days, if you want to see it it isn't tough to find or easy to make yourself if nobody else has.

RT

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I'd like to see a good history of adult movies, a history of porn would be interesting but would go back to the Egyptians. I don't think one exists at this point. Luke Ford's collection of snippets isn't exactly readable. There were a couple books, back in the 70-6-80's, but they don't cover the many changes to adult movies over the last 10 years.

Does porn reflect the culture/era it comes from?

I would guess that's true, but I think you'd have to be very careful. A board like this and the folks who wind up on the internet in general would lead you to believe that the vast majority of the current market is hard-edged gonzo. On a dollar for dollar basis, I suspect that made for cable/hotel porn still accounts for a pretty sizeable share of the market. The women generally move from gonzo to being contract girls for more softcore companies. I suspect the simple reason is that there's more money there.
So, there may be a sizeable gonzo segment of the market these days, is the actual state of porn getting rougher and more impersonal? You'd have to do a serious analysis. It is probably safe to say though that some of the extreme porn niches are much more visible today than they were 25 years ago if they even existed then. In the seventies there was lots of talk and some attempt to study the relationship between exposure to porn and the propensity to commit violence. For whatever reason, no one much does that anymore.

Some Cultural events that may have influenced porn:
Monica Lewinsky. While oral sex has always been extremely popular in porn, I don't know that there were all these all oral movie lines in 1996.

the Civil Rights movement: interracial genres remain a strong theme in US porn and I think they do reflect our culture's ambivalence about race. Interracial scenes remain somewhat forbidden/shocking enough to take on a fetish appeal, yet it's considered part of a normal career arc for actresses. Scenes between two black people or two Asian people are still relatively rare in US porn
Race issues in porn really are interesting when held up to the mirror of the affirmative action debate.

Conservative movement: one of the interesting alliances in the political realm since 1980 was the marriage between fundamentalist Christians and free market/big business forces. In the 1980's with Reagan, the Meese commission went after the porn industry just before porn became a huge business. (it was always profitable, but it wasn't corporate big in the 1980's). Since that time, the business has gotten much bigger, found its way into video stores in most every neighborhood, into hotel rooms, onto everyone's computer through the internet. The content has also gotten much harder edged and Federal attempts to regulate just don't seem all that serious as in John Ashcroft seemed to be about as interested in genuinelylimiting porn as he was in terrorism pre 9/11. I'm wondering if there will now be a rise in S&M porn with the appearance of the new attorney general.
It's a little bit of a stretch, but I do see a tie between "Invisible Hand" rhetoric in the US and the continued testing/taunting of sexual boundaries in US porn. There definitely is an "Anything that makes money is its own justification" in current porn and in our culture right now. Very different from the seventies charade about "redeeming social value" which did definitely produce a very different looking product. Back then pornographers used to pretend (pose as) to be artists or that they were making social or cultural statements. Now, porn's claim to respectability is that it makes billions of dollars each year.

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I feel I can visit any larger city and feel quite comfortable - and I'm not sure that would be possible unless the cultures were in some way similar.
It's not rain forest tribes vs asphalt canyon tribes, if you know what I mean. There are of course diffirences, but I wouldn't kill for any of them.

Recoil Therapy: The internet is no less than revolutionary - before I hit the internet I hadn't seen anything... now I've seen the most beautiful fashion models and the nastiest porn stars.
So it's definitely growing by it's own. Interesting enough I havent heard the porn industry complaining about filesharing.

In history there's a recoil eventually creating a synthesis, but I can't see that in porn. Instead of being Soft>Harder>Medum it becomes harder and harder. Maybe it's to early to comment on that though.

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In early Hollywood (up to the 1920s) mainstream films were rapidly leaning towards porn before the conservatives took over California and implemented the Hays Code to clean up Hollywood.

The peak for porn came in the late seventies when films like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door screened in "regular" theatres and Hollywood films became decidely raunchier (last tango in Paris, Emmanuaelle, The Story of O, fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's), culminating in Caligula (perhaps the one and only true cross-over film - although some of these low budget French efforts over the past few years have also pushed the envelope in darkened, mostly blurred, and unerotic shock value movies like Baise-Moi and Romance).

You may have noticed that the recent flood of gross-out gonzo efforts in porn (5,000 guy cream-pies, quadruple anal penetrations, multiple facials, and gape til you scat films) has parellelled the proliferation of gross-out body fluid Hollywood comedies of the Stiller and Myers ilk and various other 13-year old Hollywood script writers. The films coming out of mainstream Hollywood in the past few years have generally been crap, consisting either of these gross-out comedies or "the bigger and longer the explosion the better" type yawn-fests (I note that Jules Jordan's latest two-disc effort is a cause for concern here as well).

With porn stars like Jenna Jameson, Steven St Croix and Selena Silver appearing in recent mainstream efforts it is only a matter of time before the two parrallel industries collide once again ala Caligula in a gross-out bodily fluid comedy blockbuster - be warned!

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Porn, itself, however seems to be moving further away from mainstream movies. In the 70's porn movies were often movie productions with 5 sex scenes. With gonzo, it's just sex with no plot, acting, almost no dialogue. The current product is more like music videos where there are real strong crossovers...between the two with pornstars and minor rock stars often intermingling.

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Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs, Lady B

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Dac-- Colin Wilson is a wonderful writer, his "A Case Book Of Murder" which I read when I was probably too impressionable to have done so without some lasting ill effect, was an amazing book. Ths Misfits sounds very interesting indeed.

Edited by - Loraine on 2/19/2005 6:27:44 PM

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