"If hardcore goes condom-mandatory only the die hard anti-condom fans would seek out the illegal stuff from the black market. The common hardcore fan would buy the legal condom porn."
I agree with you to an extent because in addition to a creating a black market I believe the move would also cause certain directors and producers to relocate to Europe, meaning those staunchly anti-condom fans won't necessarily have just the black market to rely on. And when I spoke of said black market in my earlier post, I was essentially summarizing Sharon Mitchell's argument and as the director of AIM she is worried about the performers on the black market she won't be able to help. Coming from the New York scene, Sharon would know a thing or two about that.
I think the main reason that the audience is more sensitive to health and safety issues in football and car races than in porn is a simple one: The Limelight.
In a car crash the driver dies in the limelight in front of the audience. In porn the performer while contracting a disease looks young and healthy on screen. When she dies she's out of the limelight. She's forgotten while the audience cheers for the next young and healthy looking girl on screen.
Sydnee Steele, Savanna Samson or None. 275 Posts 12/05
Posted - Feb 10 2006 : 7:03PM
I can agree with you up to a point. Porn is indeed about the spectators' fantasy. But, like pro sports it is a form of entertainment in which another persons' physical performance is the source of our amusement. For the hardcore actors it is no fantasy.Their actual bodies are vulnerable to injury and disease. But in course of a game or DVD we don't have to worry about it because football and porn are forms of entertainment that we watch safely from from the sidelines.
Edited by - alexander portnoy on 2/10/2006 8:42:22 PM
And what makes you think that the die-hard anti-condom fans aren't the majority?
If you want to change someone's fantasies in a hurry to save lives, you're better off placing an electrode in someone's brain or having a surgeon perform a partial lobotomy.
It's supply and demand as far as directing non-condom product goes.Shooting reality porn is different than features. You can get away with condoms in features but slammed for having them in anything else. For performing it was a personal preference. Plus the business has changed a lot since I was in. Gonzo is king. If I personally can't take the plunge on the condom policy I can certainly shoot people who are. People know going in to shoot with me that it's non-condom. There's still a choice for the performer to work in the project or not.
"Shooting reality porn is different than features."
Here's the thing that's always bothered me about that dynamic. In true gonzo porn, which you are calling reality porn, condoms are pretty much not an option, yet their absence connotates some sense of pre-orchestration because no one is going to fuck each other on-screen without a condom unless they know they have clean tests. So, wouldn't the presence of condoms actually lead the viewer to believe that what they are watching might actually have some realism to it? But did such thoughts occur to me back in high school when I was watching my brother's Seymour Butts tapes and actually believing the set-ups were real? Nope.
On the other end, there could be so much more fantasy by way of reality in feature porn movies/scenes that use condoms if the magic cut was abandoned once and for all. I am talking about the idiotic cut in-between foreplay and sex where the male goes from flapping in the wind to wearing a condom. Anyone who's seen a film from Wicked Pictures knows exactly what I am talking about. However, it's not just Wicked Pictures, and it's not just a current problem. In all of the porn I have ever seen, which includes vintage classics from the 70s, I can only remember seeing the act of putting on a condom actually shown on-screen in three films. Once in Nightshift Nurses , with John Leslie putting it on slowly as Siobhan Hunter begs him to hurry up so he can fill her ass to complete a DP (hot moment in a smoking hot scene). Once in, I believe, Passages 2 with Jennifer Stewart and, eh, Marc Wallace as two college students fucking in a dorm room (real funny bit with them reading the condom wrapper). The other time was all throughout Behind the Green Door 2 , the Mitchell Bros. safe-sex opera. Not that thse are the only three examples of this ever happening in a porno. They're just the only three I remember seeing. And it's not that the act of condom application should be highlighted everytime. It's just that it's rarely ever acknowledged at all, and so many scenes could benefit from it. For example, Devinn Lane's scene with Barrett Blade at the end of Kink has a hot set-up and should feel spontaneous and raw, yet it too contains a magic cut that puts a condom where once there was not. As such, it takes the viewer out of the fantasy a little bit (not the presence of the condom, but the way it is introduced).
Google's a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever hands over sexual search records to a theocratic administration. (Okay, that has nothing to do with anything, but I used Google to look up Portnoy)
I can't be sure. Just as you can't be sure of the opposite.
But our grandpas jerked off to b/w-photos of half-naked women. Our dads jerked off to Playboy. Can't see no reason why we can't jerk of to condom-porn.
Thanks, we never did this in Europe. I know it was common in the US until the early 70s.
The "magic condom" is really annoying. I'm glad that Stormy listens to us feature fans. She integrated the condom in the scene instead of letting it magically appear.
Most porn can barely, if even, get people out of their clothes in an orderly fashion. What makes anyone think donning a condom would be shot/edited anymore sensibly?
It is a little odd though that showing the condom being put on is so beyond rare. In all the porn I've seen, I recall only one scene where the condom didn't just magically appear.
With nearly every fetish catered to in some degree, why is this so rare? Even dirty A2M sounds vastly easier to find.
It's not a fantasy though. It's real people having real sex... and hence having to deal with the very real risks of having unprotected sex. It's up to the performers to decide exactly how they want to protect themselves but I wouldn't call porn a fantasy at all.
Porn is about fantasy. When I'm watching an adult movie I want to see real sex. For me real sex involves skin to skin contact between the performers and sometimes also creampies. Condoms turn me off and destroy the fantasy. I will never buy an adult movie in which the performers use condoms. As a consumer I have the right not to buy adult movies in which condoms are used.
If you are a performer in adult movies you know that in most movies condoms aren't used. It's part of the deal. So you have the choice between performing without condoms or not performing.
Every activity in life involves some risks. Performing in adult movies always involves some risk, with or without condoms. Performers should get tested regularly to minimize these risks.
Gaspard and Blue Yonder have summed it up perfectly.
When I watch porn, I want to imagine I am there. That it is me boning these girls. Wearing condoms in real life reduces the pleasure in sex. Don't even try to tell me that it feels just as good. It doesn't.
So in my fantasy, I would not want to be wearing condoms to do these girls. Therefore, I don't want to see it on the screen. I am not so extreme that I will never buy condom porn. But the scene and girl will have to be super-special for me to consider it.
Luckily, a big part of what I enjoy are BJ-only movies and thankfully they haven't gotten so unreasonable that they are wearing condoms for that part of sex.
Exactly, tritone.I'm 100% non-condom when I buy adult movies. I'm only watching and buying anal-themed gonzo movies. In these movies it's standard that performers fuck without condoms. Nowadays there are a lot of beautiful women who perform in nasty gonzo movies so it's no longer necessary to buy vanilla movies if you wanna see beautiful women having sex.When I'm watching a good anal movie I also wanna see some gaping and ass to mouth snd sometimes a creampie. These are sex acts which don't make sense when the performers use condoms.
I agree with everything you said except for the fantasy part. I'm not saying anything bad about consumers wanting no-condom videos or performers taking risks with condomless sex. For me, Fantasy means something that is fictional... like animation or soft porn. Hardcore porn is anything but fake. By watching porn, we are essentially voyeurs witnessing a real sex act occur and that is not a fantasy, but voyeurism (again, not a bad thing).
I'm eager to stay out of this argument, which goes nowhere good in my experience, but this is misinformation that can't go unchallenged:
"who knows its a good question i hear condoms dosent protect u from hiv so who knows"
Wrong on that. No protection is one hundred percent effective, but condoms have been proven over and over again to reduce the risk of HIV transmission better than any other method. They are less effective against other STDs, but HIV is a fragile virus, not easily spread, and condoms, when correctly used, are almost invariably capable of blocking it.
Some truly despicable junk science has been spread around by the abstinence only crowd to the contrary, but it is utterly groundless and politcally motivated.
As to the rest, like I said, I'm staying out of this one.
Of course you have the right, but that doesn't make it right.Yes, like driving a car for example. That's the reason why seatbelts are mandatory.To call it "minimizing" is playing it down. It reduces the risks but it doesn't minimize them.
A reliable test is possible six month after a presumed infection, not any earlier.
That is exactly what I don't want to happen. I'd prefer for the option to perform with or without condoms to always be there. I understand that not every company or film is gonna have that option but I'd like the option to actually exist among some of them. I also understand some fans insistence on only purchasing non-condom porn, but to me, this issue goes beyond fans or what they want. To tell a performer that "you'll perform without condoms or else" amounts to blackmail to me, and I can't condone it.
I don't agree with you Aplus. Today almost all companies which are producing gonzo movies are shooting without condoms. If a performer wants to perform in a gonzo movie he/she knows that he doesn't has the choice between performing with or without condoms. When a performer wants to play in gonzo movies having sex without condoms is part of the deal. It has nothing to do with blackmail. When you wanna play in gonzo movies anal sex is also part of the deal.
Sorry, blueyonder, but that's bullshit. Not every performer does anal, and your assumption that they all know about your 'no condom new world order' is just as baseless as your theory on anal-tivity.
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Eric381 Deactivated User
What are you looking at? It 2452 Posts 3/05
Posted - Feb 19 2006 : 10:32PM
No, rather the fantasy lies in the FACT that you nor I are part of the sexual act being depicted on screen, but we (collectively) might wish to be. It's not about the act itself, but rather the vicarious nature which you place yourself in the male position. THAT is fantasy...
Voyeurism I'd put more in the personal range, as in, watching the act in real life - whether discovered by the engaged pairing or not. It's a little more "real" than fantasy also, b/c it's not on your TV screen. That said, I think "voyeurism" is something more "real life" than just watching a porno on your TV, rather the the 1st person equivalent of exhibitionism.
Well I'd agree that porn isn't fake, in the sense that a real dick is going inside a vagina, but in no sense is porn really "real" IMO. All porn, with the possible exception of pro-am or real swingers, is contrived. Sure there can be spontaneous moments within the contrived segments, but the majority of it is planned and well thought out. I see porn as more of an extension of mainstream films, stage, and television. Pure fantasy that hopefully "feels" really good.
My initial post was in response to Brian_Wallace, because he seemed to genuinely have no idea why it mattered to some people that performers not wear condoms in scenes. I hope I enlightened him a bit, at least to my motivations anyway.
Regarding performers, I think that their first concern should be toward their own health. If they do not want to perform without condoms, they should'nt. If they cannot sustain a career as a pornstar, with this criteria, they should either try to help influence change in the industry or cease to work in it. Ultimately, no one is forcing the vast majority of performers to do this line of work. Let's face it, porn attracts certain people because of the amount of money and sometimes fame they can get with relatively little work, difficulty, dedication, effort, education, talent, patience, commitment etc. It is not as if porn stars are providing an indispensible service, and getting treated appallingly, as is the case with nurses. Nor is it largely the case that they have no other options. The only problem is that these other options require more graft, work and patience, and less initial reward. If disaffected performers who insist on wearing condoms succeed in making condoms mandatory, then goodluck to them and I applaud them for their effort, but lets not put moral culpability on the fan of the condomless porn flick. Performers already have the freedom to have a less illustrious career using condoms or to not work in the industry at all, but clearly the prospect of wealth and fame are more important than the health of those performers who are indignant that they are required o perform condomless to have a successful porn career. Forget about the wealth, the fame and the porn career, for the time being, and go work in the Gap, if health is such a concern. Being a porn star or a Hollywood movie star is not a calling or a vocation. People do not do it out of a sense of altruism or civic responsibility. It is a luxury, not an essential, and the prime motivation is indulgent self interest, as opposed to neccessary sustenance. The onus of responsibility for health concerns, given this analysis, lies with the performer, not the consumer. Peace out.
I think there would be more than a few directors, performers, and producers who would take exception to your assessment that adult filmmaking is somehow very easy and requires no or very little hard work. From what I've come to understand over the years, adult films can indeed be very troublesome to make and produce, and yes that includes wall-to-wall and gonzo porn. I've heard that the hours are anywhere from long to extremely long, and that even the simplest scene or scenario can be a bitch to shoot. From everything I've heard, there isn't anything simple or easy about making adult films. Just because it looks easy and flows smoothly, doesn't mean it is.
And while I do agree that adult filmmaking isn't Rocket Science, you'll that adult film stars, crew members, directors, and producers can have very varied experiences and education. While its probably true that the average 18-19 year old pornstar hasn't had much education beyond high school, you'll also find that more than a few have extensive educational backgrounds, and would be much more inclined to own and operate a GAP franchise than actually be an employee there. Not that there would be or is anything wrong or belittling about someone working at a place like The Gap. Work is work, and bills are bills.
I agree that ultimately the responsibility lies with the performers. I also understand that some 18-19 years can be very vulnerable and naive sometimes. Now some may not have a problem with a director or producer taking advantage of them, but I have a big problem with it. Now I can't fault a "fan" from saying and even demanding what they want to see. Preferably I'd like them to put their money on things they want or need to see. Unfortunately some have to take it 1 or 2 steps further, and very publicly put direct pressure on filmmakers by basically telling them they won't buy their product unless said filmmaker will adhere to what they want to see. Now if that isn't undue pressure, I don't know what is.
Ultimately I think filmmakers need to remain selfish and unflinching about what they want to film and produce. Most people thought directors like Andrew Blake and John Stagnolia were crazy when they started shooting the kind of films they did. They could have buckled and went back to the status quo. Luckily they stayed their course and eventually found their audience. They didn't let anyone dictate to them what they should or will film and produce. By doing so, they let their audience find them. Now to me, that what great filmmaking is about. Sure fans are free to buy, rent, or download what they wish to see, but filmmakers should always shoot what's in the hearts, as opposed to what some fans wants to see. Filmmakers are indeed Artists IMHO, and art is always gonna be subjective.
As you'll see if you look again, my post was directed at performers, not producers, directors etc. Secondly, I said certain people are attracted to work in the porn industry because of the money and fame they can acquire without having to bring a great deal to the table in the way of talent, intelligence, etc. I did not say this was exclusively the case. In most industries, you are going to find intelligent people, even in the porn industry, some of whom will be performers. But let's face it, your intelligence is not going to determine your appeal to the vast majority of fans, producers, directors etc. How hot you are is. My point was, you can be a dumbass and have a successful porn career. You cannot be a dumbass and be a concert violinist. Therefore, odds are that you will find more dumbass pornstars then you will concert violinists.
Listen, producers are not concerned about one or two people who threaten not to buy their products if they use condoms in their movies. They are concerned about the silent majority or minority, whicever way it squares, who will go elsewhere for their porn.
Anyway, these are all digressions. The essential point of the post you responded to was that there is no moral obligation on the fan to buy condom only porn. I cannot remember who, but an earlier poster suggested that it was a moral issue of right and wrong, for which the fan was responsible. Baloney. The performer is responsible. Don't blame the fan, get a job in the Gap.
Very interesting, they should not use condoms at all. What is the point they don't properly use the anyway. The only use condoms during intercourse. They do not even use them for blowjobs and then they will let a guy cum in their mouth and they spit it back out like they will not get a disease. I say as long as everyone is getting tested it will be fine. You can't give a disease to someone who does not have a disease. If both people are clean how will they get a disease.
Thanks for your very honest answers Steve! As long as a performer like yourself is comfortable performing that way, I have no problems with it. Its true that condomed porn doesn't sell nearly as well as non-condom porn, but if you were to suddenly change your mind about performing/filming that way, I'd hope you'd still have someplace to go or be able to get people to work for you.
