the psychology of bad porn
After watching
awful soft-porn on Cinemax last night, I turned on the computer and found that Eric Raymond had written a
long, thoughtful [really!] piece about 'net porn, asking
Why is there so much bad porn out there and so little good stuff?
After conducting lots of ... er ... investigation, he draws this distinction:
Bad porn is full of the fetish signifiers of sexual allure, to the point where they crowd out the reality of sexual allure.
This seems right, or at least accords with my notions of "porn aesthetics." But why the prevalence of bad porn? He hypothesises,
Men who get lots of attention from attractive three-dimensional women are not likely to be buying porn-site subscriptions. Therefore, we can safely assume that the consumers who define demand patterns for porn producers generally feel that their sex life is hemmed in by female choices and the female power to refuse. Defining the objects of their desire as "cum-sucking sluts", to be used but not related to any emotional way, is a kind of equalizing move in the sexual-power game.
While this may be true, I can think of two simpler explanations.
First, Raymond admits,
When I remember the good sex I've had, or imagine the good sex I might have, my head is not populated by vacant-eyed women surrounded by fetish objects and passively waiting to be fucked. No; my fantasies, and my experience, is of women who are intelligent horny animals like me; live-eyed, smiling, fully awake and quite ready to seize the initiative if I drop it, thank you.
But, I hypothesize, many of the men driving demand for low-quality porn don't have such memories to draw upon. And so the "unrealistic" bad porn doesn't carry for them the same implausibility that it does for Raymond. Perhaps "fetish signifiers of sexual allure" simply are the stuff of fantasy for the sexually inept. Not out of a desire to equalize sexual power, but merely because of an unseasoned sexual imagination.
Or, perhaps, it's only the
intelligent (like Raymond, and the readers of this website) whose sexual fantasies rely on elaborate mental imagination of "the reality of sexual allure." After all, there are plenty of
pornographic stories which are as degrading as any of the pictures he dislikes. Yet my notion (based on anecdotal evidence mostly) is that erotic stories -- regardless of content -- appeal mostly to nerdy
Usenet types (at least among men). And so (my theory goes) the appeal of bad porn is mainly due to the prevalence of
unimaginativeness.
Now I just need to find a way to test my hypothesis against his.
Godless comments: Perhaps Joel can audition for a role and document the industry from the...ahem...inside. He
will be a starving student in Southern California, after all. And technically he's even a "coed", as Caltech does have (a few...) female students....
Razib's thoughts: If you read
Stiffed by Susan Faludi or check out
Luke Ford, you'll find it's a lot harder for men to break into porn than women. While women have short lucrative tenures (compared to what they would usually be doing), men have more modest, but longer careers. One reason guys in straight porn are so ugly is that they're hired based on the freakish properties of their penises and glandular systems (ability to ejaculate a dozen times in a day for instance-erection on demand, etc.). The lack of churning makes it hard to break into the business, though maybe if you want to be a "stunt cock" you can start out at the bottom (a lot of straight male porn stars break in via gay porn-"gay for pay").
Good luck Joel!
Joel says: Unfortunately, the terms of my fellowship require me to abstain from vices peculiar to SoCal, including (but not limited to) pornstardom, competitive surfing, and saying "gag me with a spoon."
A response: Notes from the Underground thinks that Eric Raymond has lost his
geek soul. After all, the essence of a geek is that you
don't have women wanting to seduce you. A geek has Lara Croft and Jenna Jameson - that's it.