Is All Porn the Same?

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

You may have read or heard this criticism of porn. I've heard it more than once. It goes roughly like this:

"All porn is basically the same. Porn may be fun and arousing -- but as a literary/ art/ cinematic form, it's inherently tedious. After all, there just aren't that many ways for people to have sex. So describing or depicting it is automatically going to become repetitive."

Now. Obviously, I have no truck with this attitude whatsoever. But it took me a little time thinking about it to realize what exactly was wrong with it.

Not that much time, though.

First, and at the risk of being snarky: If you think there are only a handful of ways for people to have sex, then I feel sorry for your partners. There is quite a bit more variety available in sex than a few standard variations on fucking and sucking. Read any good general sex guide, like The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex or The Guide to Getting It On, and you'll get a sense of the tip of the iceberg. Or take a look at the wildly entertaining, insanely thorough Human Sex Map. You could spend an entire lifetime trying all this stuff and still not scratch the surface. (Thanks to Joreth for the link on the Sex Map!)

But second, and far more importantly:

What makes porn interesting isn't that it comes up with some new and different sex act, or some new combination of previously known sex acts.

What makes porn interesting is that it comes up with new ways to look at sex.

Think about other topics for literature or film or art. Think about, say, murder. There are only so many ways people can commit murder, too. You can shoot someone; stab them; strangle them; poison them; bludgeon, electrocute, smother, or drown them; set them on fire; cut off their head; hit them with a vehicle; throw them off a high place. I'm sure there are more... but you get the idea. There are probably no more ways to kill a person than there are to have sex with them. Maybe even less.

And yet murder is a vastly fruitful topic for art and film and writing, one that inspires both fascination and respect. Yes, genres such as murder mystery or true crime may be looked down on... but I don't think anyone would argue that all writing/ film/ art about murder is the same.

Why? Because, while there may be a limited number of basic methods to commit murder, there are a limitless number of reasons to do it. And a limitless number of consequences for it. And a limitless number of ways to feel about it: before it happens, and during, and after.

What makes writing about murder interesting isn't that it comes up with a new and different physical method of committing murder. What makes, say, "In Cold Blood" or "Hamlet" more interesting than, say, "The Vicar in the Parlor" or "A Deadly Game of Love" or some other generic detective novel of the month is that it makes you look at murder differently. And for that matter, it makes you look at humanity in general differently. It makes you look at what causes conflict between people. What makes that conflict turn murderous. Why some people murder and others don't. Whether everyone is ultimately capable of murder. Whether murder is ever justified, and if so, under what circumstances. How murder affects the person committing it. How murder affects a family, a community, society as a whole. The relationship between moral responsibility and abusive upbringings or mental illness. Etc., etc., etc.

And what makes good porn more interesting than... well, than "The Vicar in the Parlor" or "A Deadly Game of Love" or some other generic porn novel of the month?

It's exactly the same thing. Good porn makes you look differently at what sex means to people. How sex feels to people. Why people want to have it (apart from the obvious biological drive). What people get out of it (again, apart from the obvious). What about sex can be surprising. What about it can be disappointing. How sex can change relationships. How it can change the way people see themselves. How sex can bring out the worst in people, or the best, or the most complicatedly human. Etc., etc. etc.

Now, I can hear a chorus already starting to ring: "Lord, have mercy. Porn with plot. Shoot me now." And I'll certainly admit that bad porn can be bad by being too plot- heavy, just as it can be bad by having no plot at all. Plus, to make things worse, a lot of plot- heavy porn makes the mistake of simply dropping the plot in around the sex, with little or no concern for their relevance to each other, in that Plot/ Sex Scene/ Plot/ Sex Scene structure we're all so depressingly familiar with.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about weaving the two together. I'm talking about making the sex a central part of the character and motivation... and vice versa. I'm talking about sex scenes that get you inside, not just what the characters are physically doing or physically feeling, but that gets you inside how it feels to be these unique people having this particular sex. I'm talking about sex scenes that get you to care passionately about these people and the sex they're having, and that move their story forward. And I'm talking about non-sex scenes that keep the theme of sexuality alive, taking the changes and discoveries that happen during the sex and running with them. I'm talking about porn where you don't even divide it into "sex scenes" and "plot scenes," where it's all just an integrated part of a compelling and arousing story about sex.

And that kind of porn can come in infinite variety.

Yes, a lot of porn sucks. Porn is just as subject to Sturgeon's Law as any other art form: 90% of it is crap because 90% of everything is crap. Porn may even be somewhat more subject to Sturgeon's Law than other art forms -- since, like any art form that's stigmatized or trivialized, talented and ambitious artists often stay away from it for fear of ruining their careers. (A phenomenon with an unfortunate vicious circularity to it.)

But the "All porn is the same" critique is unjust. It marks an unwillingness to explore the more interesting and imaginative regions of it... or, in a more generous interpretation, simply an unfamiliarity with those regions. And to roll your eyes and complain, "I don't want plot in my porn, I just want it to get me off" -- and then turn around and complain, "Porn is so boring, it's all the same" -- is unjustness compounded. It's trying to have your cake and eat it too... and then complaining that the fact that you can't is the baker's fault.

(P.S. Just to clarify: I'm not specifically talking about video porn here. I know that when a lot of people hear the word "porn," they think "video porn"; but for an assortment of reasons, I actually think video porn is less fertile ground for genuine variety and artistry than other media. I'm talking about porn in general, and about solo-artist media like writing, drawing, and comics in particular. That caused some confusion in the comment thread when this piece originally appeared on the Blowfish Blog, so I want to set the record straight here.)

Comments

[ToppHogg]

I don't remember the specific broadcast television series title, but it opened up with a comely young woman posed upon a spanking table with her butt raised up in perfect position. As the series evolved, it became quite clear that at least a couple of the actors weren't just acting. Their displays of attraction toward each other would have required far better acting skills than they displayed in all the other scenes combined. I found this incredibly sexy, and wished that I was watching a cable show so that it could be far more explicit. If it had, it would have been much better than most of the porn I've ever seen. Hotter, yet more realistic - the best kind!

[DuWayne]

Your post about "good in bed" sparked one from me, which in turn has motivated me to work on a post about human sexual preferences - it's not just about the equipment one prefers their partner to have...

I absolutely love sexuality, psychology and - the psychology of sexuality.

My very favorite porn, is porn in which the participants are either incredible actors or absolutely thrilled to be having the sex they're having.

[Michael Schau]

Wow. Good writing. WHy cant great bloggers like you make money at this. Strait conservative guy admires your good brain..keep it up.
Mike in FL

[Kagehi]

My experience has been that you get pure sex scenes, most of which are crap, famous ones like the whole emanual ones, which are crap for an entirely different reason (gah I hate soft porn where the only thing that differs from what they can show on TV is that "both" are nacked, and they moan a lot.. seriously..), and some others that actually do a halfway decent job.

The problem, as I see it, is that most of them are made a B-movies, with the same acting, the same lack of imagination, with regard to the story, and the same general lack of quality. What you "rarely" see are some older ones, like Lady Chaterly's Lover, or the newer ones, like the porn spoof "Pirates".

So, I agree entirely. The industry, sadly, survives on horny idiots, buying up stuff that *maybe* sometimes goes in for a bit of kink, and thus has "some" merit, but is mostly the sort of stuff that, if it was some insanely stupid BS like Refer Madness, *might* make some of them cult classics, only, most never even manage to be "that good" at being "that bad". Most of the producers of the stuff just don't give a frack. As evidenced by the Shotime series one remaking "Deep Throat", in which is rapidly because obvious that everyone on "both" teams, where total idiots, and what ever "either" of them came up with, it was probably going to be total crap.

At least the prior "Family Business" one didn't try to make the pretense that they where making some "great new film", or trying for quality that they where ill equipped to reach. Point of fact, that shows people *might* have done a better job remaking it that the idiots in the remake one. lol The remake show was.. a perfect example, imho, of why most of the stuff put out by the industry is, in fact, an absolute train wreck. These people couldn't Roleplay an dead elf in a table top RPG, never mind a living person that couldn't be replaced with a CG model, which would probably "still" be better at the sex, never mind the acting.

[Carneades [ Morgan-LynnGriggs Lamberth- aka skeptic griggsy - Google that to see that I mean business!]

Greta, yes to paramory! The bonobos are on to something. So, I propose that we call ourselves Bonobos- sex-pheens!

[Charlie Stella]

This is interesting. In the research I did for my latest crime novel (Johnny Porno, April 2010), I found that 70’s porn (the novel takes place in 1973) was equally as rough (sexually explicit) as present day porn. Where or not it’s all the same remains subjective. After X amount of time (whether doing research for the novel or not), porn scenes eventually put me to sleep (literally). 40 years ago I would’ve taken speed to stay awake (so there’s a generational issue as well--at 53, porn’s window of opportunity to appeal enough to sit through an entire scene (never mind a full length movie) is about closed for me. I think the 70’s break out films (Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door, etc.), would only be interesting/appealing to people from my age group and I remember something from the documentary about Deep Throat (Inside Deep Throat) ... how current day porn stars didn’t even know the movie or who Linda Lovelace was.

My novel centers around the 1973 NY Criminal Court decision to ban Deep Throat and how organized crime (where the financing for Deep Throat came from) cashed in because of the court decision. It was essentially a second prohibition for organized crime. The novel offers male perspectives of how some 70’s men viewed porn and its stars (Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers). The book also features a gay cop and how that issue was treated by the NYPD. There’s a book trailer on my website. Forwarning: It is often violent, humorous, and definitely considered a hardboiled crime novel. I write about organized crime and because of the time frame (1973), the characters speak without much concern for political correctness.

The research was very interesting. Seriously ...

[Paul]

American porn sucks. So boring, the same body biotype, same fake boobs, same oral, vaginal, anal sequence. Yuck!

[Andrew]

I think you missed the point. All porn is the same... It starts off with some fake scenario... there's some oral sex, and then a couple of sex positions that only a camera could appreciate, and some variation of a "money" shot, either on the face, breasts, vagina, buttocks... whatever. All porn is the same, and it's boring.

[Anthony McCarthy]

"All porn is the same" is a meaningless statement as is its breezy refutation. There are certainly some things that are common to all porn, it is intended to be sexually stimulating, for example. There are things that are generally true about porn, that it objectifies people. That objectification of people, the encouragement of the habit of looking at human beings as objects is why pornography is morally problematic.

You concentrate on written descriptions as porn instead of photographic and filmed sex, which makes it necessary to say that the form which porn takes makes a huge difference in both its problematic nature and its likely effect. It makes an enormous difference in whether or not real people and other living beings are used to produce porn and porn that uses real people and animals shares problems that completely imaginary literary descriptions and drawings doesn't. The number of people who worked in the porn industry who died of HIV and other infections, who were degraded and tortured, animals who are tortured and killed in the production of porn would make it possible to say things about that form of porn. Real living beings are not objects, to deny that makes a difference is to make what is said about their exploitation meaningless.

Another thing which I've found is generally true of porn is that most people wouldn't want their loved ones or themselves exploited in its production. It's also very easy for people not involved in its production to casually accept the exploitation and abuse that is such a common part of its production.