2005-10-14 - 3:40 p.m. Blogs and Porn This one isn�t about sports. This one is. This one is about Porn and Blogs. They are very, very closely related. Or so I am claiming. Let�s discuss porn first. I�m certainly not some ultra-conservative guy who thinks that porn should be taken off the Market or people shouldn�t be allowed to see it, but there are major problems with the industry. Those problems are basically caused by the following things, 1) Free Market 2) The VCR 3) America�s Anti-Sex stance 4) Subject matter. I will go in reverse order. 4) Subject Matter. Watching people have sex is strange. For one part it�s totally ordinary. When it comes right down to it �hopefully-- everyone has sex, and often multiple times. Watching people have sex is no more ordinary than watching people eat. In a reverse world, I could see a legitimate argument being made that people could have sex in public and eat in private and then there would be food �smut� films with some fat guy scarfing down a manwhich. Again, bizarro world. That speaks to the second fact that watching people have sex is pretty much second fiddle to actually having sex. The only two things watching people have sex offers us is 1) Visual (and audio) sexual stimulation and 2) New Tricks 3)Hidden Fetishes. If you are watching for the plot, the lighting, or the mental satisfaction the porn industry has no place for you. Of course, the next step is porn creativity. Which to me, is where things go bad. Sure the �standing 69� is fun to watch, but don�t even try that one at home. And that�s tame. Where porn typically goes is directly into the degradation of females. That honestly upsets me, as a male, because it makes me feel in some way that males deepest primal desire is to humiliate women. I honestly don�t accept that. But nevertheless take the following two scenes. 1) Two Girls, One Guy � This scene is like the guys dream come true, and the women are all into it and it�s a scene in which the guy feels like a king and there is this �hurray for men� feeling. My point being that in the porn world, there is little respect paid to women, and the more men involved, the less respect the woman gets. To note: I know that some of these are fetishes and fantasies and that some women like the submissive feeling, but it is clear than in a lot of these porn movies, she is there for the money, and I have yet to see a movie genre in which the guy is humiliated. In conclusion, the fact that we enjoy watching others have sex is silly, but I support our right to do so. 3) America�s Anti-Sex/Pro Violence stance � A lot of people point to religion, but last time I checked killing and coveting were on the same list of Moses� No-No�s. This has been talked about a lot, but basically I think its strange how we have certain moral positives �violence� which is a male trait, and certain moral negative �promiscuity� which is a negative female trait. Hence when I say �I saw a fight last night� men are assumed to be involved. However if I said that I met a total �slut� it�s assumed to be a women. I think America is still male dominated, so violence is embraced, and sexuality is denounced. 2) The VCR hurt porn. Why? Because no longer did you have to watch a pornographic movie in public, but now you could watch it in private. Later the internet came along and made it even larger and more private. Take for example what a filmmaker chose to put on screen vs a guy with a digital camcorder paying some girl to do whatever he wants to her. I watched the movie �Inside Deep Throat� and it made that point which got me to thinking about it. People liked watching porn, and went to the movie to see it. And not just beat off junkies. It was like strip clubs in a way which is a fairly controlled environment because it�s public. Think about this. Would you rather have your boyfriend go to a strip club, or have a stripper come to him in his room? Porn movies were made to entertain and just like Hollywood actors/actresses had it continued people would have been stars. Obviously we have porn stars now, like Jenna Jameson, etc � but in reality most the porn out there doesn�t have her in it. Instead it is amateur home footage. So what happened? In Hollywood, if you are going to have a car explosion, and a gun fight you need permits, crew, cameras, cars, stunt men, actors � etc� etc� which all boils down to money. For porn, you don�t need any fancy movie tricks. You only need only one thing. Bodies. So now in my own home, I can just pop in a tape and watch it. That totally changed the porn industry because of �. 1) The Free Market Money. It is this simple. Porn is made to make money. It�s not made to win an Oscar. It�s not made to make an actress/actors career. It�s not a concept movie that�s trying to explain human nature. Porn isn�t art. French movies directed by Catherine Breillat are the closest you will get to pornographic art. They are made to make money. There are a few ways to make money in the movie industry. There are far fewer ways in the porn industry. You can�t hype up a summer porn blockbuster. Christina Agularia isn�t doing the soundtrack (though she might be in it). And you can�t advertise. 1) Keep Costs Low! How low? REALLY LOW. I�m talking 1 camera, 1 take, 1 mike on camera, no editing, and a lot of panning. That means that if you are an actor that things they deserve more money, you are out! In fact the sole success of girls gone wild is their ability to advertise, not paying the �actresses�, and passing it off as a documentary. The maker of deep throat made the movie with humor and a plot. It was the highest profiting movie of all time. But instead of thrusting it into the mainstream, people started making really low budget cheap porn and allowed men to pay the girls in movies virtually nothing and in turn they get to sexual degrade them so that their audience, men, can watch. ******* Now, why am I comparing Blogs and porn? Simple. Blogs are the low budget porn of writing. I have no pretensions that I am a real writer. Think about it. CNN has bloggers commenting on News events. What? I love all you guys, but few of us are experts on anything outside our professional field. Most of the popular blogs tend to be political blogs that unite people who think the same way. But now even VH1�s best week ever has bloggers on its show, which, for that show is kinda like TV porn so it works. My point is a columnist that I enjoy who writes on ESPN put out a book, which I am sure is very funny, but it�s basically a collection of his columns and writings which are done in a Blog-like style. And for a book, I feel that might be pushing it. Novels are to blogs as Indie films are to porn. They are almost exact opposites. It would just be upsetting to me if bloggers started pushing out regular writers because they have a large following and thus publishers believe that would translate into money. Plus they don�t have to pay a blogger much, so that�s more money� See the correlation? Maybe I went way out on a limb, but the downside of the internet is the saturation of information that is processed, and often time due to access and boredom at work, I wonder if the internet is lowering our standards of what writing can be, or rather what it should be. On the other hand where else could I write about my imaginary pet monkey that hurls imaginary shit balls from its real diapers that I bought it. Which brings up two interesting questions? 1) Why would I buy a self-admitted imaginary monkey real diapers? | |||||||||||
