Porn - Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink (30 page)

The 1990s: DVD

Expansion into fetish-oriented product experienced exponential growth in the 1990s as the adult industry shifted from VHS to DVD as the favored delivery format.The extended storage capacity offered by DVDs, and an ever-increasing catalog of existing movies which could be converted to the new format, gave rise to a new pornographic phenomenon: the compilation. Companies had long taken scenes from different, older movies and packaged them together as new product. It was, after all, pure profit to resell something that had already recouped its costs.VHS, however, was a limited format in this regard. A single, 140-minute tape could be filled with close to seven hours of material (the theoretical limit for the format), but only by using a very low transfer speed, resulting in a poor quality product. The advent of DVD removed this barrier. Now producers could pack four to six hours of higher-quality pornography onto a single DVD and they did so with increasing regularity, as the new format gained acceptance. Compilations also allowed pornographers the freedom to choose from vast libraries exactly the type of scene they wanted to market. It suddenly became easy to offer six hours of a particular actress, a particular type of actress (e.g., hair color, body type, ethnicity, etc.), particular sex act, or even a specific fetish.

Full movies featuring five scenes of anal or lesbian sex could be chopped up and included as pieces in compilations featuring anal sex with brunette women or lesbian sex featuring naturally busty women. Entire lines could now be dedicated not just to anal sex, but to more specific (anal-sex-related) themes such as “gaping” (a term used to describe a close up shot of a distended female anus, left open after anal penetration) or “anal cream pies” (anal intercourse ending in internal ejaculation with a subsequent shot of the semen being intentionally expelled) or even something more exotic like “felching” (semen that is expelled from the anus and into a partner’s mouth).

DVD’s ability to allow a viewer to skip directly to specific scenes or even exact points within a scene further broke down the traditional adult movie. Fans no longer had to sit through dialogue if they did not want to. They could jump directly to the sex or even to the climax if the intercourse was too pedestrian. If there was an actress they found unappealing, a single click of a button could skip over her scene.When they found a position they particularly liked, they could easily move to view it with no waiting for a tape to forward to the appropriate cue. And of course if they wanted to time their masturbatory climax to match that of a male porn star, they could easily do so with just the remote. Adult movies had truly become nothing more than collections of scenes and even more to the point, short special interest clips within those scenes.

Specific body types had also long been focused upon. Magazines featuring busty women had been around from the very beginning of porn, and some of the porn’s Golden Age favorites gained their legendary status as a result of their ample chests. Similarly, women of specific ethnic backgrounds were featured in magazines and even some early adult films. As DVD became the dominant format and individual scenes overtook full feature movies, genres begat subgenres and every possible combination of ethnic mix, body type, and sex act was there to be hand-picked from local store shelves.The idea that a filmmaker had to appeal to the broadest possible audience was gone. In its place, the target audience could now consist of just a few hundred customers willing to pay money for four hours of “Big Booty White Girls,” “Barely Legal Asians,” or “Anal Lesbians.” If these subgenres seemed specific at the time, they were nothing compared to what was to come.

The Oh-Oh Age of the Internet

Pornography on the Internet has existed for nearly as a long as the Internet itself. Long before companies made it a priority to market their products, old and new, on the web, fans used the new technology to share their collections, discuss their favorite starlets, and explore beyond the boundaries of the local smut emporium. The rapid spread of high speed Internet over the past decade has opened even more doors for pornographers.With the ability to deliver higher definition video directly to the end user, came a world of new possibilities. Users were now free to seek out exactly what they wanted and pay for individual scenes rather than for entire movies. Producers could skip expensive duplication and shipping charges and focus leveraging even narrower target audiences. Companies still making DVDs were quick to figure out that customers would use a pay per minute model for video on demand, allowing them to skip over anything they did not want and only pay for the sort of scenes they were interested in.

Web-based delivery models caught on early, and pornographers began to customize their content to meet very specific needs.While early gonzo movies could feature girls with large derrieres, the world of Video on Demand minutes, niche websites and customization required a more delicate parsing of content. Websites now promised big booties in every possible shade. Like Caucasian women with large butts? You can watch “Big White Asses.” If you prefer darker complexioned backsides, give “Big Black Asses” a try. If Latinas are more your speed, “Big Latin Asses” can be found. If that is not specific enough, liquid can be brought in to give the gigantic glutes sheen, giving us “Big Wet Asses.” If even that won’t do, then the wet asses can get an ethnic breakdown treatment as well. One need only add “White,” “Black,” “Latin,” or “Asian” to “Wet” and “Asses” and you open up another rainbow of sexual possibilities.

Advances in technology have advanced pornography, turning the once-limited world of adult films into a vast empire capable of reaching into nearly every home in the civilized world. The once narrow “adult film” industry has blossomed into a customer-driven industry. Once dominated by films shown on a limited number of screens to the broadest possible audience, pornography now uses the vast array of inexpensive delivery modes to produce material directed to more specific tastes.This has both expanded the audience for pornographic material while simultaneously narrowing the focus of the individual work.The standard adult movie of the 1970s with five to ten sex scenes, a scripted story, and basic cinematic elements has been replaced. No more sticky floored theatres in seedy neighborhoods showing generic films filled with porn clichés.They have been replaced, first by a similar product available in local video stores offering greater privacy and a wider selection. But even this would pale to the changes offered by later technology. First came a DVD driven model with five to six sex scenes, few recurring performers, no scripts, and minimal production values.With movies now split into interchangeable scenes, it was easy to take the next step and market each scene individually. Websites and DVD lines have been refined to cover every possible body part. Ethnicity and corresponding stereotypes have become sufficient central themes for countless lines. Even specific sex acts have been split off, categorized and turned in fetishes of their own. Gone is the Golden Age of adult films, and even video tapes seem ancient by today’s standards. In their place is a high definition world of desktop delivery debauchery in every flavor dreamed up by the human psyche. Websites, scenes, and video clips can be tailored to virtually any fetish.

Driven by technological advances, pornography has evolved from full length films shown in theatres to neatly packaged scenes designed to please the most specific sexual taste directly to the home of the end user. Technology has undoubtedly changed the future of pornography. The question remains, however, as to whether these changes have been for the better or for the worse? In a word, both.

Modern pornography is both superior and inferior to that seen just three decades ago. Better, cheaper, and smaller cameras have improved picture quality immensely. Grainy films have been replaced by slick HD porn. Handheld cameras allow pornographers to get in close to the action and show the audience every possible detail of any act. These technological improvements bring with them their own set of issues. High definition video leaves little to the imagination. Brightly lit scenes and ultra-sharp pictures show the audience every blemish, bruise, and wrinkle.With cameras only inches away from their subjects, today’s porn performers are unable to hide from the harsh reality provided by HD porn. As a result, a layer of fantasy has been removed from pornography, revealing a reality that is a little less ideal.

Pornographers today can make feature films that are technically far superior to anything possible in the Golden Age of porn. Better cameras, lighting, and editing make it entirely possible to create an erotic art form only dreamed about in the days of
Deep Throat
. Instead of taking this path, most pornographers have chosen to produce neatly packaged scenes where themes and specific fetishes are far more important than anything resembling “art” or even filmmaking. Scripts, when used at all, are often written for single scenes to set the stage with a line or two of dialogue rather than tell a complete story.

While some would mourn the loss of porn as an art form, few would argue that modern pornography is a better product. Gone are the days when a consumer had limited choices and had to wait through an entire movie in hopes of seeing whatever specific body type or sexual activity they were most interested in. Websites abound featuring performers of every race, color, and sexual orientation engaged in sexual acts ranging from the basic to the most exotic.Video on Demand websites even allow the porn consumer to only pay for the exact material they want. The result is a product that can be exactly what the end user wants it to be.

Modern pornography is also delivered to the end user in the privacy of his own home. He does not even have to rent or buy VHS tapes or DVDs that must be hidden from disapproving spouses or curious children. Porn can be viewed on a computer and deleted after viewing. It is both discreet and disposable, offering a convenience that simply was not possible before the rise of the Internet.

Yet, such convenience is not without a downside. In generations past, curious children had to go to great lengths to uncover dad’s “secret porn stash.” Such efforts were often rewarded with ample bosoms and a fleeting glimpse of pubic hair provided by a
Playboy
magazine. The prevalence of Internet porn has put the whole world of sexuality, both healthy and deviant, literally at the fingertips of millions of children. How easy is it for a child to reach hardcore pornography? Painfully so. Starting with a popular search engine and the word “boobs,” it takes three clicks of a mouse to go from giggling curiosity to full length hardcore porn available free of charge with no age verification. Few would argue that such easy exposure comes without negative ramifications. Arguments about how best to curtail such access could fill volumes and the full affect of widespread access to pornography will not be known for decades.

Ironically, many standard porn clichés have survived and remain firmly entrenched in the landscape. The lucky pizza delivery boy, naughty schoolgirl, and overexposed plumber still manage to thrive in modern pornography. They now serve as central themes in DVD lines devoted completely to their unique qualities. Instead of being clumsily written into a feature film, the saucy secretary or bubbly babysitter now star over and over on websites designed to give consumers the sexual fantasy scenario time and again.

As a direct result of massive technological changes, modern pornography is produced by a fractured industry delivering specific material to a much larger, but more narrowly focused, audience. The end user now enjoys privacy as he or she downloads or streams only the material that appeals to their unique sexual interests. Pornography has both driven and been driven by the niche fetish desires of this new, massive, and increasingly particular audience.

NOTES

1
Julia Dubrow,
Social and Cultural Aspects of VCR Use
(Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990).

2
Hal Freeman (dir.)
Caught From Behind
(Hollywood Video, 1982); Gregory Dark (dir.)
Betweeen the Cheeks
(VCA, 1985).

3
John Stagliano (dir.)
Adventures of Buttman
(Evil Angel, 1989); Bobby Hollander (dir.)
Breast Worx
(LBO, 1991).

MATTHEW BROPHY

CHAPTER 16

SEX, LIES,AND VIRTUAL REALITY

Science fiction writers and futurists describe a technological “tipping point” we are hurtling toward as a global society. They call this tipping point “the singularity,” though they characterize this transformative event differently. One vision of the singularity is when artificial intelligence will surpass human intellect. Another singularity is when computers gain self-consciousness.

The singularity I portend is social: when technology achieves virtual realities that are qualitatively indistinguishable from our real world.While benefits of such computer-generated environments are numerous, such unbounded simulacra will present potential dangers: particularly, virtual pornography.

A technological garden of earthly delights looms on the horizon as virtual reality technology increases yearly. What will the effects be upon romantic relationships when men can have discreet, recreational sex with coquettish supermodels at a few clicks of a mouse, or when wives can have ongoing virtual relationships with handsome hunks who show them the romance and care their husbands do not?

Easy accessibility to virtual pornography threatens to rip apart the social fabric that binds human beings together. I term this tipping point the “pornographic singularity.” The pornographic singularity may arrive within our lifetimes, and with it, far-reaching consequences that will erode the foundations of our society.

In this essay, I explore probable effects of this singularity upon future individuals, families, and society. I extrapolate from current examples of low to medium grades of virtuality – including
Second Life
, simulated-reality video games, and Internet pornography generally. I also consider the proliferation of online sexual fetish cultures – furries, amputee “devotees,” bestiality, incestuous age-play, and so forth – and will discuss the negative impacts of such desires, unbounded in the virtual world.

The warning signs of the approaching pornographic singularity beg our attention.This essay, however, should not be misinterpreted as a puritanical screed against pornography, recreational sex, or moderate sexual deviance. And though our discussion may include some religious allusions, any metaphors are for stylistic purposes only. I bear no religious moral commitments, and I take no exception with recreational sex, fetishes, and pornography consumption being compatible with living a good life.

I will argue, however, that virtual forms of pornographic sex may threaten a healthy psyche and prevent individuals from achieving a good life. Moreover, the coming pornographic singularity will exacerbate a host of current social problems that derive from pornography, exploding their prevalence and degree.

Virtual Reality: Immersive Pornography

Pornography may be as old as
Homo sapiens
. In May 2009, archeologists in Germany found the earliest pornography on historical record: a 35,000-years-old ivory figurine of a woman, its sexual characteristics exaggerated.
¹
The only thing that has changed through the centuries is the advancing media of our sexual depictions; from etchings, drawings, photography, video, and ultimately to virtual reality.

Virtual reality is the endpoint of pornography’s journey. By “virtual reality” I mean a computer-generated “dream,” qualitatively indistinguishable from the actual world (like the virtual world Neo experiences in the movie
The Matrix
).
²
Future virtual realities will optimize four aspects of pornography:

 

• veridicality
  , a life-like experience, qualitatively identical to the actual world;
  
 

 

• immersion
  , in which the user will be an integral part of the pornography, rather than be separate from it;
  
 

 

• interactivity
  , where the user’s own decisions and actions will determine the course of events;
  
 

 

• unboundedness
  , meaning that any pornography will be available, no matter how peculiar, bizarre, or paraphilic.
  
 

Though virtual reality technology is not yet sufficiently immersive or veridical, this virtual Promised Land will be reached, according to several estimates, in a few decades. Already in 2003, Sony patented the goal of a non-invasive introduction of ultrasonic waves into a user’s brain in order to stimulate all five senses: in essence, tailoring vivid “dreams” into subjects’ consciousness.

The best window into the future is current virtual worlds such as
Second Life
. Second Life provides computer-generated environments populated by avatars: animated characters, which are controlled by over an estimated 230,000 computer users around the world.
Second Life
offers only a medium-grade virtual reality, as it lacks total immersion and veridicality.

The virtual realities of the near future will shore up such deficits, offering veridical, immersive experiences that fully engage all five senses.This will provide users with limitless real-life-like possibilities, including virtual sex. Virtual sex could even surpass real sex in offering “hyperreal” pornography, which may ultimately render real sex as inferior.

Welcome to the Hyperreal World

Fashion magazine covers of airbrushed women represent the hyperreal; even the models themselves do not measure up to what appears on the glossy pages.
³
In this way, postmodern cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard defines the hyperreal as “The simulation of something which never really existed.”
⁴
The airbrushed models represent unreachable ideals, by which real women henceforth are judged as inferior.

Like “computer-enhanced” images of models on magazine covers, human representations in virtual environments are also hyperreal: depictions of what never has and never will exist in reality. Females, for instance, tend to be cartoonish exaggerations of male desires: enormous sag-less breasts, vanishingly small waists, long curvaceous legs, round buttocks, luminous eyes, flawless skin, perfect hair, and pouty lips.These hyper-beauties of the virtual world defy the laws of gravity, as Mattel’s Barbie has long defied the realistic proportions of any living woman. Barbie, too, is hyperreal.

“Pornbots” are the sexual Barbies of the future – virtual reality prostitutes run by artificial intelligence (not that they will need much intelligence).Virtual reality will peddle the hyperreal via pornographic simulacra: programmed pornbots as sexual partners and sexual behavior that replaces reality, which in their wake may make “the real” deficient in comparison.

In “The Porn Myth,” Naomi Wolf explains the damaging hyperreality of pornography in our present age: “For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women.Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”
⁵
The hyperreality of pornography creates an unattainable standard; everything real pales in comparison.

Sociologist Harry Brod explains this devaluation of real sex from his personal experience with pornography:

There have been too many times where I have guiltily resorted to impersonal fantasy because the genuine love I felt for the woman wasn’t enough to convert feelings into performance. And in those sorry, secret moments, I have resented my lifelong indoctrination into the aesthetic of the centerfold.
⁶

In this way, the hyperreal in current pornography tends not to over- sexualize men toward women in real life; rather, it seems to deaden men’s desire for real women and real sex.

The danger of the hyperreal ideal will increase as pornography becomes immersive, interactive, and veridical in the virtual world. When there is no longer any carnally gratifying advantage to sex with a real woman as opposed to sex with a virtual woman, males may no longer expect their current or potential girlfriends to look or sexually perform like porn stars; instead, they may find no desire to have real romantic relationships in the first place.

The Future Obsolescence of Real Women

Already, women must compete with pornography. Breast implants offer women one option. Such surgical enhancements signify a “Barbiefication” of real women; women conforming to the hyperreal male fantasy.

Naomi Wolf reports that college-aged women complain that they cannot compete with the hyperreality introduced by pornography:

For how can a real woman – with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”) – possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?
⁷

Virtual reality will throw wide open the doors of Barbiefication, since users can embody whatever “physical” form they want in virtual environments. As such, women will be incentivized to embody avatars that are the virtual sex-dolls of the hyperreal male sex fantasy. Even a committed real-life couple may be tempted to make “improvements” to their self-styled avatars when engaging in virtual sex online: the man might want a larger penis and a bit more musculature; the woman might want larger breasts and flawless skin. This indulgence in hypersex online may make real sex deficient for this couple, when they seek intimacy off-line.

The Barbiefication of women extends from appearance to action. And when real women have to compete with the female pornbots of the future, there may be little choice for women but to play into the male fantasies of hypersex, stammering the “More, more you big stud!” that male porn consumers have progressively come to value.

The arrival of virtual fantasy may betray a crass reality: that a major advantage real women have over current pornography is the real experience that they provide to men. A man can try to sate his sexual desires through various forms of pornography, but current porn pales in comparison to real sex. A hand is not a vagina, and even sophisticated sex toys for men are dim shadows of the immersive, multidimensional experience that real sex affords.Virtual sex will erase this “advantage.” It will offer qualitatively identical (or even “superior”) sex. In its wake, real sex may become obsolete, conditioning males to view real women as just “bad porn.”

Hyper-Romance is Porn Too

Men and women desire not just sex, but romantic companionship as well. Virtual reality proffers simulacra of such companionship, which may not be healthy for users. A significant portion of virtual romantic companionship can be termed “hyper-romance”: romance idealized and dramatized beyond the real. Like hypersex, hyper-romance should be considered a type of pornography, though predominantly emotional rather than physical.

The romance and drama of virtual environments beckon the closet romantics of the world, where the mousy librarian can become a princess courted by a storybook prince in a virtual kingdom of their own making. A woman can find her needs – for care, romance, validation, intimacy, and sex – supposedly satisfied via hyper-romances in the virtual environment, by other virtual world residents.

Hyper-romances in virtual reality are like romance movies on theatre screens and they promise similar detrimental effects to real-life relationships. Experts at Heriot Watt University blame romantic comedies for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to relationships.
⁸
They found that consumers of rom-coms (e.g.,
You’ve Got Mail
, 1998;
Notting Hill
, 1999;
Runaway Bride
, 1999;
The Wedding Planner
, 2001;
Maid in Manhattan
, 2002, and so forth) are more likely to believe that sex should be perfect.They are more likely to believe that a romantic partner should know what they need without having to communicate it, to idealize love as thrilling and predestined, and to expect trust and committed love as immediate rather than achieved through time and hard work.