Every year the porn industry makes billions of dollars in America (in 2006, the US reportedly made $13.33 Billion dollars in revenue compared to China's $27.40 billion. For more info please refer to this website to see statistics of the United States pornography industry and other countries) But why does this industry come out on top every year? What makes pornography materials one of the best businesses to be apart of?
Even with the growing use of the internet as a source to find adult materials,porn seems to grow every year with hundreds of titles being churned out, each one catering to all sorts of fetishes and interest. Now one only needs to go down to their local video store to find stacks and stacks of porn that is available for purchase. No longer is it the days of Pussycat Cinema that use to be the only place that one could find a "XXX" rated film. Yet, we still treat sex as a taboo in our society. So why would mass media crave for sex yet scorn those who chose to make their living from it?
An interesting example of this is pop cultures fascination with the adult actress Jenna Jameson, born Jenna Marie Massoli, who is a top grossing porn industry player. This women began her journey as a stripper who then turned to porn which sky rocketed her to stardom. Through the porn industry Jenna was able to create ClubJenna in 2000, a production company of hers that creates not only a number of porn titles but also host numerous websites that rake in millions of dollars. Jenna has been features on TV and in movies and even has a best selling book yet, how? After all she is a porn star and when we think of porn stars we think of women being degraded by men for money and that the women in porn as being "weak". This is a problem that has plagued the porn industry in my opinion. Many of the women in the industry now are very independent especially when it comes to their careers. Sure when they are first starting out they may face problems or do films that they would not normally do for the money. Does that make it wrong? No. After all they have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies and rights for women have expanded in the porn industry. Now women are becoming producers and CEO's of production companies.
I'd also like to make a reference to Pirates, one of the top grossing porno's of all time made by production companies Adam & Eve and Digital Playground. Like the title states this porno plays off the hugely successful Pirates of the Caribbean title by Disney and it supposedly had a budget of 1 million dollars to make the film, reinforcing that today Silicone Valley and Hollywood have in fact started to mesh together as a reflections of each other like the article Naked Capitalist that we read for class which comments on the dichotomy of the two.
The plot is simple yet refine, "In 1763, Captain Edward Reynolds is hunting pirates, or at least trying to do so. He does not consider himself a great commander, and neither do most of his crew. Only his first officer Jules believes in him. When they save a young woman named Isabella from drowning, she tells them that her husband's ship has been destroyed by the feared Captain Victor Stagnetti and his crew of cutthroat pirates.
Reynolds and his crew go hunting for Stagnetti, who tries to find a map that leads to a powerful secret on an island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Stagnetti finds the secret "staff" unlocked by Isabella's husband Manuel.
After the crew escapes the spawn of darkness summoned by Stagnetti, their ship engages Stagnetti's in battle, ending Stagnetti's reign as a pirate."
Which allows a bit of dialogue but doesn't require any technique training in acting which has always been the basic design of porn even from it's early days of "Deep Throat" and "Debbie Does Dallas", which are considered classic porn's.
An example of the film here:
(Side note: It also turned out that a small group at University of Maryland had planned to show the piece in a student union room but the event was pulled when a Senator planned to pull funds for the school if they went through with the event. I know personally that this is true because I was apart of UMBC's solidarity group, when I was attending there, which had been e-mailed to ask ways we thought we could support the groups first amendment right to show the piece. For more info please check out this article.)
I'd also like to address the film that we watched in class, The Price of Pleasure.
First, this is an opinion and I feel like I must state that very clearly because what I have to say may offend some people. This is after all just an opinion piece and I do not try to offend anyone or what they personally thing, but with that saying this blog may have adult materials regarding sex and sexuality. If these sort of things offend you then you may want to turn around now. I do plan to be frank and honest with how I see the pornography industry. Second, I am not trying to say pornography is right or push a pro-pornography agenda but I do plan to take the side that porn is normal, healthy, and is not as evil as everyone says it is but sadly it is like any business and has evil people in it.
In this documentary we watched the film makers tried to show the negative or evil side of pornography and the adult industry. They first interviewed people who had watched porn at a young age. Yet, is it porn's fault for these people being exposed to it at a young age? I don't want this to sound like a shouting match or that I'm being ignorant but it bothered me to show people who were exposed to porn at a young age because it's not really porn's fault for some of the problem that they later encountered. Really it is the person who owned the porn's fault for being careless to leave those materials out.
Porn is like anything else that is meant to be for adults, locked away. Like anyone who owns a gun or alcohol, if you are of age to own it, it is your responsibility to make sure someone young can't get to it.
I remember as a child that my dad would sometimes borrow dvd's from my Grandmother and they would be a set of special uncensored episodes of the show Cops or Jerry Springer. While, this might embarrass him for me writing about it but if there was one thing I can remember it's that I could never find them. I knew he would have them and I was curious because I was 13 and when you're that age you just wonder about things. There isn't anything wrong with that and I respect the fact that I could never find those dvd's because it was not wrong that my dad to watch them but it would be wrong of him to allow me to see them. As parents it is your job to teach your child from right and wrong and no one else. By socializing your child and installing morals in them you set them up for failure or success. TV can't teach them that. It's up to you to teach your child about sexuality and to be frank and honest with them, too long have we been white washing sex to young adults and expecting them not to engage in it.
I think it is easy for people to pick out porn because it has the taboo factor of it, in our society we are taught that we have sex for reproduction yet never because it is enjoyable for us as humans. Sex has been linked to relieving stress and releasing toxins that store up. Sex is natural and useful to us as humans yet we live in a society that tells us not to enjoy sex or that only one type of sex is the right way to have sex. For years Maryland had laws against oral sex and anal sex in place which discriminated against homosexual couples from housing, child care and job positions. Sex, that deemed "vanilla", is only common because we are told that this is the only sex we should be having. Most couples practice missionary because it's the standard set for what positions we should be having sex in. There is nothing unnatural about wanting something different and porn capitalizes on this in a capitalist economy.
I think porn should be seen as another area of revenue and a personal choice. I think that while there are disgusting pornographic material out there, pornography itself is not harmful or degrading to females and that as a society we should work on changing stereotypes and concepts about sexuality and the human body.
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