It's simple. Quality porn doesn't sell. Bob Guccione knows it. Larry Flynt
knows it. I work in a convenience store that
sells men's magazines, and I know it too.
People do try to sell the good stuff. Every now and then, we get a magazine that gives it a shot. I particularly remember the early days of Tight. Back then, the pictorials were beautiful: A sweet blonde girl drowsed naked
under windblown sheets. Two roommates giggled helplessly as they
playfully wrestled each other's clothes off and cuddled on the sofa. A pale girl in a dark room ran her hands over every inch of her body,
finally arching her back and gasping with pleasure as she slipped both her
hands between her legs.
The cover of the first issue said it all: two cute, cheerful women proudly declared that "young and innocent doesn't mean dumb!" These women were presented as beautiful, intelligent, fun, free, and happy. Fantasy? Maybe so--but it was joyful fantasy--a celebration, not a
desecration, of women and their sexuality.
That lasted for a while, but now it's slowly fading. The lights are
getting brighter, the pictorials are growing more standard, their story arcs have
vanished--and the girls, while still young and innocent, are now dumb too. Consider a snippet of dialogue that a girl uttered in not one but TWO recent stories:
"Fuck fucking fuck fuck!"
Fuck fucking fuck fuck. The rhythm! The meter! The layers of
meaning! The shades of emotion! And oh, yes, the realism--why, it's
dialogue ripped straight from the mouths of live nude girls! How
long the author must have struggled to produce this glorious gem! How
happy I am that I paid for the privilege of reading these words!
Okay, maybe I shouldn't mock it too much. Tight still shows natural, beautiful women,
it doesn't abuse them, and it portrays them with some degree of decency...but it's lost some of the exceptional grace and sensuality
of its early days.
That doesn't explain why it changed, though. Why don't people want quality porn? I suppose one could claim that porn hounds are invariably pigs, or that they're all cringing insecure sorts who feel threatened by strong women--who want to see women being humiliated or abused, because, hey, it's giving those bitches what they deserve for rejecting them time after time.
But some people (ToasterLeavings, me, others) hate cheap, exploitative porn, and want something different. Why don't these people have an effect? Well, the good stuff is hard to find (as it is in just about any
domain) and nobody's really making much of an effort to find it. When people want porn, they usually want it
now, so they can do what they need to do before the roommate gets back or the wife comes home. There's no time for a
lengthy search--the crappy stuff does the job well enough.
Plus, no one's willing to step forward and guide them through the
morass of uninspired smut that's out there. In other fields, we have experts--wine connoisseurs, movie critics, book reviewers, and the like, all of whom (ideally)
direct readers to quality products and pressure the companies to maintain
high standards. Even if you don't trust reviewers and critics, you can still
get information through word of mouth--your trusted friend might tell you
about a great movie or delicious restaurant, for example. But few people
(aside from your humble narrator) offer criticisms of porn, and few people sit around discussing the great piece
of smut
they saw the other day. So it's hard to find the good stuff
among the crap and give it the attention--and the money--it deserves.
So let me perform my public service for the day. There are a few
publications that get it right, and I've reviewed them elsewhere. A few photographers consistently produce good work,
too--Roy Stuart, for example, has produced some quality material.
(Unfortunately, he sometimes does cumshots, he seems to select
the vilest men alive to appear in his pictorials, and he has a repulsive
tendency to wallow in freaky fetishes.) Dian Hanson sometimes gets it
right, and so does Eric Kroll, though Kroll too has a tendency towards
fetish.
If we want to get rid of abysmal porn, we've got to change not only its
producers but also its consumers. Nobody's going to waste time and money on quality erotica if customers are just as satisfied by a few quick cheap
pieces of Stuffed Porn Queen with Sperm Sauce served up under a withering klieg
light. If you choose to buy it, be discerning. Buy the good stuff, and
vote with your wallet.