Naked French maids with whips and chains; librarians caressing the Lesbian Sex Book; drunken college girls gone wild for each other — does any of this turn women on?
Naked French maids with whips and chains; librarians caressing the Lesbian Sex Book; drunken college girls gone wild for each other — does any of this turn women on? In theory, I suppose it should. And while it is in my head, the fantasy is riveting and intoxicating; in seconds, I am wild with excitement, and if I am with company, the possibilities are endless. But the on-screen dramatization of such fantasies leave me drier than a Sahara summer day.
For days now I’ve been investigating the matter of porn — well, investigating might be too dishonest a term — but I have been googling and googling and googling different word-combinations to ascertain exactly what is out there. And what I have found is that most of the sex on film in the world is geared towards a male audience.
Sometimes it’s gay men, sometimes it’s the frat boy and his father, but most of it completely ignores what may or may not cause a woman, lesbian or straight, to toss aside her p-style, or her curling iron and reach for her dildo or her Hitachi (if she has one) or her trusty best-friend-with-benefits.
I mean, even the ones that claim to be girl on girl action is really a bunch of aspiring playboy bunnies trying to get the male audience to believe they are younger than they are. (And don’t get me started on our ageist culture, which values youth so much, that soon we will be masturbating to images of zygotes in thongs!) Frankly, the only kind of porn that tends to get a rise (if you’ll pardon the awful and less than appropriate pun) out of me is gay male porn — and if it’s S &M it can’t be interracial either.
I like my power dynamics at the minimal. The man on man stuff allows me to take my own body — historically, racially and with respect to gender — out of the sexual dynamics. Two white men beating on each other doesn’t offend me as much as a white man beating on a Black girl. To tell you the truth, the white boy spanking the Chinese girl in school uniform is mad offensive to me too.
But I digress, the point I am making is, the un-considered race stuff in porn makes me think of slavery, especially with all those whips and chains and gruff orders and kneeling and forced sexual activity—no, I like everybody in the porn flick to be the same race. I may be able to watch some heterosexual stuff, but it has to be very carefully directed. (Did I just write that? Somehow I don’t think nuance, i.e. the art or politics of over-the-counter porn is a matter of great concern to the producers.)
So anyway, after I have all our specific porn-criteria met, I push the start button. Within seconds I want to fast forward. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but the acting skills, or lack of it thereof is distracting. It’s hard to concentrate on being horny when the person screaming, “Yeah, Big Daddy, fuck me, Big Daddy! I want more of your big pretty…” looks like she would rather be eating sawdust than sucking and/or spitting on a stranger’s genitals. It really bothers me that nobody seems to be having a good time. I don’t mind if my postmistress is sad or grumpy.
I’m only slightly annoyed when the guy in the DMV is not chipper. I’m even okay with my pharmacist being a little deadpan. But if I am watching people have sex — perhaps my expectations are a little naïve, but I need people to look more than just mildly tolerant as they scream erotic utterances — I need them to convince me that what they are doing is even a wee bit exciting, if only on a physiological level. And who writes these lines? I think if they just put the people in the room and let them ad lib — let them find the moment — it would be more entertaining, more absorbing.
Sex is pretty organic. Perhaps if they didn’t have to concentrate on acting, they might be able to enjoy the sex, or at least perform it so it feels less stilted. And therein lies the problem with porn. For sex to be good, the act needs not to be an act. There are the actors, acting away at lines. They have to reach back to their training at Julliard, or NYU, or Miss Phoebe’s acting school in Delaware, and deliver those awful lines on camera — and then somewhere in the middle of that, said actor has to stop acting and move swiftly towards the real thing — i.e. he now has to deliver a real live sexual experience on film. And my experience is most people are terrible at faking sex. You may be able to get away with it if your partner is not paying attention, or if there isn’t a camera recording your every expression, but otherwise, you are fucked! (There goes the other opposing pun.)
Porn is an act of voyeurism. And voyeurism at it’s best is unscripted — unplanned. And film at it’s worst, (and I would say that aptly describes the porn industry,) is obviously scripted — and very badly planned. Now friends have told me that there are sex films out there that are very well done, and would move my feminist lesbo clitoris to jump out of my cargos in response, but I have yet to see the things.
If anyone knows exactly where to find these jewels of avante garde artistry, do direct me to their sources. Otherwise, I will be forced to give up the idea of porn altogether, proving that the fundamentalist Christians are right when they say sex is bad, unless it is done in the dark, and never spoken of or filmed or explored in the way we explore all the other aspects of being human.
(Staceyann Chin is the author of The Other side of Paradies: A Memoir)