About
ten years ago I was making a composite Photoshop graphic and wanted
the naked torso of a woman to start. Lucky old me – Mr J
is a sculptor with loads of photographic reference. “I need a
picture of a woman’s breasts, this sort of shape, this sort of
angle” I said to him, confused by his slackening jaw. “Deb” he
replied, “you must be the only person I know with an internet
connection who doesn’t know how to find tits.”
Fair
enough … I’ve got better at it. I think we can agree the internet
has boobs aplenty, although accurately measuring porn traffic and content is problematic.
So all that bandwidth isn’t devoted to watching kittens after all.
The
subject of Tyger Drew-Honey’s recent BBC3 Tyger Takes On …
was porn – specifically, the effect it may be having upon his
generation. Better known to most as the oldest kid from Outnumbered,
Tyger is a contemporary teenager, so he has grown up with the kind of
access to hardcore images that previous generations could only dream
of. In addition, his parents were well-known workers in the industry:
his porn-performer and producer father’s stage name is Ben Dover, and his mother Linzi Drew was an adult model,
porn-performer and one-time editor of Penthouse.
Change
in the industry in the last twenty years has been massive and
technology-driven. The factors that have made porn so easily
available have also dismantled entry barriers into the industry, and
pushed prices considerably southwards. A female porn performer to
whom Tyger spoke to at an award ceremony lamented the fact that
anyone thinks they can be a porn “star”; Ben Dover mourned an
abandoned studio: “The Marie Celeste of the porn world – a
metaphor for the porn world today”.
Understandably,
nobody in protected professions likes progress which strips them of
their monopoly, but the reality is that just as anyone with a satnav
is potentially a taxi-driver, anyone with genitals and a lack of
inhibitions is now potentially a porn performer. But before we get
the violins out, we should remember that this is not a decline in
porn – quite the contrary - just decline of big money due to
reduced exclusivity of distribution.
This
is where the habitual use of the term ‘star’ for any person who
commits their fornicating to film is palpably ridiculous: a ‘star’
is a person who has a brand. Stars have clout, control over their
careers, merchandising and contracts. In fact, very few porn
performers get to this point, and they don’t earn a huge amount on
their way.
I think I’d probably want more than eight hundred quid (minus my
agent’s 15%) for filmed anal sex, especially since the
internet does not have
amnesia.
But
enough of the effect on the industry’s participants: the intended
thrust of the programme was the effect the output porn has on people
who have grown up with it.
It is
used, predictably, as an instructional manual: “Take that video and
do it on a bird” inarticulated one young man … which is great in
the event the porn he consumes reflects what his lover wants. In an
industry whose majority output is consumed by men, is that likely?
Is it
possible to become addicted to porn? I have my doubts, but I suppose
addiction is compulsion in relation to a normal but condensed
stimulus. If cocaine is a condensed stimulus to a dopamine hit, is
porn condensed sex? One contributor commented upon the number of
times “I’ve been with a girl and wished I was at home with porn”.
“Yep – I’ve been out with women like that” piped up Mr J. A young man called Randeep took up boxing to keep occupied and
away from porn: well, if you’re going to watch someone get battered
around the ring …
But I
can’t be as jocular about the coercion and violence. An anonymous
contributor habitually watched rape-porn with her boyfriend and they
found themselves replaying the scenes: sexual violence had become
normalised. She’s clearly not happy with what happened but “I
don’t feel like I’m his victim … I feel like I’m porn’s
victim”.
Is this
an excuse too far? Her euphemistic phrasing
- “anal sex without permission” – suggested she has a
vocabulary to displace the blame. The word she needed was ‘rape’.
Correlation and causation are devilishly tough to disentangle, but
women were being violated for a long time prior to rape-porn. It’s
hard to believe that a man of his generation could be so oblivious to
the issue of consent. In a reasonable world he’s culpable, whether
he’s been watching porn or cartoons.
Tyger
concluded that “maybe my own sex life has been informed by porn”.
He felt “slightly robbed” by a three minute erotic dance which
cost twenty quid. If you can have steak for free, sizzle at four
hundred quid an hour probably is a bit steep. “The fantasy of porn
is helping us to disconnect from the reality of sex” he concluded.
So …
worth an hour of your time? Given that there are some extremely
presentable people
who inform authoritatively on sex issues this programme seemed to be
less an incisive examination of real issues than a vehicle for
someone who’s accrued
ace meeja contacts and
some great PR outreach virtue of The Daily Mail.
If you’ve watched existing quality pieces such as Lisa Rogers The Perfect Vagina
watching someone pick
the low-hanging fruit of interviewing their own Mum and Dad may not
satisfy.
