Pornographic cinema
The pornographic cinema, porn cinema or also called adult cinema is one in which the genitals are explicitly shown while sex is being performed. sexual act and whose purpose is to excite the viewer.
The United States is the largest adult film producer in the world, its epicenter being located in the area known as the San Fernando Valley, frequently also called The Valley or Porn Valley, located in the city of Los Angeles (California). Also known as the “porn capital of the world”. In 2005, the turnover of the American adult film industry significantly exceeded that of the mainstream Hollywood film industry. The United States is the largest consumer and producer of pornography in the world. The best known American pornographic film is probably Deep Throat.
There are also pornographic cartoons, especially those produced in Japan, known as hentai.
History
First examples
William Kennedy Dickson, while working for Thomas A. Edison, invented the first practical celluloid film and worked on the creation of the kinetoscope, a machine that continuously looped film he had developed, illuminated by a source Edison light. Dickson left Edison's company to produce the mutoscope, a machine that projected film with the help of a crank. These machines produced moving images via a rotating drum containing illustrated cards, taken from an actual portion of film. Often the sequences were featured in coastal locations, showing sequences of women stripping or acting as models. In Britain these machines became known as 'What the Butler Saw', taking its name from one of the earliest and most famous softcore reels.
The idea of projecting a moving film onto a screen in front of an audience was a European idea. In 1895 and 1896, Auguste and Louis Lumière and Robert W. Paul made the first public demonstration of a moving image projector.
Almost immediately after the medium was invented, pornographic films began to be produced. Two of the pioneers were Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner, who directed the first recorded pornographic tape, under the name "Lèar". The 1896 film "Le Coucher de la Mariée" it showed Mademoiselle Louise Willy performing a striptease. Pirou's film inspired a genre of edgy French films featuring women stripping naked as other film producers realized the commercial potential of the idea.
Since Pirou's activities as a pornographic producer are virtually unknown, credit for being the first pornographic work is often attributed to other films. In "Black and White and Blue" (2008), one of the deepest attempts to document the origins of the clandestine exchange of adult films, Dave Thompson compiles evidence that the porn film industry arose in the brothels of Buenos Aires and other South American cities towards the beginning of the 20th century., spreading rapidly through central Europe in the following years; however, no copies of any of these films exist. According to Patrick Robertson in Film Facts, the first pornographic film for which an exact date is known is 'A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge', filmed in France in 1908; the story features an exhausted soldier who has an appointment with a maiden at an inn. The Argentine "El Sartorio" it could be even older; it is estimated to have been shot sometime between 1907 and 1912. Robertson also notes that "the oldest films that have survived to the present day are in America's Kinsey Collection". A projection demonstrates how the conventions of early pornographic works were established. The German film "Am Abend" (1910) is & # 34; a film that begins with a woman masturbating alone in her room, which links to scenes of herself having vaginal, oral and anal sex with a man & # 34;.
Porn cinema spread widely in the silent film era of the 1920s, being regularly screened in brothels. Outlawed in a short time, adult films, also called blue films, were produced clandestinely by amateurs for a long time beginning in the 1940s. Processing the films consumed considerable time and resources., with individuals using their bathtubs to wash film when processing facilities (often linked to organized crime) were not available. From there, the tapes circulated privately between owners, under penalty of imprisonment in case of being discovered watching one of these projections or simply having it in possession.
The postwar period saw advances that stimulated the growth of this market. Technological developments, especially the introduction of the new 8mm and Super-8 formats, resulted in a spread of amateur cinema or amateur cinema, and consequently entrepreneurs appeared to supply the lustful cinema market. In Britain, Harrison Marks productions were 'softcore', but considered risqué in the 1950s. In Europe, the films were more explicit. Lasse Braun was a pioneer in quality color productions, which were initially distributed thanks to the diplomatic privileges of his father.
1960s
In the 1960s some attitudes about the representation of sexuality began to change. European films like "I Am Curious (Yellow)" (1968) by Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman and "Language of Love" (1969) featured explicit sexual scenes, although they were classified as quasi-documentaries, which made their legal status unclear.
In 1969, Denmark became the first country to legalize hardcore pornography, and soon storyline films with sex scenes began to be produced, often in a comical vein, as in "Bordellet" (1972) and "I Jomfruens tegn" (1973), starring generalist actors and normally not classified as porn movies, despite including high sexual content. Also in 1969, pornography was legalized in the Netherlands, leading to an explosion of commercially produced pornography. Now that pornography was a legitimate occupation, there was no problem for entrepreneurs to invest in equipment to redirect the product for low-cost, but quality, mass marketing. Large amounts of this new pornography, both in film and magazine format, ended up in other parts of Europe through smuggling, being sold clandestinely or sometimes even being shown in elite clubs.
1970s
The progressive legislative relaxation allowed that in the 1970s there was a growth of X-rated cinemas in many countries. At the same time, coin booths also proliferated in sex shops that reproduced movie scenes in a loop.
The first explicitly pornographic storyline film to receive mass distribution in the United States is commonly considered to be 'Mona, the Virgin Nymph,' a 59-minute 1970 film starring Bill Osco and Howard Ziehm, who would go on to produce the relatively high-budget cult film 'Flesh Gordon', hardcore or softcore depending on the version.
The 1971 film "Boys in the Sand" brought with it a number of novelties. For one, it was the first mainstream gay pornographic film. Apart from this fact, it was also the first to include on-screen credits for the cast and crew (mostly pseudonyms), to parody the title of a mainstream motion picture (in this case, The Boys in the Band), and also to be analyzed by The New York Times. Other significant American hardcore films of the time are "Deep Throat (1972), Behind the Green Door (1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), The Opening of Misty Beethoven by Radley Metzger (1975) and Debbie Does Dallas (1978).
In New York, the work of Gerard Damiano, Deep Throat, gained special relevance and a reasonable popular acceptance, giving birth to the term "porno chic", recognized as a trend cultural. Certain sectors predicted that the explicit representation of sex would become commonplace in the following years, but society did not come to accept this change, maintaining a more conservative position. William Rotsler stated in this regard in 1973 that "erotic movies are here to stay. At some point, they will simply be integrated into generalist films and disappear as a film subdivision. Nothing can stop it". In Britain, however, Deep Throat was not approved in its uncut version until 2000, and was not publicly played until June 2005.
A major legal case in the United States was "Miller v. California," in 1973. The verdict established that obscenity was not legally protected, but also imposed the Miller test, a series of tests to differentiate obscenity (illegal in the United States) from indecency (which can be legal or illegal).
1980s
With the advent of home video recorders in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the movie industry experienced massive growth, giving birth to adult movie stars like Ron Jeremy, Christy Canyon, Ginger Lynn, John Holmes and Traci Lords, and directors like Gregory Dark. By 1982, most pornographic films were released on tape format, which was much cheaper. Many directors resisted this change at first because of the different image quality offered by the videocassette, benefiting those who adapted before, who took a good part of the market as consumers decided en masse for the new format. Technological change was rapid, and most directors realized that continuing to shoot on film was no longer a profitable option. This change brought with it a bigger change, moving movies from movie theaters to people's homes, spelling the end of the era of big-budget productions and full-blown pornography. Before long, the industry went back to its roots and rapidly expanded to cover every possible fetish, taking advantage of the low cost of production. It went from hundreds to thousands of movies shot a year, including compilations of the best sex scenes from various productions. Consumers were not only able to enjoy pornography in the comfort and privacy of their own home, but also could choose from a wide catalog to satisfy their fantasies and fetishes.
Similarly, the camcorder brought about another revolution in pornographic cinema in the 1980s, allowing people to shoot their own sexually charged amateur movies, either for private use or for wider distribution.
Among other things, Sony Betamax's defeat to VHS in the tape format war is attributed to the porn industry's choice of the VHS format over Sony's technically superior system.
In 1987 an important legal event took place in the United States when hardcore pornography was legalized as a result of the outcome of the State of California v. Freeman lawsuit. Ironically, the prosecution of Harold Freeman was the first in a series of lawsuits planned in advance to try to outlaw such films.
1990s
The world of porn was rocked by the expansion of two technologies in the 1990s: DVD and the Internet.
DVD offered better image and sound quality, and was received by pornographers with the same enthusiasm that it was received by major Hollywood studios and consumers. Also, the DVD introduced innovations such as "interactive" videos, allowing the user to select alternate endings, multiple camera angles, and bonus content for computers.
However, the Internet is probably the cause of the biggest changes in the distribution of pornography since it has existed: instead of buying a movie in a store in person, or placing a mail order, people were able to see pornographic movies on their computers. Instead of waiting weeks for an order to arrive, with the Internet it is possible to download a movie in minutes.
Internet pornography is distributed through various channels, primarily via payment sites, video storage services, and peer-to-peer networks. Although pornography had been the subject of exchange on the Internet since the 1980s, it was the invention of the World Wide Web in 1991, as well as the opening of the web of networks to the general public, that led to the explosion of online pornography. Like tapes and DVDs, the Internet has established itself as an immensely popular means of distribution, especially due to the anonymity it provides to the user, who can enjoy content with a high sexual content in the comfort and privacy of their home, thus opening this market to people who would otherwise be denied access due to legal or social restrictions.
An immediate consequence of the growth of porn on the Internet was the legal difficulties regarding obscenity cases, as the laws vary between different states or countries, even without such discrimination on the Internet.
Some important directors of this decade are Viv Thomas, Paul Thomas, Andrew Blake and Antonio Adamo.
In 1998, Danish Oscar-nominated production company Zentropa became the first major mainstream film company to openly produce hardcore pornographic films, beginning with Constance. The same year she also produced Idioterne, directed by Lars von Trier, which won several international awards and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. This film included a shower sequence showing a male erection and an orgy scene with penetrative close-ups (with the camera focused from the participants' ankles). Idioterne started a wave of new mainstream films depicting sexually explicit images, such as Catherine Breillat's Romance, starring porn star Rocco Siffredi.
In 1999, the Danish station Kanal København began broadcasting hardcore films late-night, undecoded and available free-to-air to any viewer in the Copenhagen area (as of 2009, such broadcasts are still ongoing, courtesy of Innocent Pictures, company created by Zentropa).
The porn industry
The global pornographic film industry is dominated by the United States, with the San Fernando Valley area, outside Los Angeles, California, being the heart of it. With this in mind, most of the Figures regarding the size of this industry refer exclusively to the North American country.
In 1975, the total value of all hardcore pornography in the United States was estimated to be between $5 million and $10 million. The 1979 Revision of the Federal Criminal Code stated that "in Los Angeles alone, the porn business produces $100 million in gross annual profits". According to the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, the American adult entertainment industry has grown considerably over the past thirty years through a process of continuous change and expansion into new markets, although the production is considered low-cost and clandestine.
Recent figures (1998-2008) for adult entertainment revenue are often estimated at $10-13 billion, of which $4-6 billion would be legal. These estimates are often attributed to a Forrester Research study, and were lowered in 1998. In 2007, The Observer also credited a figure of 13 billion. Other sources, cited by Forbes (Adams Media Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, and IVD), and including all sorts of potential products (video stations, cable and satellite pay-per-view, websites, hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys, and magazines). They mention figures of between 2.6 and 3.9 billion dollars (not counting mobile telephony). USA Today claimed in 2004 that websites such as Danni's Hard Drive and Cybererotica.com generated $2 billion in revenue that same year, about 10% of the entire US domestic porn market. at the time. Adult film profits (sales and rentals) were estimated by AVN Publications at $4.3 billion, although the sources of that figure are unclear. According to Forbes data in 2001, annual income is classified as:
- Pornographic videos, between 500 and 1800 million dollars
- Internet, $1 billion
- Magazines, $1 billion
- Pay-per-view, $128 million
- Telephone, $30 million
The Online Journalism Review, published by the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, supported the figures provided by Forbes with an analysis. The figures in question of pornography distributed in hotels is difficult to estimate, since the hotels keep these statistics for internal use or, at all, do not keep them. A CBS News report in November 2003 revealed that 50% of the clients of the Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn hotel chains bought pornographic films, reaching 70% of profits on room service. Telephone revenues are low compared to other countries. The absence of parental control systems has kept Americans from using mobile phones to access explicit content.
The world's largest adult film production studio, Vivid Entertainment, generates revenues of $100 million annually, distributing some 60 films annually and selling them in stores, hotel rooms, cable networks, and the Internet. The Private Media Group studio, located in Spain, is listed on the NASDAQ. Rental videos went from just under 80 million in 1985 to 500 million in 1993. Subsidiaries of large corporations are also among the largest sellers of pornography, such as Direct TV, owned by News Corporation. Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, estimates revenue from adult programming at $50 million. The revenues of other more famous companies in the sector, such as Playboy and Hustler, were lower in comparison.
Pornographic subgenres
Although they basically present sex, lust and eroticism, pornographic films have different ways of doing it for the taste of the amateur. According to whether or not it shows the male genitalia:
- Softcore refers to pornography where sexual activity is simulated (with the exception of masturbation), or that in which there is real sex but you never see genitals in action (effect that is achieved by changing the viewing angle of the camera);
- Hardcore, on the contrary, if filmed (or photographed) the penetration, the genital organs are seen and the sexual act is often made wilder than usual.
There are two important classifications in porn cinema[citation needed] Gonzo and Feature or plot:
- Gonzo: Say of that film in which not an interest is sought in the story narrated, but only the important thing is to film the sexual act explicitly.
An important fact is that in the Gonzo genre the cameraman himself always participates in the scene.
- Argumental (o) Feature): It is that porn cinema in which there is a complicated production, with script, characters, nude heading and outcome. It's a normal movie where sex is present and visible.
Age-Based Pornography
- Lolicon is the pornographic anime in which images of characters appear to be girls appear.
- Mature or MILF (matures), in this porn women are usually older than usual, reaching even in extreme cases, to be starred by elderly people.
- Teen (adolescent), also known as barely legal (apenas legal), are very young porn actors or actresses or models, always 18 years old (age authorized by law) and appear to be very young. In the movies, scenes such as girls' rooms, boys and teen stereotypes are sought, as well as wearing costumes to create fantasies and draw the attention of young people and adults who are looking for new experiences.
Finally there would be Alt porn or alternative Porn.
Porn, condoms and STDs
In the 1980s, an outbreak of HIV led to the untimely deaths of several erotic performers, including John Holmes, Wade Nichols, Marc Stevens, Al Parker, and Lisa de Leeuw, among others. These events led to the creation of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIMHCF, Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation in English), which collaborated in the generation of a system in the United States, through of which erotic actors would undergo HIV testing every 30 days. All sexual contacts are recorded, and the appearance of a positive case causes all individuals related in the last 3-6 months to be located and retested. Condom use became a standard in films whose theme included anal sex, be it heterosexual or homosexual. AIDS cases in the pornographic industry have been significantly reduced in recent years thanks to these measures, although there is disagreement about these data and it is believed that there are cases of which there is no record.
In April 2004, a wave of panic rocked the US straight porn industry when two porn performers tested positive for HIV in California, the nation's leading porn production site. The industry voluntarily agreed to a 30-day cessation of production while the matter was resolved, although a 60-day moratorium was initially planned.
Two actors, Darren James and Lara Roxx, initially tested positive, being banned from any production of sexually explicit content. About sixty actors who had been in contact with James and Roxx stopped working until the next round of AIDS tests were completed and cleared of suspicion. At the end of the moratorium, a total of five actors were diagnosed with the virus: one man and four women (Miss Arroyo and Jessica Dee, as well as Roxx), including a transgender woman.
It is believed that James probably contracted the virus while filming a movie in Brazil, passing it on to the other women, except for the transsexual actress, who was considered an unrelated case. Roxx was shocked by the news, believing that porn actors were healthier than the general public. The AIMHCF ensures that the percentages of STDs in adult film actors, according to their test routines, is 80% lower than that of the general public. However, according to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, the data is quite different, and it is estimated that infections by STDs such as gonorrhea or chlamydia are higher in adult film actors.
Because of this outbreak, the California state government considered regulating the industry. There were those who proposed the mandatory use of condoms in explicit scenes, although the reception of said idea was mostly contrary. On the one hand, it was alleged that some actors rejected the use of condoms; on the other hand, it was argued that the measure would produce a decrease in sales, since pornographers do not accept their use in movies either. It was also commented that if the use of condoms were to be regulated, an underground industry would probably emerge, in which the exhaustive control of tests of the AIMHCF could not be carried out.
In 2007, a study conducted by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health (the main center for the production of pornography in the United States) found that only 17% of actors regularly used condoms while filming movies. Although they highlighted the work of the AIMHCF, they also stated that the controls did not prevent the appearance of new cases, but only controlled the spread of outbreaks.
In June 2009, the AIMHCF reported another positive case for AIDS, although apparently the infection did not occur during the performance of the profession, but in the private life of the actress. From the Los Angeles health system it was ensured that there were 16 cases of HIV not without official reports in the adult film industry. The AIMHCF defended itself by claiming that these cases did not involve actors from the companies that followed their testing protocols, but to people outside the industry who also used their services or individuals trying to work as pornographic actors, but who never got there due to being positive for HIV or other STDs.
In France, the projection on television of pornographic films in which the condom was not used was prohibited by law.
In Brazil, condom use is widespread in the production of pornographic films.
On the other hand, the gay porn industry is also in favor of condom use in productions that include explicit sexual relations.