For once, the porn industry might have met its match in the form of a new technology:
Pornography has long helped drive the adoption of new technology, from the printing press to the videocassette. Now pornographic movie studios are staying ahead of the curve by releasing high-definition DVDs.
They have discovered that the technology is sometimes not so sexy. The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors - from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes.
Hollywood is dealing with similar problems, but they are more pronounced for pornographers, who rely on close-ups and who, because of their quick adoption of the new format, are facing the issue more immediately than mainstream entertainment companies.
I'm not sure how much this would really be a problem for most guys who are into porn because let's face it, most men are realistic enough to accept that even the best looking women are going to have some flaws here and there. Perhaps some men would be turned off to realize that some of these women actually have small amounts of fat or dimples or whatever, but what are the odds that that would actually change anything in terms of sales? In fact, the high definition DVD formats might make this guy's prediction fairly realistic:
The technology makes the experience more intimate, he said. "People look to adult movies for personal contact, and yet they're still not getting it. HD lets them see a little bit more of the girl."
But not all of the womenfolk are so sanguine about having minor flaws in their otherwise gorgeous visages exposed to the common man:
"Men are all about outdoing each other, being up with the times, being cool, having the latest technology," she said. "They're willing to sacrifice our vanity and imperfections to beat each other" to high-definition, she said.
Sony may have ended up doing some serious damage to its Blu-ray format by excluding pornographers from its format. According to the article, there are companies that will create Blu-ray disks for pornographers, but Sony has officially come down hard (hehehe) on porngraphers who want to use their format. Given the fact that family-friendly and Sony are not usually associated with one another, and that Nintendo already claims that ground in the video game market, the decision really just didn't make much sense.
This news should make the harpies who screech about exploitation of women and "artificial beauty standards" happy. Nah...
They can't even turn down the lights, or "have covers"...wow, reality, at last!
Porn has spearheaded much of the innovation in net security and privacy.
There's also the argument that it's indirectly responsible for the PG13 pussification of hollywood movies.
Now don't get me wrong, nudity isn't substance in movies, in-and-of-itself, but the lack of "adult" content in movies has greatly constricted the capacity for depth and exploration of emotions and situations adults actually experience.
Porn has supposedly resulted in the "compartmentalization" of the expression of passion and sexuality to a purely private domain, leaving the public one with a sophmoric ceiling which prevents the themes of movies (that have any chance of making money) to puppy-love and plastic renditions of teen-angst bullshit.
What makes the erotic passages of Henry Miller and Anais Nin actually erotic is that they're usually one percent of stories otherwised concerned with the complexities of life, human relationships, and the meaning of our existence in the modern world.
Henry writes with the same gusto about sex as he does art, friendship, fatherhood, romantic love, and sublimeness we must find in even the mudnane, to fully appreicate life.
With the cleaving and segregation of erotic passion from the rest of the spectrum of human emotion and interaction, you begin to understand more fully why the yutes of today can engage with wonton abandon in meaningless sex and not see the consequences of a sexuality defined thereof.
I think you can blame Wal-Mart for a lot of that pussification. They won't sell a lot of movies that are considered "irredeemably not family friendly." That they are one of the most important of all of the distribution channels in this country means that Hollywood has to think about what can and cannot sell at places like Wal-Mart. There are simply too many conservatives who think that it is their God-given right to impose their moral standards on an open market. The sort of people who think that subscriber-only cable should be cleaned up for obscenities, you know.
We've always had a culture that didn't like talking about sex as though it were a legitimate part of the human condition beyond procreation. 1984, for example, was ruthlessly attacked by social conservatives for its uses of sexuality to convey anti-totalitarian rebellion. All they saw was the sex, nothing more. Not even the raw emotion of "fuck the state, I will be with this woman, regardless of what the Commissar says!"