Porn, porn, more porn
2003-07-16 13:40
Los Angeles - It was once the province of seedy men sneaking in to even seedier cinemas in the worst parts of cities around America. Then the VCR was invented and porn went suburban - videos hidden in the back of TV cabinets.
But now porn is coming out of the closet. With Playboy about to celebrate its 50th anniversary, porn has established itself firmly in the centre of the American mainstream.
This week porn actress Traci Lord is blitzing the news talk show. CNN was so excited about her interview on Tuesday with Larry King that the self-proclaimed "trusted news leader" hyped it throughout the day.
Traci's big news? The blonde sexpot has written an autobiography detailing how she was drugged on cocaine when she made 19 films before aged 18 - films that are now banned as child pornography.
Elsewhere on TV, porn superstar Jenna Jameson has appeared on NBC sitcom Mr Sterling and hosted shows on the cable channel E!. The Fox network is planning a prime time soap opera called Skin about characters in the porn industry and starring Ron Silver as a porn producer.
Big business
Cable channel Showtime is pulling in viewers with a reality show called Family Business about the porn star and film producer who goes by the name of Seymore Butts.
Meanwhile, Vanity Fair features porn stars as models, Val Kilmer will star in the movie Wonderland as porn legend John Holmes this September and, of course, your average teenage pop star wears clothes that would put pioneering porn star Linda Lovelace to shame.
The pervasiveness of porn is not just a cultural phenomenon. With an estimated $10 billion to $14 billion in annual sales, over 700 million video rentals a year and more than 11 000 new porn movies annually, the adult industry is big business meeting a surging demand from ordinary Americans, not just cliques of sexual perverts.
Leading companies have realised that they cannot afford to ignore this booming sector. Reputable, squeaky-clean firms like Marriott International Inc, Hilton Hotels Corp and satellite and cable operators Comcast Corp, DirecTV, and AOL Time Warner Inc send hard core movies to hotel rooms and homes all over America, while web portals from AOL to Yahoo host websites run by communities that feature a cornucopia of unabashed sexual imagery.
"Porn doesn't have a demographic - it goes across all demographics," says Paul Fishbein, 42, the man who founded Adult Video News, a journal that employs some 70 people to rate adult films and track news developments in the industry.
In June the leading new economy magazine featured a six page centrefold spread on the business practices that have made porn a rival money earner to mainstream Hollywood, and the lessons that "regular" businesses could cull from the success - avoid alienating viewers, build long relationships with top stars and insist on premium production values.
Steve Hirsch, the CEO of leading porn video company Vivid, even lectures at the prestigious University of Southern California Business School.
Increased familiarity
"Pornography has gone mainstream all over America," said the magazine Newsweek. "From movies to television shows to music videos and magazines, porn stars and porn iconography are everywhere, pointing to a national comfort level that few would have predicted even a decade ago."
What is behind this porn boom is clearly an increased familiarity with sexuality, and the persistent use of sexual images to sell everything from cars, to shoes to news shows. The explosion of porn on the Internet also made explicit pictures available at the click of a mouse.
Another notable milestone in the growing tolerance for explicit sexual imagery was the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair, in which life in the Oval Office seemed to imitate the script of a bad porn movie.
With a reduction in the stigma of porn, its actors, actresses and producers are often feted by the public and media. Vivid entertainment president Bill Asher says many parents at the ritzy private school in Los Angeles where he sends his kids regularly give him their critiques of his movies - and ask to perform in them.
"It's not seen as an odd thing that I'm a pornographer," he told Newsweek. "They know what I do, and they talk to me about it, it doesn't faze anyone. They talk about my movies like you'd talk about Julia Roberts."
For Hugh Hefner the growing acceptance of porn is a sweet victor for the ideals he said guided him when he launched the magazine in 1953 with a borrowed $600 and a pin-up of Marilyn Monroe.
"I was trying to give sex a good name because sex had always been both legally and socially and politically outside the boundaries of what was acceptable in society," he said.
"I tried to create a magazine and a lifestyle around it that incorporated sex as a natural, normal part of life, including recreational sex." - Sapa-DPA
- SAPA