Porn and creativity

I have several reservations about the porn industry. Some of it is political: I would be completely comfortable with the idea of porn were it no so deeply entangled in capitalism and a system of beliefs with some distinctly unpleasant views about gender and sex–even the term “porn industry” shows how commodified sex is in this system. Some of it is personal–if I am watching people fucking, I prefer to be in the same room as them.

My other personal qualm is that much of the porn I have seen tends to be dull. It is a tedious representation of sex. It is repetitive. And it is repetitive.

There seems to be little room for creativity in mainstream porn: it is like summer blockbusters, a presentation of what the executives think their audience want to see. The plots of porn films are as hackneyed as a Michael Bay orgy of explosions; the sex presented within as thoroughly monotonous as yet another superhero origins film. Everything has been done to death. In fact, there is probably a porn film featuring vampires which is called Done To Death.

It surprises me, therefore, when I see deviations, slight glints of creativity in an otherwise lifeless industry.

Porn puns, for example. I appreciate a good pun, and the porn industry seems to be surprisingly good at delivering rather brilliant sex puns based on aspects of popular culture. It is a rather depressing thought that four hundred years ago, this niche was filled by Shakespeare.

Yet pun-based porn titles often make me laugh. Big Trouble In Little Vagina. Sex Trek: The Next Penetration. Shaving Ryan’s Privates.   Prude and Pre-juiced. 

I cannot help but laugh. Faint twinkles of imagination; thought went into those titles. It is particularly apparent when compared to other porn versions of real films, such as the obvious Edward Penishands or the horrifyingly stale The Erotic Witch Project. Even The Bare Tits Project would have been a superior title to that banal title.

A similar vein runs through the dim attempts at adding plot to porn. Bored housewives and naughty students still thrive as the storyline holding together a string of spiritlessly rehashed scenes of fucking. It is only rarely that a flicker of something offbeat is seen. What sometimes emerges is surreal and extraordinary.

For example, one film begins with a Russian tank breaking down in front of Sarah Palin’s house. The Russians wish to use Palin’s telephone to call the Kremlin. Fucking ensues.

In another devastatingly bizarre porn introduction, a couple gush over their new lemon tree and its “endless possibilities”, and bemoan the “damn lemon-stealing whores” which appear to be a problem in their neighbourhood. Unbeknownst to them, a lemon whore is stealing their lemons as this conversation is taking place.

A friend of mine once watched a porno which started with a fish falling from the sky and knocking a man out, necessitating his stay in hospital. At one point, she recalls a scene in which an operation was performed, which involved some interpretive ribbon-twirling dance and a tray of eyeballs.

Following all of these quirky introductions, the fucking is as predictable and mechanical as always. Creativity in porn will only go so far. Summer blockbusters always outsell the more interesting films.

I would like the porn industry better were it not so hackneyed. Under capitalism and under society’s current expectations of sex, the best we will get is the odd funny pun, and the occasional peculiar situation. It all leads to the same old contrived fucking.