Porn Is Everywhere

Pornography went full-throttle mainstream about ten years ago and is getting more exposure in popular culture now than ever before.
Back in the day, you’d keep a stack on Penthouse magazines your uncle gave you hidden away from your parents. Now with DVDs, the Internet and the proliferation of pornography out in the open, such private pleasures created a populace desensitized to what once was taboo.
It used to be that pornography, the explicit manufacturing and distribution of graphic sexual materials, was a seedy underground enterprise, perpetrated by organized crime and a few sleazy characters in their Manhattan studio apartments or trailers scattered throughout Orange County. Entrepreneurs like Irving Klaw, who photographed women in garters and stockings performing light bondage in the 1950s might have made garnered Bettie Page international notoriety, but was hounded in his day as a purveyor of smut.
Everything was encased in brown paper wrappers and hidden below the counters, or shown on small screens in basement clubs or movie theaters with sticky floors. Porn in America was the hidden vice, food for perverts and degenerates and the bane of puritanical authorities that took this material to the torch.
Porn’s influence in popular culture manifested at the height of the porn chic era, with the release of 1972’s “Deep Throat.” The film’s impact spilled over from the dingy Times Square theaters to mainstream theatres across America. Linda Lovelace’s performance as a frustrated woman with a clitoris in her throat who could only experience pleasure by giving head became one of the top grossing pornographic movies of its time and sparked obscenity trials to ban it. Couples who never watched porn before went to see “Deep Throat,” and its presence in small towns prompted local police departments to closes theaters showing the film.
Though the porn chic era had its dark side, (“The Devil in Miss Jones” starring Georgina Spelvin and Harry Reems, “Behind the Green Door” starring Marilyn Chambers and the rise and fall of John Holmes) content was mostly lighthearted sexual romps with dialog and production values that rivaled most small films of the day.
Current pornographic subject matter is mostly hardcore, emphasizing anal, gangbangs and domination. Once clever dialog or erotic subtext has been totally stripped away, leaving just explicit sex acts recorded not on film, but on video. Once playful actors have now been replaced by weary amateurs who fuck each other like libidinous robots.
During the porn chic era of the 1970s and early 1980s, pornography had an almost romantic sensibility, a classical edge far removed from its seedy past.
Within this multi-million dollar business, a circus of freaks gyrating and getting off in several studios in Van Nuys, the Hollywood of porn, nestled in the San Fernando Valley. The output has gotten more explicit and gratuitous, with more content produced than ever before. What used to be titillating groping and close-up penetration of the girl next door with perk tits and massive untrimmed pubic hair, today’s porn is more violent, more hardcore and bereft of the whimsy of 1979’s “Debbie Does Dallas”, one of the more successful films of the classic porn era.
What used to be risqué and fun has become a cum-soaked den of humiliation and sodomy bereft of subtlety. The old titles were evocative and conjured an erotic mystique.
Today that mystique has been ruined by the direct and shocking, such as “Gang Bang Angels,” “Interracial Cheerleader Orgy” and “Cum Fart Cocktails #6.”
I don’t know what’s more disturbing, the fact that someone made a movie called “Cum Fart Cocktails” or that there are six of them.
Some porn titles try to be cute and put a humorous spin on mainstream Hollywood titles like “Forrest Hump,” “Star Whores,” “The Sperminator.”
Why go through the trouble of portraying sex as something lurid or scintillating when you can have “Assy McAss and Her Asstastic Assventures?” I made that title up. It really doesn’t take any imagination to name a porn film.
A simple straight girl-on-guy encounter is viewed as passé and bland in today’s hyper-sexed ghetto porn world, and the audiences demand rougher acts, including Ashley Blue getting choked, Sasha Grey getting gangbanged by ten men or Cytherea squirting her vajayjay juices like the fountains at the Bellagio.
The days of Peter North riding Ginger Lynn on a couch are over, replaced by Brianna Banks getting it up the pooper from a midget.
The problem with modern pornographic depictions of sex is that they’ve become travesties of themselves, spectacles only Caligula would admire. In a race to outdo others in the industry, the studios crank out more outrageous acts, but in the process, hardcore has become formulaic and trite. Every sex act must involve anal penetration and conclude with the man ejaculating on the woman’s face. Women have taken more bukkake blasts that by the end of the shoot, the actress has more genetic material on her face than can be found on a bed sheet in a Motel 6.
The sex act isn’t concluded until the guy cums on the girl’s face. That’s how you know it’s over. Just try that one with your wife. Fire a load of jizz all over her mug and see what happens. She’ll kick your ass faster than Chuck Norris.
Despite where the money shots originate or end up, modern porn audiences see more ejaculations now than ever before. Cumming on a woman’s pert tits is so old school. Now these would-be onanists fire their wads down the woman’s esophagus with alarming frequency. I hope for their sake that there’s a bottle of mouthwash on the set.
Internet porn sites climbed over the last decade, featuring everything from tame softcore to Japanese women shitting and vomiting on each other.
What the hell is wrong with the Japanese?
Before the Internet brought limitless, globe-spanning information into our homes, I never knew that a woman could blow a dog while another woman pisses on her. And after watching “2 Girls, 1 Cup,” I think I’m going to need therapy for the rest of my life.
Celebrity sex tapes brought the mainstream to the porn industry. Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's sex tape leaked online in 1998. The most famous home sex tape was Paris Hilton's, which essentially made her a household name overnight. As more celebrities continue fucking each other, it is inevitable that their videotaped carnal activities will be made public, which surprisingly doesn't destroy their careers.
The porn industry has leached into pop culture with some of its more famous denizens appearing in other non-pornographic media.
The most recognizable contemporary porn star, Ron Jeremy, made a notable appearance in The Surreal Life, a reality show where the Hedgehog shared living quarters with such noteworthy celebrities as Erik Estrada, Tammy Faye Messner, Vanilla Ice and Traci Bingham.
Jeremy also appeared in several movies and made cameos on TV shows, including “Orgasmo,” “Boondock Saints,” and an autobiographic film “Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy.”
Jenna Jameson, a former porn actress, is a successful businesswoman who appeared on TV and in mainstream movies. She wrote an autobiography, a comic book and did voice work for “Family Guy” and the video game “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.”
Veteran porn actress Nina Hartley made a cameo in “Boogie Nights” while Sasha Grey appeared in the Steve Soderbergh film “The Girlfriend Experience.”
In 2003, endowed porn actress Mary Carey ran for governor of California in a freak show of an election.
These appearances pushed porn onto Main Street instead of the dark dungeons of red light districts. “Porn Star” T-shirts and other merchandise glamorize the porn industry. Amateur Web sites allow you to post your own home movies for others to view, and by home movies I don’t mean that family trip to the Grand Canyon.
Privately, porn is growing edgier, with more bodily fluids and acts of penetration than a frat house on a typical weekend. Publicly, it is morphing into popular culture as a glamorous profession the young idolize. As more porn stars go Hollywood, what affect will that have on both industries?
Will young women in trailer parks across America aspire to be the next “Double Dildo Dyke” or something tamer, such as the next “Lactating Latina?”
Only time will tell if Bree Olson wins an Oscar for her performance in “Jane Austen’s Blowjob Bandits” or if Larry Flynt wins a U.S. Senate seat.
Just remember to stock up on tissues.