This freaking obsession with really abysmal porn

I have just about had it with the porn obsession. I don't just mean everything, I mean everywhere. When you deconstruct it, what's involved apart from some well endowed members of one or more sexes, rubbing many and varied parts of themselves upon and in each other, while a slack jawed camera guy absently scratches himself when he should be getting a decent damn shot? It could be something vaguely interesting, but it's not. It could be something erotic, but it sure ain't.

Way too much filmed fucking is rancidly unsexy. Who wants to see some dumb chick grimace in pain as a leering fat sociopath rams her 'tight, sweet ass' with autistic head banging repetitiveness. I don't need to see women pretend that they really wanted a super soaker squirt of semen up their left nostril. There is nothing even remotely sexy about guys high fiving each other over the back of the crack buzzing chick they are currently both feebly banging. Sure, on the field or court it's an act of camaraderie and bonding. When it's a prelude to double penetration, I think that I want to cut my package off, buy some lippy, and ask people to call me Madeleine.

Are zoomed in shots of pube shaving rash and the left-overs of an over zealous lube application really just cause for titillation? You want a twenty minute shot of nothing more than Mr. Happy ramming home in extreme (hey..that's a crab!) veincam close-up?: porn's the stuff. You've always believed 'yeah...suck it bitch' was an endearing way of showing appreciation?: look no further.

When you get *the good stuff* like this, what happens when you tire of the sameness of it all? I know...you find porn that's even more wonderfully spiteful and degrading. Yes guys, it's true! Women don't want to be fucked anywhere but in the ass, and foreplay is best summed up by 'yeah, suck my dick'. Max Hardcore told me so!

Why does something that feels so good, shouldn't hurt anybody (unless they really want it to), and is just plain fun and right, get portrayed with all the allure and style of a waste treatment plant on filter clean out day. No wonder every starched brain with a bible or the address of their local politician wants to have it banned, banned, banned (although, they watch it too).

Luckily, nothing forces us to watch bad porn. There are vast amounts of hardcore pornography (and softcore, too), that have been shot by people that understand light, color, focus, exposure, camera movements, contrast and all those things that make photography and filmography arts.

May I point you (as a beginning) to the works of Suze Randall and Eric Kroll? Also some pictures by Robert Mapplethorpe. And Japanese pornography can be very smooth at times.

I am sure that the impact of quality will simply make you forget all the bad porn.

I am happy to say that, out there, you can find hot stuff that is also beautiful stuff. One has to look for it.

It's simple. Quality porn doesn't sell. Bob Guccione knows it. Larry Flynt knows it. I work in a convenience store that sells men's magazines, and I know it too.

People do try to sell the good stuff. Every now and then, we get a magazine that gives it a shot. I particularly remember the early days of Tight. Back then, the pictorials were beautiful: A sweet blonde girl drowsed naked under windblown sheets. Two roommates giggled helplessly as they playfully wrestled each other's clothes off and cuddled on the sofa. A pale girl in a dark room ran her hands over every inch of her body, finally arching her back and gasping with pleasure as she slipped both her hands between her legs.

The cover of the first issue said it all: two cute, cheerful women proudly declared that "young and innocent doesn't mean dumb!" These women were presented as beautiful, intelligent, fun, free, and happy. Fantasy? Maybe so--but it was joyful fantasy--a celebration, not a desecration, of women and their sexuality.

That lasted for a while, but now it's slowly fading. The lights are getting brighter, the pictorials are growing more standard, their story arcs have vanished--and the girls, while still young and innocent, are now dumb too. Consider a snippet of dialogue that a girl uttered in not one but TWO recent stories:

"Fuck fucking fuck fuck!"

Fuck fucking fuck fuck. The rhythm! The meter! The layers of meaning! The shades of emotion! And oh, yes, the realism--why, it's dialogue ripped straight from the mouths of live nude girls! How long the author must have struggled to produce this glorious gem! How happy I am that I paid for the privilege of reading these words!

Okay, maybe I shouldn't mock it too much. Tight still shows natural, beautiful women, it doesn't abuse them, and it portrays them with some degree of decency...but it's lost some of the exceptional grace and sensuality of its early days.

That doesn't explain why it changed, though. Why don't people want quality porn? I suppose one could claim that porn hounds are invariably pigs, or that they're all cringing insecure sorts who feel threatened by strong women--who want to see women being humiliated or abused, because, hey, it's giving those bitches what they deserve for rejecting them time after time.

But some people (ToasterLeavings, me, others) hate cheap, exploitative porn, and want something different. Why don't these people have an effect? Well, the good stuff is hard to find (as it is in just about any domain) and nobody's really making much of an effort to find it. When people want porn, they usually want it now, so they can do what they need to do before the roommate gets back or the wife comes home. There's no time for a lengthy search--the crappy stuff does the job well enough.

Plus, no one's willing to step forward and guide them through the morass of uninspired smut that's out there. In other fields, we have experts--wine connoisseurs, movie critics, book reviewers, and the like, all of whom (ideally) direct readers to quality products and pressure the companies to maintain high standards. Even if you don't trust reviewers and critics, you can still get information through word of mouth--your trusted friend might tell you about a great movie or delicious restaurant, for example. But few people (aside from your humble narrator) offer criticisms of porn, and few people sit around discussing the great piece of smut they saw the other day. So it's hard to find the good stuff among the crap and give it the attention--and the money--it deserves.

So let me perform my public service for the day. There are a few publications that get it right, and I've reviewed them elsewhere. A few photographers consistently produce good work, too--Roy Stuart, for example, has produced some quality material. (Unfortunately, he sometimes does cumshots, he seems to select the vilest men alive to appear in his pictorials, and he has a repulsive tendency to wallow in freaky fetishes.) Dian Hanson sometimes gets it right, and so does Eric Kroll, though Kroll too has a tendency towards fetish.

If we want to get rid of abysmal porn, we've got to change not only its producers but also its consumers. Nobody's going to waste time and money on quality erotica if customers are just as satisfied by a few quick cheap pieces of Stuffed Porn Queen with Sperm Sauce served up under a withering klieg light. If you choose to buy it, be discerning. Buy the good stuff, and vote with your wallet.

Personally, although I have downloaded both kinds of porn (as I said, good porn is not plentiful), I tend to avoid movies or pics where the girl is clearly not aroused, let alone enjoying it. It's my way of saying no to "fuck me, oh yeah, come all over my face, (as male actor does so) oooohhhh yeaaahhhhh (like THAT's what just gave her an orgasm)". I don't know if people who like this stuff like it because they really think in their ignorance that semen on a girl's face (and probably other parts of the body) will give her an orgasm, or just because they care nothing whether the girl hates it, and just want to see her getting splattered.

Of course, the problem also seems to be that, while nobody will care much if you have in your site some-random-girl-getting-gangbanged pics, you can't link or host copyrighted, good quality pictures. Even if it IS copyrighted, some-random-girl-getting-gangbanged will most likely be ripped and linked in a gazillion other pages, so suing each and every one of them would take years and ridiculous amounts of money, while it's easy to track the odd website that links ripped quality images, and get it to take them off...

As usual, people who look for more than what is fed to the sheep have to endure more abuse. We either go through endless searches, or pay. And personally, I ain't paying a cent.