Every invention in communication technology—the printing press, photography, motion pictures, videotape, the Internet—was quickly coopted to produce and disseminate erotica.

Pornography has been a part of human evolution throughout time, from plaques depicting sexual activity between man and woman to paintings, magazines and has now finally reached the stage of videos. The narrative that has been conveyed through these pornographic texts has also changed according to the time period they were created. We are living in an age where access to porn is so effortless and ubiquitous that today there is an overbearing presence of porn videos on the internet without proper regulations and restrictions. “According to one estimate, there are at least 4 million adult websites on the Internet, which constitute approximately 12% of all websites” (Ahmed 88). It has also been reported that adult websites have more monthly unique visitors than Netflix, Twitter, and Amazon combined. For this much traffic to be sustained, the porn industry has to cater to the innate desires of human beings, mainly men. We see how the deep carnal urges are played out in these videos but at the same time it does so in a way that the viewer would not question their desires or morality. This paper aims to study this interesting yet simple contradictory narrative about how the pornographic videos in this digital age sidesteps the taboos that are prevalent in the society. 

A HISTORY OF PORN VIDEOS

Contrary to the popular belief, porn videos have not cropped up in this world in the previous decades with the advent of internet. Porn movies had been in the media even before the invention of penicillin as a cure. Production of erotic films commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture. The French were the first to venture into the erotica (giving new meaning to the English phrase Pardon my French), a 7-minute 1896 film Le Coucher de la Mariée where Louise Willy performed a bathroom striptease. But these only included nudity of women or unrobing the women's body and no sexual intercourse of any kind.

It was not until 1960s the porn videos that are in the industry today started to emerge. Porn films of this kind started to emerge in the European continent with hardcore sex scenes which were sold all over Europe and the United States. Notable directors of porn films at that time were Lasse Braun, Doris Wishman and Torgny Wickman. With the arrival of sex films, came censorship laws and a whole lot of red tape. But these were slowly loosened and Denmark became the first country to relinquish censorship laws towards pornography. Soon, other countries also followed suit. In 1969, Blue Movie by Andy Warhol was the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States. Then came a spate of adult films which were shown in mainstream theatres and also in shady peep booths. Another phenomena which erupted due to the advent of sex films were the exploration of different sexualities in these movies. Earlier, only heterosexual intercourses were made in pornos, but since the 1970s gay and lesbian sexual relationships were explicitly shown which also sparked many controversies. With the arrival of the home video cassette recorder in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the pornographic movie industry experienced massive growth and by 1982, most pornographic films were being shot on the cheaper and more convenient medium of videotape. This marked the end of the age of big-budget productions, and the beginning of the mainstreaming of pornography. Instead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands were being made, including compilations of just the sex scenes from various videos. One could now not only watch pornography in the comfort and privacy of one's own home, but also find more choices available to satiate specific fantasies and fetishes.

It was finally in the 1990s Internet entered the scene and pornographic content found their way through to computers. The World Wide Web brought forth many independent porn film makers who could share their content digitally without any need of physical copies. Previously, videos were ordered from an adult bookstore or through mail-order; with the Internet, people could watch pornographic movies on their computers, and instead of waiting weeks for an order to arrive, a movie could be downloaded within minutes. By 2000s, the face of the adult film industry was taken over by websites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, Xhamster et al becoming the new mode of media for pornographic contents. The number of adult videos surfing on the internet now are uncountable, their numbers reaching millions, with new ones popping up every day. Even though the numbers may seem near to infinite, there are some common threads which connect most of the porn videos together.

INDEXING PORNOGRAPHY

When one opens a porn website, they would be shown a wide variety of videos classified under different titles. The arrangement of these different titles varies from country to country based on the popularity in each region. These classifications may be based on the physical bodies, age, scenarios, and many more. The narratives of porn films make use of the desires of human beings which are considered taboo by the society. But one would argue that the interests and fetishes of millions of Homo sapiens cannot be linked together as they are far too diverse. But a study conducted by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, two computational neuroscientists, in 2006 came up with some stunning statistics that derived its conclusions from 55 million dogpile searches regarding porn. “Just twenty different interests account for 80 percent of all searches. That’s rather remarkable. With less than two dozen interests, you can satisfy the desires of almost everyone who uses a search engine to find erotic content” (Ogas 36). But the data is skewed because most of the searches were done by men and the results show how the desires of male brain work and can be classified easily into different categories. This paper will now analyze the major concepts underlying adult videos which makes them very viable for consumption.

SIDE’STEP’ING THE OEDIPAL COMPLEX

One of the most common searches in adult web sites are with the word “Mom” or “Stepmom”. These videos will mainly have a lady between the age of 35 and 50 with a young son or step son. The videos are designed in such a way that it feeds arousal into the male brain way faster than other pornographic content. The usual narrative goes like this: the teenager would be in need of solution to a problem he has with his girlfriend and his mother or stepmother would offer the solution which would culminate in the act of sexual intercourse. A common man would wonder why there is an abundance of such videos and the amount of traffic it generates. The Oedipus complex is a term used in the psychosexual stages of development theory by Sigmund Freud. The concept, first proposed by Freud in 1899 and not formally used until 1910, refers to a male child’s attraction to their parent of the opposite sex (mother) and jealousy of their parent of the same sex (father). “The Oedipus complex is typically thought to be a constellation of internal relationships and fantasies that forms between the ages of 2 and 6 and remains static over a lifetime” (Levy 328). The attraction they feel towards the mother and the enmity they feel towards the father during the phallic stages mostly gets resolved by the time they are teenagers, but it does leave a huge imprint in their psyche. The videos with the title ‘Mom’ make use of this Oedipus complex which is persistent in most of the male population. This is called a cued interest; A cued interest develops when the brain’s natural responsiveness to a particular kind of cue causes the brain to sexually imprint upon a target that exhibits that cue.

But some of the viewers would also be prone to questions of morality and this may decrease the number of viewers for the pornographic video. The makers of these porn videos have found a loophole to sidestep this morality question by introducing the concept “stepmom”. The viewers find solace in the fact that the teenager in these videos is not biologically related the mother and hence there is no taboo or the arousal of any morality question in them having intercourse. Today, there are a greater number of porn videos with the title “stepmom” rather than “mom”. It is the same case with videos which depict incest, sexual relationship between siblings. The taboo is overridden when the viewer makes him believe that there is no wrongdoing in having sex with a sibling who is not biologically related to you. But it is these taboos itself that gives that extra sense of pleasure to the viewer while watching porn. When society deems something as a taboo or immoral, a want to do the same is created in the human being and porn videos make use of this. Porn videos differ from other kinds of literature, be it cinema or written text, because of its lack of subtility in conveying its narrative. While in Sons and Lovers and Hamlet, we have to employ some critical thinking to deconstruct the plot and to discern the oedipal complex, pornographic content puts it out there for the viewer to see and enjoy. It doesn’t portray the oedipal complex as a taboo or an aftermath of vile thoughts, but as a form of enjoyment. Pornography thus becomes a stage for people to sidestep the taboos created by societies and revel in their desires.

VIOLENCE IN PORN

“Most pornography contains a cruel message...The suggestion is that women should not only be sexually conquered, but beaten, tortured, and enslaved triumphed over in any way” (Stevens 8). Definition of pornography has been a contentious debate, but most of the feminist scholars agree upon the above written statements. And by looking at the amount of pornographic content which depicts violence against women, it is not surprising that porn has such a bad reputation.

A common narrative of porn which depicts non consensual sex goes like this: the man forces himself onto the women which the women resist at first but then later on starts to enjoy the intercourse. “Between 37% and 88% of mainstream pornographic scenes include acts of physical aggression (mostly gagging and spanking), most commonly towards female actors with the scene usually suggesting that the recipient was a willing participant” (Lim 3). A normal viewer does know that raping a woman is ethically and morally wrong and not permittable, but when the porn videos depicting rape shows that the women start to enjoy it, they begin to think that there is no harm in doing so since they are enjoying it. This is a strategy employed in the narrative structure by the adult video makers to bypass the questions of consent and morality. It is also clear that is not the sexual images which leads to arousal, but the images of aggression. Even though this type of pornography is prevalent throughout the world, Japanese porn industry have been the frontrunners in creating porn which depicts violence and rape.

A question would naturally arise about the correlation between watching violent and pornography and the number real-life aggression against women committed by men. But statistics about this have been inconclusive, some stating that there are positive correlations while others state that none could be found. “Studies about the effects of pornography on attitudes toward rape and the actual occurrence of rape have produced inconclusive, and often contradictory, results, there appears to be a greater consensus in the literature that violent pornography has detrimental effects on the attitudes and behavior of men who view it” (Gossett 691). Therefore, it can be said with some caution that perceiving images of rape towards women may lead to aggressive behavior towards women from men in real life scenarios. This leads us to the next question, what about the feministic space in porn?

FEMINISTIC SPACE IN PORN

There is none. The burden of sexual objectification on pornography lies on the female body, and never on the male. “Pornography is sexually explicit content that represents or describes degrading or abusive sexual behaviour so as to endorse and/or recommend the behavior as described. By erotica, I mean sexual representations that are premised on equality” (Russel 46). Pornographic website and videos have generally been a space for men only. The narratives that are created in these videos cater only to the pleasure of men. Even though one can find many porn videos in website where women dominate, it is conceived in such a way that it fulfills the fantasies of the male viewers. Most of the porn videos out there, tells one story, a story of a man who has sexual intercourse easily with a woman, either because the woman is in desperate need of sex or because the man forces himself onto her. Nevertheless, there a growing number of adult websites which states themselves as ethical and feminists, that puts women’s pleasure front and center while promoting inclusivity and more realistic on-screen portrayals of sex. Essentially, ethical porn sites are porn sites for women that gives one more options catering to unique preferences and desires.

There is another stream of findings with statistics pointing out that women find more pleasure in reading romance novels and written stories about sexual encounters rather than visual images. The romance novel is a chronicle of female mate choice,” assert Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons in their book, Warrior Lovers, “in which the heroine overcomes obstacles to identify, win, and marry the hero, who embodies the physical, psychological, and social characteristics that constituted high male mate value during the course of human evolutionary history”. Whereas men are more aroused by visual cues, women are more aroused by psychological cues. Psychological cues convey information about a man’s stability, commitment, social status, competence, and kindness. A contemporary take on romance novels in today’s digital world is the very popular Korean dramas. “One reason why K-dramas are so popular is perhaps the fact that they are largely by, for, and of women” (Kumar NA). K-dramas provide a feminist perspective and don’t mould their male leads in a way that sexually objectifies the female protagonists. As it has been widely said that romance novels are “pornography for women”, Korean Dramas are “erotica for women”.

CONCLUSION

Pornography is a growing industry and, in all likelihood, will be so for the foreseeable future. After a considerable amount of research, I have reached the conclusion that pornography can help a person to find a safe space for venturing out their desires, but also at the same time can give them the wrong notions about consent and violence. The ethicality of pornography is a contentious debate, since the e-novels written by women largely for women also portray rape in graphic details for women’s enjoyment, it becomes a question on where to draw the line. It is the unrealistic setting of narratives in pornography, which makes it more enjoyable for men, while it is the realistic progression towards sex which makes it more pleasurable for women. One key undertaking that pornography should pursue is to make visual erotica with narratives for women’s liking, transforming pornography (which means prostitution in Greek) into erotica (which means sexual love in Greek).

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