Corporate Porn

The conventional wisdom is that porn is in crisis.
Decreasing profits, increased piracy and a flood
of free and amateur porn on the internet are the
culprits and that the industry is haemorrhaging money.

Some go as far as to argue that the industry
is “fighting for its life”. While profits
may be down, it is a mistake to see this as
evidence of a dying industry.

Actually, it’s a sign of a successful, maturing industry
moving from a “mom and pop” model of small, backstreet
players to a more legitimate, mainstream industry
characterised by fierce competition and increasing
concentration in the hands of a few large companies.

The corporatisation of porn isn’t something which will
happen or is happening, it’s something that has happened.

It’s Las Vegas all over again. The independent owners,
renegade mobsters and visionary entrepreneurs pushed
aside by mega-corporations that saw a better way of
doing things and brought the discipline needed to
attain a whole new level of success to the remaining players.

Concentrated Porn Power

James Deen Porn Star

What has happened to porn is typical as industries grow and mature. The internet enabled rapid market growth and attracted a proliferation of new entrants eager to make what appeared to be easy money.

This led to intense competition, falling prices and profits. It also led to lower pay for the performers.

Cougar Pounces

The weeding out of some unprofitable firms and a wave of acquisitions have led to the consolidation of the industry and the emergence of a few large, more professionally managed businesses operating in multiple market segments through a variety of distribution channels.

These big players have gained a level of economic, political and cultural power that is reshaping the industry.

It’s a sign of the success of the porn industry that it has become a mainstream, legitimate sector that interfaces with credit card companies, mobile technology companies, software developers, venture capitalists and mainstream media corporations.

Porn Profits:
Corporate America’s
Secret

Pornography has grown into a $10 billion business — bigger than the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball combined — and some of the nation’s best-known corporations are quietly sharing the profits.

Companies like General Motors, AOL Time Warner and Marriott earn revenue by piping adult movies into Americans’ homes and hotel rooms, but you won’t see anything about it in their company reports.

Disorder from Francois Ferracci on Vimeo.

And you won’t hear them talking about the production companies that actually make the films — or the performers the producers hire, men and women as young as 18, for sex that is often unprotected.

Only a handful of “high end” production companies require condoms, leaving the majority of performers vulnerable to AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. While some companies require performers to take HIV tests, there is no government regulation mandating tests across the industry.

Bringing It Into
Homes and Hotels

According to Adult Video News, an estimated 11,000 hard-core porn movies are produced in the United States annually, many of them in California’s San Fernando Valley, where modern porn was born.

The production companies market them over the Internet and to distributors who feed them to video stores — the industry claims that more than 30 percent of all video rentals on the East and West coasts are sex films — and to giant cable and satellite companies.

General Motors, through its subsidiary DirecTV, delivers hard- and soft-core porn to homes via satellite. Communications giant Comcast supplies various kinds of porn to homes via pay-per-view.

And AOL Time Warner owns a cable company that offers erotic programming from Playboy and other outlets, including hard-core.

It is hard to estimate how much money these corporations derive from porn because they do not publicize it in their portfolios or anywhere else.

Their financial statements do not mention profits from adult movies. However, one industry analyst estimated that the combination of cable and satellite outlets makes about $1 billion a year from the adult-movie market.

Many of the major hotel chains, including Marriott, Hilton and Westin, also derive revenue from adult films without mentioning it in their company reports.

Adult titles are available as in-room movies in around 40 percent of all hotel rooms in the United States. The hotels share the revenue with the in-room entertainment companies that provide the TVs and the content.

New-Wave Porn

Can Porn Be
Feminest Friendly

Feminist porn includes images and sex films meant to appeal to those who feel put off by mainstream porn. Women come in all shapes, sizes, and sexual orientations.

The actresses don’t necessarily conform to the typical big-boobed, tiny-waisted ideal. Some sport armpit hair. They look more like the average woman walking down the street or standing in line at Whole Foods than “porn stars.”

Angel’s documentary is one of 41 films from eight countries being celebrated at the annual awards event, which features several days of screenings and presentations, including an awards ceremony, held last night.

Some feminist porn movies look like art-house movies—and meander, plot-wise, like them too. Take Emile, for instance, one of this year’s contenders.

The movie features a zaftig woman in a silky robe getting herself off, and doing a lot of sexy cigarette smoking, too.

There’s more of a narrative in Erika Lust’s Cabaret Desire, another nominated film, about a bohemian gathering spot where people go to hear erotic tales. Lust’s plot-heavy films typically appeal to straight women and couples.

If feminist porn sounds relatively wholesome to you—if you’re picturing sex that might be graphic but is also gentle and romantic, you might be getting the wrong idea.

Some porn that’s considered feminist depicts women who are hog-tied while having sex that looks painful, or women who are suspended from the ceiling while men penetrate them. That’s feminist?

Yes, proponents say. What makes these films “feminist” isn’t just that they feature performers who are more diverse in shape, size, sexual orientation, age, and race than in mainstream pornographic movies.

They’re ‘new-wave’because the performers engage in sexual behavior they enjoy. The directors and producers often ask the actors what they like to do. In mainstream porn, the performers don’t have any say in the matter.

Some women are turned on by being submissive. There’s a need to respect that their choice for themselves is not degrading or sexist.

There’s so much shame and negativity around sex already. People need to feel positive about their desires.

Feminist porn doesn’t exclude overt violence. In fact, it’s getting brutal, just like the mainstream stuff which features women being forced to perform oral sex until they gag, or to endure men going straight from penetrating them anally to orally, with no break in between.

Feminist porn is increasingly copying the big boys. A website called Sex and Submission features previews of films that are considered feminist porn but that show women performing as sex slaves, strapped to boards or chained up, while men have aggressive sex with them.

Because some women are into rape fantasies, ome feminist porn has violence and sadomasochism in it. Some women like sadomasochism and enjoy that fantasy.

But violence isn’t the norm. The sadomasochism enthusiasts make up a very small portion of the feminist-porn audience, she says, and there’s plenty of softer feminist porn.