NEW YORK CITY—As everyone reading this must surely know by now (or at least guess) porn movies (aka stag films) have been around pretty much since the invention of cinematography. In fact, in Victorian-era America, even the mildest human-to-human "sexual" contact caught on film was considered scandalous and even "obscene"—like, f'r'instance The Kiss, an 18-seconds-long film from the stage musical The Widow Jones, which shows actors May Irwin and John Rice smooching—and without even using their tongues! Simple nudity could be found in the French film Le Bain (The Bath) (1896) and several early works by German filmmaker Oskar Messter, which featured women undressing, then bathing, exercising and dancing in the nude.
But it didn't take long for early movie cameras to capture actual sex. The 1908 film A l'Ecu d'Or ou La Bonne Auberge (At the Golden Shield or the Good Inn) is described in the volume Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film 1915-1970, by Al DiLauro and Gerald Rabkin, as "the oldest pornographic film having a scenario"—and wouldn't you know, it's the old story of a soldier stopping at an inn for the night and being seduced by a servant girl.
In any case, lots and lots of stag films have been produced over the past 120 years, and according to an article by Curtis Silver for Forbes.com, "Pornhub went back a generation further [than the "Baby Boomer" years] and has dusted off your grandparent's old stag films to display them in conjunction with the Museum of Sex in New York City."
The exhibit will be titled "STAG: The Illicit Origins of Pornographic Film," and will feature hardcore (often amateur) productions released during the first 60 years of the 20th century.
"We're proud to partner with the Museum of Sex in the presentation of 'Stag: The Illicit Origins of Pornographic Film,'" stated Corey Price, vice president of Pornhub, in a press release about the upcoming exhibit. "We wanted to celebrate the earliest depictions of sex on film and pay homage to the professional filmmakers and amateur producers responsible for this unprecedented time in adult entertainment."
As Silver's article notes, "Back in the day, your parents and grandparents used to gather in basements at the legion hall, smoke cigars and laugh and drink while watching stag films. Even as film technology advanced, the films generally remained silent and filmed in black and white, lending to the illicit underground pull of the pornographic industry." According to the museum's own website, the exhibit "will feature 'stags' which are short, black and white films produced in secrecy in the early 1900 through the 1960s which often interlaced sex with humor and narrative plots for the sake of satire and social commentary."
"The technology used in the creation of these was intentionally retrograde; almost all stag productions were silent and black-and-white, even as sound and color film became the norm of the rest of the industry," Pornhub states on its website. "This stylistic device contributed to the films' explicit allure, suggesting the reality of the sex acts being performed, as well as the underground and illicit nature of the pornographic film industry itself."
The point is, this retrospective is bound to be a hoot for fans of early porn, or any non-prude who just wants a fun evening out—and the fun will continue on a specially curated channel Pornhub has created called the Stag Channel.
