Once an unthinkable subject to wax philosophical about in the mainstream press apparently 'pornography' has become the media's darling topic these days. Right now there is invariably something about the business and/or pleasure of pornography staring at you from a newspaper column, cable TV show, local news report or magazine article.
Last week alone, stories about pornography popped up on the cover of Daily Variety, in a special Sunday section of The New York Times, and on E! Entertainment Television's popular series The True Hollywood Story, which chronicles the life and times of uber porn star Jenna Jameson.
Truth is, porn makes good copy. It has the sex appeal to hook readers/viewers and there is enough legal, political and economic issues surrounding the adult sector to allow mainstream news organizations, general interest magazines, columnists, pundits, and talk show hosts to feel justified in their coverage of what is essentially the business of people screwing on film.
About that Variety article, if you're a subscriber you can read Dana Harris' interesting piece on the link between Hollywood's appetite for porn and the government's efforts to denounce it.
The abovementioned New York Times article by Dana Kennedy chronicles the surging popularity of interactive pornography, complete with a tasty image of two porn starlets in a bathtub together.
Then there's Phil Kloer's piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which spotlights, you guessed it, the mainstream-porn connection.
I even fell upon a NY Times News Service story that ran in the Taipei Times of all places about pornography in the suburbs.
I also found a story in the Sydney Morning Herald by Amy Lawson who writes about pornography and how ...it's not just for the fellas as women fess up."
Up in the Great White North, Vinay Menon of the Toronto Star makes the interesting case that if porn continues to become more and more mainstream it will eventually lose it's 'smut appeal.'
And what of Ms. Jameson? Apparently everyone in the free-speaking world caught a glimpse of E!'s True Hollywood Story, which detailed Jameson's rise to pornographic immortality.
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Perhaps no other porn star of late has walked the line between adult and mainstream entertainment more absolutely than Mary Carey, the blonde beauty presently making a play for Governor of California in the state's circus-like recall election. Even Time magazine allotted her coverage in a recent issue, precious editorial space normally reserved for tidbits about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Other contenders for title of Grand Poobah of California (or as I like to call it, Fantasyland) includes the likes of Gary Coleman, Gallagher, Larry Flynt and Arnold Schwarzenegger, so you can see how a porn star almost had to be in the race to make it complete.
A few months back in Vanity Fair's much ballyhooed annual Hollywood issue, a super sexy double-page spread of Jameson, Savanna Samson and Taylor Hayes (all adult actresses for Vivid Entertainment) appeared alongside the likes of Brad Pitt, Diane Lane, and Martin Scorsese in the rarified air of the Hollywood Portfolio; A watershed moment for mainstream porn to be sure. Socialites, housewives, and people waiting in doctors' offices from Seattle to Miami were catching a glimpse of porn royalty alongside Hollywood royalty.
What we have seen, if anything, is that the pornography industry is breaking into splinter groups; those starlets and companies deemed acceptable by the big boys in Hollywood entertainment to grace with their exposure. Jameson is undoubtedly the face of porn and is universally chosen to appear alongside magazine articles, TV shows and so on. There can be but one 'It Girl' of porn, and for now that girl is Jameson.
Whether or not the media will find another go-to girl on par with Jameson once she exits stage left remains a crapshoot, but would-be successors will surely try to pull the sword from the stone (or is that dildo from the...Oh never mind) to ascend to the throne of the porn star monarchy.
Porn is everywhere: Its reach has permeated traditional entertainment like never before and found a sexy niche within popular culture. What is deemed 'pornography' these days is a whole other issue entirely. Remember the controversial Calvin Klein TV ads and the furor it raised? How about that skanky Christina Aguilera video? Just watch any episode of The Man Show, peek at the latest issue of Maxim or recall fondly those Miller Lite "Catfight" TV commercials and you'll see where sex and pornography have joined in a wedded media bliss.
In recent years we've observed a wave of advertising, marketing and other commercial mediums blur the lines of sex and pornography (arguably two entirely separate entities) in hopes of tapping into a popular style or trend that eventually ends up being dissected on Websites like Slate.com, in coffee shops, on The Today Show, in high school hallways and conferred about in the Style section of The New York Times.
If the old adage that sex sells is true, than pornography is truly the currency.
If you look around, pornography is much like Visa: it's everywhere you want to be. It's now a component of racy video games, the focus of upcoming feature films like The Girl Next Door and Wonderland, in marketing campaigns, on network TV this upcoming season in the form of Fox's Skin, and I just read on AVN.com that a 50-foot tall Jenna Jameson billboard will be erected in Times Square. Erect being the operative word here.
As society's once vice-like grip on sexual awareness has been loosened somewhat, it has allowed the XXX industry a chance to finally play in the sand box. Teens (and adults alike) are more aware of sex and sexuality like never before. And we as mass consumers are privy to so much sex in the media - from MTV to Temptation Island to gossip shrine US Weekly - that sexual sensory overload is now part of everyday life.
With all the media coverage and loosening of Hollywood's sexual moralizing there has been a sea change of how sex, as a manufactured good, is packaged for public consumption. This is not a bad trend. Everywhere you look is sex, and it's as if everyone was prescribed a much-needed chill pill to deal with this new wave of sexual consciousness. We're still a ways from showing topless women on TV commercials, proper sex education in the classroom or dealing with a hodgepodge of important sexual issues, but we've come a long way, baby.
Porn, as a business and lifestyle, has been called up from the minors to the big leagues of entertainment. For the media it's fresh blood in the water; the big boobs and mini skirts don't hurt either. Even with this 'Up With People' attitude porn has been feeling these days, it's still a dicey game to play; the government isn't exactly Fan #1, various religious groups remain in a constant tizzy, competition is ruthless, Penthouse has bought the farm as Playboy tries not to act its age, Internet porn is up to its ears in legal issues and economic shakeouts and some people just think porn isn't cool.
Still, there is something very normal about porn these days; like the calm air inside the eye of a hurricane. Seeing a porn star on TV is just not that exciting anymore; the shock is long gone. Howard Stern interviewing a porn star on his radio show has become typical. Even politico TV guy Bill O'Reilly has the occasional discussion about adult entertainment. Ho-hum. Whether this new legitimacy is good or bad is a personal opinion. Part of me is happy to see the Hollywood hypocrites lined up to grab a slice of the pie. The one-time gray area between mainstream entertainment and porn is almost no longer; the extreme XXX players and raucous Internet showmen still bend the limits of sexual content, but the upper echelon of adult industry occupants continue to reap the spotlight shining down from an overzealous media horde often in desperate need of viewer ship.
The industry of sex has never been a passing fad, and now that mainstream media has hitched its star to the XXX wagon, the proof that pornography has become a significant part of this country's sociological and cultural tapestry has never been more evident.
You can probably read about it tomorrow in your local paper.
Tripp Daniels
Thoughts, opinions, cheap shots, slander, biased judgments, love letters, sweet nothings, haranguing, personalized erotica? How about a cool site I should know about? Drop me a note at [email protected]. Or don't. It's cool, and I'm plenty busy as it is.
