Cum shot - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A cum shot, cumshot, come shot, pop shot, or money shot
Money shot
A money shot is a moving or stationary visual element of a film, video, television broadcast, print publication, etc., that is disproportionately expensive to produce and/or is perceived as essential to the overall importance or revenue-generating potential of the work.-Cinema:Originally, in...

are slang terms used to describe a person ejaculating (in film or video, or image in a pornographic magazine

Pornographic magazine

Pornographic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines, sex magazines or top-shelf magazines are pornographic magazines that contain content of a sexual nature. Adult magazines are mainly aimed towards men, and in some parts of the world, many men's first sight of a naked woman has been in an...

), usually onto a person or object. It is typically used by the cinematographer

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

within the narrative framework of a pornographic film, and since the 1970s has become a leitmotif

Leitmotif

A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...

of the hardcore

Hardcore pornography

Hardcore pornography is a form of pornography that features explicit sexual acts. The term was coined in the second half of the 20th century to distinguish it from softcore pornography. It usually takes the form of photographs, often displayed in magazines or on the Internet, or films. It can also...

genre. Cum shots have also become the object of fetish

Sexual fetishism

Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...

genres like bukakke.

Origin and features of cum shots

Although earlier pornographic films occasionally contained footage of ejaculation, it was not until the advent of hard-core pornography in the 1970s, that the stereotypical cum shot scene became a standard feature—displaying ejaculation with maximum visibility. An oft quoted influential work of this era, Stephen Ziplow's The Film Maker's Guide to Pornography (1977), states "There are those who believe that the come shot, or, as some refer to it, 'the money shot', is the most important element in the movie and that everything else (if necessary) should be sacrificed at its expense. Of course, this depends on the outlook of the producer, but the one thing is for sure: if you don't have the come shots, you don't have a porno picture." Nowadays, facial cum shots are regularly portrayed in pornographic films and videos.

Cum shot scenes may involve the female actor "calling for" the shot to be directed at some specific part of her body. Cultural analysis

Cultural analysis

As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena; in an effort to gain new knowledge or understanding through analysis of that data...

researcher Murat Aydemir considers this one of the three quintessential aspects of the cum shot scene, alongside the emphasis on visible ejaculation and the timing of the cum shot, which usually concludes a hard-core scene.

As a possible alternative explanation for the rise of the cumshot in hardcore pornography, Joseph Slade, professor at Ohio University

Ohio University

Ohio University is a public university located in the Midwestern United States in Athens, Ohio, situated on an campus...

and author of Pornography and sexual representation: a reference guide notes that pornography actresses in the 1960s and 1970s did not trust birth control methods, and that more than one actress of the period told him that ejaculation inside her body was deemed inconsiderate if not rude.

"Money shot" terminology

Originally, in general film-making usage the term "money shot" was a reference to the scene that cost the most money to produce; in addition, the inclusion of this expensive special effect sequence is being counted on to become a selling point for the film. For example, in an action thriller, an expensive special effects sequence of a dam bursting might be called the "money shot" of the film.

The use of "money shot" to denote the ejaculation scene in pornographic films is attributed to producers paying the male actors extra for it. More recently, the meaning of the term "money shot" has sometimes been borrowed back from pornography by the film and TV industry with a meaning closer to that used in pornographic films. For example, in TV talk show

Talk show

A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....

s, the term, borrowed from pornography, denotes a highly emotional scene, expressed in visible bodily terms.

Pornography and erotica without cum shots

Two exceptions to this expectation are softcore pornography, in which penetration is not explicitly shown and "couples erotica

Erotica

Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...

", which may involve penetration but is typically filmed in a more discreet manner intended to be romantic or educational rather than graphic. Softcore pornography that does not contain ejaculation sequences is produced both to respond to a demand by some consumers for less-explicit pornographic material, and to comply with government regulations or cable company rules that may disallow depictions of ejaculation.

Cum shots typically do not appear in "girl-girl

Lesbianism in erotica

Depiction of lesbianism has been a relatively common theme in erotic art and pornography throughout history. Studies indicate that heterosexual men were more aroused by depictions involving lesbian sex than they are by depictions of heterosexual activity, while heterosexual and lesbian women were...

" scenes (female ejaculation

Female ejaculation

Female ejaculation refers to the expulsion of noticeable amounts of clear fluid by human females from the paraurethral ducts through and around the urethra during or before an orgasm...

scenes exist, but are relatively rare) and orgasm is normally implied by utterances, cinematic conventions, or body movement.

Other meanings

While the term "cum shot" normally refers to filming of the ejaculation scene in a pornographic movie (the term "shot" in "cum shot" refers to the filming, or "shooting" of the scene), the term is also used more loosely to refer to the actual physiological event of male ejaculation.

Television

On the long-running Dutch family game show Lingo
Lingo (Dutch game show)
Lingo is a Dutch television game show based on the North American format of the same name. Each episode involves two teams of two people trying to guess and spell words. There are usually six letters, but on a Friday, there are seven...

, on 2 march 2011, a male contestant guessed 'cumshot'. The word was approved by the jury, because it actually is included in the Dutch dictionary. Through weblogs and social media, the episode quickly sparked international attention.

Relating to misogyny

In Padraig McGrath's review of Laurence O'Toole's book Pornocopia – Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire, he rhetorically asks whether "...women enjoy having men ejaculate on their faces?" He suggests that the role of such a scene is to illustrate that "...it doesn’t matter what the woman likes – she’ll like whatever the man wants her to like because she has no inner life of her own, in turn because she’s not a real person". McGrath argues that there is a "power-aspect" to depictions such as cum shots. He suggests that the "...central theme [of pornography] is power...[,] implicitly violent...eroticized hatred."

Gail Dines

Gail Dines

Gail Dines is a feminist anti-pornography activist, author, professor, and lecturer. An academic, she has also been described as "The world's leading anti-pornography campaigner".-Biography:...

, writing in Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, describes the money shot of a man ejaculating on the face or body of a woman as "one of the most degrading acts in porn". To Dines, the ejaculate on the female performer's body "marks the woman as used goods", conveying a sense of ownership, and she quotes veteran porn actor and producer Bill Margold as saying, "I'd like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we serve a purpose by showing that. The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that because they get even with the women they can't have." She adds that at least for some posters on adult forums discussing such scenes, the pleasure is derived from watching a woman suffer.

From feminists

Susan Faludi

Susan C. Faludi is an American feminist, journalist and author. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1991, for a report on the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, Inc., a report that the Pulitzer Prize committee thought showed the "human costs of high finance".-Biographical...

, a Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning journalist and the author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women is the title of a 1991 nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Faludi, which argues for the existence of a media driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s...

, argues that pornography scenes depicting women performing oral sex on men objectify the male performer, in that the male performer's entire body, except for the erect penis, is off-camera.

In the article "My Son's Penis" from Masthead magazine, Richard Jeffrey Newman, who cites Faludi, writes: "the male performer's [in porn] primary function is to make her [the female actress'] performance possible. He is her straight man, her foil, or as Susan Faludi puts it in her essay 'The Money Shot' her 'appendage, the object of the object.'" The article states that the woman in such a scene may appear like a "machine". It also states that with "the cum shot, the pleasure of which is expressed not in what the man on the screen felt in his own body up to and including the point of his ejaculation, but rather in what it means for him to ejaculate onto the body of a woman." She argues that the way cum shots are depicted in pornography is a "more or less absolute yoking in heterosexual pornography of male sexual pleasure to a woman's presence.", and that focus on having the man ejaculate onto a woman "... has a moral fervor, an intellectual certainty" that is usually associated with "religious or scientific pronouncements."

From directors

Another critic of "cum shot" scenes in heterosexual pornography is the US porn star-turned writer, director and producer Candida Royalle

Candida Royalle

Candida Royalle is an American producer and director of couples-oriented pornography and a former pornographic actress. She is member of the XRCO and the AVN Halls of Fame....

. She produced pornography films aimed at women and their partners that avoid the "misogynous predictability" and depiction of sex in "...as grotesque and graphic [a way] as possible." Royalle also criticizes the male-centredness of the typical pornography film, in which scenes end when the male actor ejaculates. Royalle’s films are not “goal oriented” towards a final "cum shot"; instead, her films depict sexual activity within the broader context of women's emotional and social lives.

Counterarguments

Sexologist

Sexology

Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behavior, and function. The term does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sex, such as political analysis or social criticism....

Peter Sándor Gardos argues that his research suggests that "... the men who get most turned on by watching cum shots are the ones who have positive attitudes toward women" (on the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex in 1992). Later, on The World Pornography Conference in 1998, he reported a similar conclusion, namely that "no pornographic image is interpretable outside of its historical and social context. Harm or degradation does not reside in the image itself".

Author Lisa Moore

Lisa Moore (writer)

Lisa Moore is a Canadian writer.Born in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Moore studied art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design...

suggests that it is the pleasure the actresses exhibit that the male partners enjoy, and that it is more accurate to think men want their semen to be wanted. Women's activist Beatrice Faust

Beatrice Faust

Beatrice Faust AO is an Australian author and women's activist. She was a co-founder of Women's Electoral Lobby and President of the Abortion Law Repeal Association of Victoria.-Biography:...

stated "Since ejaculating into blank space is not much fun, ejaculating over a person who responds with enjoyment sustains a lighthearted mood as well as a degree of realism. This occurs in both homosexual and pornography so that ejaculation cannot be interpreted as an expression of contempt for women only."

Cindy Patton, activist and scholar on human sexuality, claims that in western culture male sexual fulfillment is synonymous with orgasm and that the male orgasm is an essential punctuation of the sexual narrative. No orgasm, no sexual pleasure. No cum shot, no narrative closure. In other words, the cum shot is the period at the end of the sentence.