Pornographic movie
Encyclopedia
Pornographic films are motion pictures with the purpose of promoting sexual arousal
in the viewer, often featuring depictions of sexual activity. They are sold and rented out on DVD, shown through Internet and special channels and pay-per-view
on cable and satellite, and in adult theater
s.
Pornographic films appeared shortly after the creation of the motion picture in the early 1900s. Pornographic films have much in common with other forms of pornography
and erotica
. Pornography is often referred to as "porn" and a pornographic work as a "porno." Older names for a pornographic movie include "adult film", "stag film", and "blue movie." In general, "softcore
" refers to pornography that does not depict penetration or "extreme fetish" acts, while "hardcore
" refers to pornography that depicts penetration and/or extreme fetish acts.
Throughout its history, the movie camera
has been used for pornography, but for most of that time pornographic movies were typically available only by underground distribution, for projection at home or in private clubs and also night cinemas. Only in the 1970s were pornographic films semi-legitimized; by the 1980s, pornography on home video
achieved distribution unimagined only decades earlier. The rise of the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s similarly changed distribution of pornography, and furthermore complicated legal prosecution of obscenity.
Pornography is a thriving, financially profitable business: according to a 2004 Reuters article, "The multi-billion-dollar industry releases about 11,000 titles on DVD each year, giving it tremendous power...."
William Kennedy Dickson, while working for Thomas Edison
, developed the first practical celluloid film and worked on making the kinetoscope
, a peep show
machine showing a continuous loop of the film Dickson developed lit by an Edison light source. Dickson left Edison's company to produce the mutoscope
, a form of hand-cranked peep-show movie machine. These machines showcased moving images via technique of a revolving drum of card
illustrations, taken from an actual piece of film. These were often featured at seaside locations, exhibiting sequences of women undressing or acting as an artist's model. In Britain, these devices became known as "What the butler saw" machines, taking the name from one of the first and most famous softcore
reels.
The idea of projecting a moving film onto a screen
in front of an audience was a European innovation. In 1895 and 1896, Auguste and Louis Lumière
and Robert W. Paul
gave their first public demonstrations of motion picture projector
s.
Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Two of the earliest pioneers were Eugène Pirou
and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, Le Coucher de la Marie showed Louise Willy performing a striptease
. Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films showing women disrobing and other filmmakers realised profits could be made from such films.
Because Pirou is nearly unknown as a pornographic filmmaker, credit is often given to other films for being the first. In Black and White and Blue (2008), one of the most scholarly attempts to document the origins of the clandestine 'stag film' trade, Dave Thompson recounts ample evidence that such an industry first had sprung up in the brothels of Buenos Aires and other South American cities by the turn of the century, and then quickly spread through Central Europe over the following few years; however none of these earliest pornographic films is known to survive. According to Patrick Robertson's Film Facts, "the earliest pornographic motion picture which can definitely be dated is A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge" made in France in 1908; the plot depicts a weary soldier who has a tryst
with a servant girl at an inn. The Argentinian El Satario might be even older; it has been dated to somewhere between 1907 and 1912. He also notes that "the oldest surviving pornographic films are contained in America's Kinsey
Collection. One film demonstrates how early pornographic conventions were established. The German film Am Abend (1910) is "a ten-minute film which begins with a woman masturbating alone in her bedroom, and progresses to scenes of her with a man performing straight sex, fellatio and anal penetration."
Pornographic movies were widespread in the silent movie
era of the 1920s, and were often shown in brothel
s. Soon illegal, stag films, or blue films as they were called, were produced underground by amateurs for many years starting in the 1940s. Processing the film took considerable time and resources, with people using their bathtub
s to wash the film when processing facilities (often tied to organized crime) were unavailable. The films were then circulated privately or by traveling salesman but being caught viewing or possessing them put one at the risk of prison.
The post-war era saw developments that further stimulated the growth of a mass market. Technological developments, particularly the introduction of the 8mm
and super-8
film gauges, resulted in the widespread use of amateur cinematography
. Entrepreneurs emerged to supply this market. In Britain, the productions of Harrison Marks
were "soft core", but considered risqué in the 1950s. On the continent, such films were more explicit. Lasse Braun
was a pioneer in quality colour productions that were, in the early days, distributed by making use of his father's diplomatic privileges.
(1967) and Language of Love (1969) were sexually explicit, but were framed as quasi-documentaries, which made their legal status uncertain.
In 1969, Denmark
became the first country to legalize hardcore pornography, followed by toleration in the Netherlands
also in 1969. This led to an explosion of commercially produced pornography. Now that being a pornographer was a legitimate occupation, there was no shortage of businessmen to invest in proper plant and equipment capable of turning out a mass-produced, cheap, but quality product. Vast amounts of this new pornography, both magazines and films, were smuggled into other parts of Europe, where it was sold "under the counter" or (sometimes) shown in "members only" cinema clubs.
s in the United States
and many other countries. There was also a proliferation of coin-operated "movie booths" in sex shop
s that displayed pornographic "loops" (so called because they projected a movie from film arranged in a continuous loop).
Denmark started producing comparatively big-budget theatrical feature film sex comedies such as Bordellet
(1972), the Bedside-films
(1970–1976) and the Zodiac-films
(1973–1978), starring mainstream actors (a few of whom even performed their own sex scenes) and usually not thought of as "porno films" though all except the early Bedside-films included hardcore pornographic scenes. Several of these films still rank among the most seen films in Danish film history and all remain favourites on home video
.
The first explicitly pornographic film with a plot that received a general theatrical release in the U.S. is generally considered to be Mona the Virgin Nymph
(also known as Mona), a 59-minute 1970 feature by Bill Osco and Howard Ziehm, who went on to create the relatively high-budget hardcore/softcore (depending on the release) cult film Flesh Gordon
.
The 1971 film Boys in the Sand
represented a number of pornographic firsts. As the first generally available gay pornographic film, the film was the first to include on-screen credits for its cast and crew (albeit largely under pseudonyms), to parody the title of a mainstream film (in this case, The Boys in the Band
), and to be reviewed by The New York Times
. Other notable American hardcore feature films of the 1970s include Deep Throat
(1972), Behind the Green Door
(1972), The Devil in Miss Jones
(1973), Radley Metzger
's The Opening of Misty Beethoven
(1975) and Debbie Does Dallas
(1978). These were shot on film and distributed in movie theaters. Many predicted that frank depictions of sex onscreen would soon become commonplace, but culture soon shifted to the more conservative side and that fantasy never came true. William Rotsler
expressed this in 1973, "Erotic films are here to stay. Eventually they will simply merge into the mainstream of motion pictures and disappear as a labeled sub-division. Nothing can stop this." In Britain however, Deep Throat was not approved in its uncut form until 2000 and not shown publicly until June 2005.
One important court case in the U.S. was Miller v. California
(1973). The case established that obscenity
was not legally protected, but the case also established the Miller test
, a three-pronged test to determine obscenity (which is not legal) as opposed to indecency (which may or may not be legal).
, Ron Jeremy
, Christy Canyon
, Ginger Lynn
, John Holmes
, and Traci Lords
and directors, such as Gregory Dark
. By 1982, most pornographic films were being shot on the cheaper and more convenient medium of videotape
. Many film directors resisted this shift at first because of the different image quality that video tape produced, however those who did change soon were collecting most of the industry's profits since consumers overwhelmingly preferred the new format. The technology change happened quickly and completely when directors realised that continuing to shoot on film was no longer a profitable option. This change moved the films out of the theaters and into people's private homes. This was the end of the age of big budget productions and the mainstreaming of pornography. It soon went back to its earthy roots and expanded to cover every fetish possible since filming was now so inexpensive. Instead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands now were, 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 satisfy specific fantasies and fetishes.
Similarly, the camcorder
spurred changes in pornography in the 1980s, when people could make their own amateur sex movies, whether for private use, or for wider distribution.
It has been suggested that, among other things, Sony Betamax
lost the Videotape format war
to VHS (in becoming the general home video recording/viewing system) because the adult film industry chose VHS
instead of the Sony system.
The year 1987 saw an important legal case in the U.S. when the de facto
result of California v. Freeman
was the legalization of hardcore pornography
. Ironically, the prosecution of Harold Freeman was initially planned as the first in a series of legal cases that would have effectively outlawed the production of such movies.
offered better quality picture and sound, and was embraced by pornographers just as enthusiastically as it was embraced by major Hollywood studios and by private consumers. DVD allowed innovations such as "interactive" videos that let the user choose such variables as multiple camera angles, multiple endings and computer-only DVD content.
However, the Internet
arguably changed the distribution of pornography more than any earlier technology: rather than ordering movies from an adult bookstore, or through mail-order, people could watch pornographic movies on their computers. Rather than waiting weeks for an order to arrive from another U.S. state, one could download a pornographic movie within minutes (or, later, within a few seconds).
Internet pornography is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet
, primarily via paysite
s, video hosting service
s, and peer-to-peer
file sharing
. While pornography had been traded electronically since the 1980s, it was in the invention of the World Wide Web
in 1991 as well as the opening of the Internet to the general public around the same time that led to an explosion in online pornography. Like videotape
s and DVD
s, the Internet has proved popular for distributing pornography because it allows people to view pornography (essentially) anonymously in the comfort and privacy of their homes. It also allows access to pornography by people whose access is otherwise restricted for legal or social reasons.
Viv Thomas
, Paul Thomas, Andrew Blake, Antonio Adamo
, and Rocco Siffredi
were prominent directors of the '90s.
In 1998, the Danish
, Oscar-nominated film production company Zentropa
became the world's first mainstream film company to openly produce hardcore
pornographic films, starting with Constance
(1998).
That same year, Zentropa also produced Idioterne (1998), directed by Lars von Trier
, which won many international awards and was nominated for a Golden Palm in Cannes. The film includes a shower sequence with a male erection and an orgy scene with close-up penetration footage (the camera viewpoint is from the ankles of the participants, and the close-ups leave no doubt as to what is taking place). Idioterne started a wave of international mainstream arthouse films featuring explicit sexual images, such as Catherine Breillat
's Romance
, which starred pornstar Rocco Siffredi
.
In 1999, the Danish
TV-channel Kanal København started broadcasting hardcore films at night, uncoded and freely available to any TV-viewer in the Copenhagen
area (as of 2009, this is still the case, courtesy of Innocent Pictures
, a company started by Zentropa
).
area of Los Angeles
, California
being the heart of the industry. This being the case, most figures on the size of the industry refer solely to the U.S.
In 1975 the total retail value of all the hardcore pornography
in the U.S. was estimated at $5–10 million. The 1979 Revision of the Federal Criminal Code stated that "in Los Angeles
alone, the porno business does $100 million a year in gross retain volume." According to the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, American adult entertainment industry has grown considerably over the past thirty years by continually changing and expanding to appeal to new markets, though the production is considered to be low-profile and clandestine.
The total current income of the country's adult entertainment is often rated at $10–13 billion, of which $4–6 billion are legal. The figure is often credited to a study by Forrester Research
and was lowered in 1998. In 2007 The Observer
newspaper also gave a figure of $13 billion. Other sources, quoted by Forbes
(Adams Media Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, and IVD), even taking into consideration all possible means (video networks and pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite, web sites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys, and magazines) mention the $2.6–3.9 billion figure (without the cellphone component). USA Today claimed in 2003 that websites such as Danni's Hard Drive and Cybererotica.com generated $2 billion in revenue in that year, which was allegedly about 10% of the overall domestic porn market at the time. The adult movies income (from sale and rent) was once estimated by AVN Publications
at $4.3 billion but the figure obtaining is unclear. According to the 2001 Forbes data the annual income distribution is:
The Online Journalism Review, published by the Annenberg School of Communication
at the University of Southern California
, weighed in with an analysis that favored Forbes number. The financial extent of adult films, distributed in hotels, is hard to estimate—hotels keep statistics to themselves or do not keep them at all. A CBS News
investigation in November 2003 claimed that 50% of guests at the Hilton
, Marriott
, Hyatt
, Sheraton
, and Holiday Inn
hotel chains purchased adult movies, contributing to 70% of in-room profits. The income of cellphone porn
is low, when compared with other countries. The absence of V-chip
-style parental controls however has encouraged American consumers to use cellphones to access explicit content.
The world's largest adult movie studio Vivid Entertainment
generates an estimated $100 million a year in revenue, distributing 60 films annually and selling them in video stores, hotel rooms, on cable systems, and on the internet. Spanish-based studio Private Media Group
is listed on the NASDAQ
. Video rentals soared from just under 80 million in 1985 to a half-billion by 1993. Some subsidiaries
of major corporations are the largest pornography sellers, like News Corporation
's DirecTV
. Comcast
, the nation's largest cable company, once pulled in $50 million from adult programming. Revenues of companies such as Playboy and Hustler were small by comparison.
from the United States, who starred in the 1972 feature Deep Throat
. Casey Donovan
, star of the first mainstream pornographic hit Boys in the Sand
in 1971, achieved name recognition nearly a year before Deep Throat debuted. The success of Deep Throat, which grossed millions of dollars worldwide, spawned a slew of other films and pornographic film stars such as Marilyn Chambers
(Behind the Green Door
), Gloria Leonard
(The Opening of Misty Beethoven
), Georgina Spelvin
(The Devil in Miss Jones
), and Bambi Woods
(Debbie Does Dallas
). Other well-known performers from the '70s and early '80s included Seka
, John Holmes
, Ginger Lynn Allen, Veronica Hart
, Nina Hartley
and Amber Lynn
.
Attempts were made in the 1970s to outlaw pornography in the United States
by prosecuting porn stars for prostitution
. The courts in California were where the case was initially made, and stopped short of advancing the case to the United States Supreme Court for a final decision. It was this decision and acceptance to let stand whereby the California Court made a legal distinction in the case of People v. Freeman between someone who took part in a sexual relationship for money (prostitution) versus someone who takes on the act of merely portraying role where a sexual relationship was engaged in on-screen act as part of their acting performance. It is this specific legal distinction between pornography and prostitution in California law that has allowed California to become the porn center of the United States.
The primary focus of heterosexual sex films are the women in them, who are mostly selected for their on-screen appearance. Most male performers in heterosexual pornography are generally selected less for their looks than for their sexual prowess, namely their ability to do three things: achieve an erection
while on a busy film set, maintain that erection while performing on camera, and then ejaculate
on cue.
Most male performers in straight porn are paid less than their female counterparts. Ron Jeremy
has commented on the pay gap between women and men in the sex film industry: "The average guy gets $300 to $400 a scene, or $100 to $200 if he's new. A woman makes $100,000 to $250,000 at the end of the year. " and "Girls can easily make 100K-250K per year, plus stuff on the side like strip shows and appearances. The average guy makes $40,000 a year."
, Wade Nichols
, Marc Stevens and Al Parker
. This led to the creation of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation
, which helped set up a system in the U.S. adult film industry where erotic actors are tested for HIV
, Chlamydia and Gonorrhea
every 30 days-and Hepatitis
, Syphilis
, HSV
annually. Since the introduction of the AIM testing protocol, adult film actors have a lower rate of STI's than the general population.
and China
, but can be accessed through the internet in some of these nations.
Sexual arousal
Sexual arousal, or sexual excitement, is the arousal of sexual desire, during or in anticipation of sexual activity. Things that precipitate human sexual arousal are called erotic stimuli, or colloquially known as turn-ons. There are many potential stimuli, both physical or mental, which can cause...
in the viewer, often featuring depictions of sexual activity. They are sold and rented out on DVD, shown through Internet and special channels and pay-per-view
Pay-per-view
Pay-per-view provides a service by which a television audience can purchase events to view via private telecast. The broadcaster shows the event at the same time to everyone ordering it...
on cable and satellite, and in adult theater
Adult theater
An adult movie theater is a movie theater where pornographic films are shown to an adult audience. There are usually continuous showings. The movie posters in front of the theaters normally feature no nudity.- Films and patrons :...
s.
Pornographic films appeared shortly after the creation of the motion picture in the early 1900s. Pornographic films have much in common with other forms of pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and erotica
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
. Pornography is often referred to as "porn" and a pornographic work as a "porno." Older names for a pornographic movie include "adult film", "stag film", and "blue movie." In general, "softcore
Softcore
Softcore pornography is a form of filmic or photographic pornography or erotica that is less sexually explicit than hardcore pornography. It is intended to tickle and arouse men and women. Softcore pornography depicts nude and semi-nude performers engaging in casual social nudity or non-graphic...
" refers to pornography that does not depict penetration or "extreme fetish" acts, while "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...
" refers to pornography that depicts penetration and/or extreme fetish acts.
Throughout its history, the movie camera
Movie camera
The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film which was very popular for private use in the last century until its successor, the video camera, replaced it...
has been used for pornography, but for most of that time pornographic movies were typically available only by underground distribution, for projection at home or in private clubs and also night cinemas. Only in the 1970s were pornographic films semi-legitimized; by the 1980s, pornography on home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
achieved distribution unimagined only decades earlier. The rise of the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s similarly changed distribution of pornography, and furthermore complicated legal prosecution of obscenity.
Pornography is a thriving, financially profitable business: according to a 2004 Reuters article, "The multi-billion-dollar industry releases about 11,000 titles on DVD each year, giving it tremendous power...."
Early examples
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
, developed the first practical celluloid film and worked on making the kinetoscope
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic...
, a peep show
Peep show
A peep show or peepshow is an exhibition of pictures, objects or people viewed through a small hole or magnifying glass. Though historically a peep show was a form of entertainment provided by wandering showmen, nowadays it more commonly refers a presentation of a sex show or pornographic film...
machine showing a continuous loop of the film Dickson developed lit by an Edison light source. Dickson left Edison's company to produce the mutoscope
Mutoscope
frame|right|An 1899 trade advertisementThe Mutoscope was an early motion picture device, patented by Herman Casler on November 21, 1894. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope it did not project on a screen, and provided viewing to only one person at a time...
, a form of hand-cranked peep-show movie machine. These machines showcased moving images via technique of a revolving drum of card
Mutoscope cards
Mutoscope cards were 5.25" x 3.25" cards were published during the 1940s by the International Mutoscope Reel Company and other firms. They are not individual pictures from Mutoscope reels and have no connection whatsoever to the Mutoscope motion-picture device...
illustrations, taken from an actual piece of film. These were often featured at seaside locations, exhibiting sequences of women undressing or acting as an artist's model. In Britain, these devices became known as "What the butler saw" machines, taking the name from one of the first and most famous softcore
Softcore
Softcore pornography is a form of filmic or photographic pornography or erotica that is less sexually explicit than hardcore pornography. It is intended to tickle and arouse men and women. Softcore pornography depicts nude and semi-nude performers engaging in casual social nudity or non-graphic...
reels.
The idea of projecting a moving film onto a screen
Projection screen
A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed, as in a movie theater; painted on the wall; or semi-permanent or mobile, as in a conference room...
in front of an audience was a European innovation. In 1895 and 1896, Auguste and Louis Lumière
Auguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
and Robert W. Paul
Robert W. Paul
Robert W. Paul was a British electrician, scientific instrument maker and early pioneer of British film.-Early career:...
gave their first public demonstrations of motion picture projector
Movie projector
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...
s.
Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Two of the earliest pioneers were Eugène Pirou
Eugène Pirou
Eugène Pirou was an early French filmmaker and photographer who made one of the first pornographic films, Le Coucher de la Marie in which Louise Willy performed a striptease, only a year after the first public screening of motion pictures, though he made his name filming the Tsar's visit to Paris...
and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, Le Coucher de la Marie showed Louise Willy performing a striptease
Striptease
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
. Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films showing women disrobing and other filmmakers realised profits could be made from such films.
Because Pirou is nearly unknown as a pornographic filmmaker, credit is often given to other films for being the first. In Black and White and Blue (2008), one of the most scholarly attempts to document the origins of the clandestine 'stag film' trade, Dave Thompson recounts ample evidence that such an industry first had sprung up in the brothels of Buenos Aires and other South American cities by the turn of the century, and then quickly spread through Central Europe over the following few years; however none of these earliest pornographic films is known to survive. According to Patrick Robertson's Film Facts, "the earliest pornographic motion picture which can definitely be dated is A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge" made in France in 1908; the plot depicts a weary soldier who has a tryst
Tryst
Tryst may refer to:*A meeting of two lovers, as in courtship*Tryst , a book by Elswyth Thane*Tryst , a play by Karoline Leach*A nightclub at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel...
with a servant girl at an inn. The Argentinian El Satario might be even older; it has been dated to somewhere between 1907 and 1912. He also notes that "the oldest surviving pornographic films are contained in America's Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, as well as producing the Kinsey Reports and the Kinsey...
Collection. One film demonstrates how early pornographic conventions were established. The German film Am Abend (1910) is "a ten-minute film which begins with a woman masturbating alone in her bedroom, and progresses to scenes of her with a man performing straight sex, fellatio and anal penetration."
Pornographic movies were widespread in the silent movie
Silent Movie
Silent Movie is a 1976 satirical comedy film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks, and released by 20th Century Fox on June 17, 1976...
era of the 1920s, and were often shown in brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
s. Soon illegal, stag films, or blue films as they were called, were produced underground by amateurs for many years starting in the 1940s. Processing the film took considerable time and resources, with people using their bathtub
Bathtub
A bath , bathtub , or tub is a large container for holding water in which a person may bathe . Most modern bathtubs are made of acrylic or fiberglass, but alternatives are available in enamel over steel or cast iron, and occasionally waterproof finished wood...
s to wash the film when processing facilities (often tied to organized crime) were unavailable. The films were then circulated privately or by traveling salesman but being caught viewing or possessing them put one at the risk of prison.
The post-war era saw developments that further stimulated the growth of a mass market. Technological developments, particularly the introduction of the 8mm
8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
and super-8
Super 8 mm film
Super 8 mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format....
film gauges, resulted in the widespread use of amateur cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
. Entrepreneurs emerged to supply this market. In Britain, the productions of Harrison Marks
Harrison Marks
George Harrison Marks was a British glamour photographer and director of nudist, and later, pornographic films who was active in the fields for several decades.-Kamera and Pamela Green:...
were "soft core", but considered risqué in the 1950s. On the continent, such films were more explicit. Lasse Braun
Lasse Braun
Lasse Braun is an Italian pornographer, film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and researcher.- Introduction :...
was a pioneer in quality colour productions that were, in the early days, distributed by making use of his father's diplomatic privileges.
1960s
In the 1960s, some attitudes towards the depiction of sexuality began to change. European movies like I Am Curious (Yellow)I Am Curious (Yellow)
I Am Curious is a 1967 Swedish drama film written and directed by Vilgot Sjöman and starring Sjöman and Lena Nyman. It is a companion film to 1968's I Am Curious ; the two were initially intended to be one 3½ hour film...
(1967) and Language of Love (1969) were sexually explicit, but were framed as quasi-documentaries, which made their legal status uncertain.
In 1969, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
became the first country to legalize hardcore pornography, followed by toleration in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
also in 1969. This led to an explosion of commercially produced pornography. Now that being a pornographer was a legitimate occupation, there was no shortage of businessmen to invest in proper plant and equipment capable of turning out a mass-produced, cheap, but quality product. Vast amounts of this new pornography, both magazines and films, were smuggled into other parts of Europe, where it was sold "under the counter" or (sometimes) shown in "members only" cinema clubs.
1970s
In the 1970s, more permissive legislation permitted the rise of adult theaterAdult theater
An adult movie theater is a movie theater where pornographic films are shown to an adult audience. There are usually continuous showings. The movie posters in front of the theaters normally feature no nudity.- Films and patrons :...
s in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and many other countries. There was also a proliferation of coin-operated "movie booths" in sex shop
Sex shop
A sex shop, erotic shop is a shop that sells products related to adult sexual or erotic entertainment, such as sex toys, lingerie, clothing, pornography, and other related products...
s that displayed pornographic "loops" (so called because they projected a movie from film arranged in a continuous loop).
Denmark started producing comparatively big-budget theatrical feature film sex comedies such as Bordellet
Bordellet
Bordellet is a Danish theatrical sex comedy film made by pornographic pioneer Ole Ege and notable for being Denmark's first full-length hardcore pornographic feature film....
(1972), the Bedside-films
Bedside-films
The Bedside-films is a series of eight feature films directed by John Hilbard in 1970-1976, and form part of the wave of erotic films from Denmark.The eight films are connected by the Danish word "sengekant" in the title of each film...
(1970–1976) and the Zodiac-films
Zodiac-films
The Zodiac-films is a series of six feature films from 1973-1978, and form part of the wave of erotic films from Denmark.The Six films are connected by a zodiac-starsign in the title of each film. They were produced by the film company Happy Film. The first film was directed by Finn Karlsson, the...
(1973–1978), starring mainstream actors (a few of whom even performed their own sex scenes) and usually not thought of as "porno films" though all except the early Bedside-films included hardcore pornographic scenes. Several of these films still rank among the most seen films in Danish film history and all remain favourites on home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
.
The first explicitly pornographic film with a plot that received a general theatrical release in the U.S. is generally considered to be Mona the Virgin Nymph
Mona the Virgin Nymph
Mona the Virgin Nymph was the first pornographic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States , following the previous decade's nudist-themed films...
(also known as Mona), a 59-minute 1970 feature by Bill Osco and Howard Ziehm, who went on to create the relatively high-budget hardcore/softcore (depending on the release) cult film Flesh Gordon
Flesh Gordon
Flesh Gordon is a 1974 American science fiction adventure comedy film. It is an erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serial films from the 1930s. The screenplay was written by Michael Benveniste, who also co-directed the film with Howard Ziehm...
.
The 1971 film Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand is a landmark American gay pornographic film. The 1971 film was directed by Wakefield Poole and stars Casey Donovan. Boys in the Sand was the first gay porn film to achieve crossover success and one of the earliest porn films of any genre to gain mainstream credibility, preceding...
represented a number of pornographic firsts. As the first generally available gay pornographic film, the film was the first to include on-screen credits for its cast and crew (albeit largely under pseudonyms), to parody the title of a mainstream film (in this case, The Boys in the Band
The Boys in the Band
The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley is based on his Off Broadway play of the same title, Crowley penned a sequel to the play years later entitled The Men From The Boys...
), and to be reviewed by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. Other notable American hardcore feature films of the 1970s include Deep Throat
Deep Throat (film)
Deep Throat is a 1972 American pornographic film written and directed by Gerard Damiano and produced by Louis Peraino and starring Linda Lovelace ....
(1972), Behind the Green Door
Behind the Green Door
Behind the Green Door is a 1972 feature-length pornographic film, widely considered one of the genre's "classic" pictures. It was the first hardcore film widely released in the United States. It was the first feature-length film directed by the Mitchell brothers and starred Marilyn Chambers...
(1972), The Devil in Miss Jones
The Devil in Miss Jones
The Devil in Miss Jones is a pornographic film, written, directed and produced by Gerard Damiano and starring Georgina Spelvin. It is widely regarded as a classic adult film, released during the Golden Age of Porn. Damiano made the film after his 1972 success with Deep Throat...
(1973), Radley Metzger
Radley Metzger
Radley Metzger is an American filmmaker and distributor. He is also credited under the pseudonym Henry Paris, a name he adopted in the 1970s when he began to direct hardcore pornography....
's The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Opening of Misty Beethoven is an American hardcore pornography film released in 1976. Produced with a relatively high budget and filmed on elaborate locations in Paris , New York City , and Rome , with a musical score, it owes much to its fastidious director Radley Metzger .-Premise:In a...
(1975) and Debbie Does Dallas
Debbie Does Dallas
Debbie Does Dallas is a 1978 pornographic film starring Bambi Woods. The plot of the film focuses on a team of cheerleaders attempting to earn enough money to send the title character to Dallas, Texas, to try out for the famous “Texas Cowgirls” cheerleading squad. The fictional name "Texas...
(1978). These were shot on film and distributed in movie theaters. Many predicted that frank depictions of sex onscreen would soon become commonplace, but culture soon shifted to the more conservative side and that fantasy never came true. William Rotsler
William Rotsler
William "Bill" Rotsler was an American cartoonist and graphic artist; author of several science fiction novels and short stories, and television and film novelizations, and non-fiction works on a variety of topics, ranging from Star Trek to pornography; a prominent member of science fiction...
expressed this in 1973, "Erotic films are here to stay. Eventually they will simply merge into the mainstream of motion pictures and disappear as a labeled sub-division. Nothing can stop this." In Britain however, Deep Throat was not approved in its uncut form until 2000 and not shown publicly until June 2005.
One important court case in the U.S. was Miller v. California
Miller v. California
Miller v. California, was an important United States Supreme Court case involving what constitutes unprotected obscenity for First Amendment purposes...
(1973). The case established that obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
was not legally protected, but the case also established the Miller test
Miller test
The Miller test , is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.-History and details:The Miller test was developed in the...
, a three-pronged test to determine obscenity (which is not legal) as opposed to indecency (which may or may not be legal).
1980s: New technology, new legal cases
With the arrival of the home video cassette recorder in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the pornographic movie industry experienced massive growth and spawned adult stars like SekaSeka
Seka is an American pornographic actress who appeared in many pornographic films during the late 1970s and the 1980s.-Career:...
, Ron Jeremy
Ron Jeremy
Ronald Jeremy Hyatt , usually called Ron Jeremy, is an American pornographic actor. Nicknamed "The Hedgehog", he was ranked by AVN at number one in their "The 50 Top Porn Stars of All Time" list...
, Christy Canyon
Christy Canyon
- External links :...
, Ginger Lynn
Ginger Lynn
Ginger Lynn is an American pornographic actress, prominent in 1980s videos. She also had occasional roles in low-budget B-movies. AVN has ranked her at #7 in a list of the 50 greatest porn stars of all time...
, John Holmes
John Holmes (actor)
John Curtis Holmes better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd , was one of the most prolific male porn stars of all time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and pornographic feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s...
, and Traci Lords
Traci Lords
Traci Lords , also known as Traci Elizabeth Lords and Tracy Lords, is an American film actress, producer, film director, writer and singer...
and directors, such as Gregory Dark
Gregory Dark
Gregory Dark is an American film director, film producer, music video director, and screenwriter. Dark is one of the few adult film-makers to successfully transition into mainstream Hollywood film-making...
. By 1982, most pornographic films were being shot on the cheaper and more convenient medium of videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
. Many film directors resisted this shift at first because of the different image quality that video tape produced, however those who did change soon were collecting most of the industry's profits since consumers overwhelmingly preferred the new format. The technology change happened quickly and completely when directors realised that continuing to shoot on film was no longer a profitable option. This change moved the films out of the theaters and into people's private homes. This was the end of the age of big budget productions and the mainstreaming of pornography. It soon went back to its earthy roots and expanded to cover every fetish possible since filming was now so inexpensive. Instead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands now were, 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 satisfy specific fantasies and fetishes.
Similarly, the camcorder
Camcorder
A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage...
spurred changes in pornography in the 1980s, when people could make their own amateur sex movies, whether for private use, or for wider distribution.
It has been suggested that, among other things, Sony Betamax
Betamax
Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
lost the Videotape format war
Videotape format war
The videotape format war was a period of intense competition or "format war" of incompatible models of consumer-level analog video videocassette and video cassette recorders in the late 1970s and the 1980s.- Overview :...
to VHS (in becoming the general home video recording/viewing system) because the adult film industry chose VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
instead of the Sony system.
The year 1987 saw an important legal case in the U.S. when the de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
result of California v. Freeman
California v. Freeman
California v. Freeman was the criminal prosecution of Harold Freeman, a producer and director of pornographic films, by the U.S. state of California. Freeman was arrested in 1987 for hiring adult actors, which the prosecution interpreted as pimping, as part of an attempt by California to shut down...
was the legalization of hardcore pornography
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...
. Ironically, the prosecution of Harold Freeman was initially planned as the first in a series of legal cases that would have effectively outlawed the production of such movies.
1990s: The Internet age
Two technologies became prominent in the 1990s that changed pornographic movies: the DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
offered better quality picture and sound, and was embraced by pornographers just as enthusiastically as it was embraced by major Hollywood studios and by private consumers. DVD allowed innovations such as "interactive" videos that let the user choose such variables as multiple camera angles, multiple endings and computer-only DVD content.
However, the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
arguably changed the distribution of pornography more than any earlier technology: rather than ordering movies from an adult bookstore, or through mail-order, people could watch pornographic movies on their computers. Rather than waiting weeks for an order to arrive from another U.S. state, one could download a pornographic movie within minutes (or, later, within a few seconds).
Internet pornography is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, primarily via paysite
Paysite
A paysite, in pornography jargon, is a website that charges money to become a member and view its content, and often produces original adult content. They can be contrasted with "free-sites", which do not charge a membership fee. Most paysites offer "free tours" which allow non-members to view a...
s, video hosting service
Video hosting service
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...
s, and peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
file sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
. While pornography had been traded electronically since the 1980s, it was in the invention of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
in 1991 as well as the opening of the Internet to the general public around the same time that led to an explosion in online pornography. Like videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
s and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s, the Internet has proved popular for distributing pornography because it allows people to view pornography (essentially) anonymously in the comfort and privacy of their homes. It also allows access to pornography by people whose access is otherwise restricted for legal or social reasons.
Viv Thomas
Viv Thomas
Vivian "Viv" Thomas is a South African-born British producer of pornographic movies. He has produced hundreds of features over the course of his 15+ year career. He specializes in producing lesbian pornography as well as foot fetish videos...
, Paul Thomas, Andrew Blake, Antonio Adamo
Antonio Adamo
Antonio Adamo is an Italian pornographic film director. He won the 2003 AVN Award for "Best Director, Foreign Release" for the film Gladiator I.-External links:...
, and Rocco Siffredi
Rocco Siffredi
Rocco Siffredi is the stage name of an Italian pornographic actor, director and producer of pornographic movies, famous for his rough sex scenes...
were prominent directors of the '90s.
In 1998, the Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Oscar-nominated film production company Zentropa
Zentropa
Europa is a film directed by Lars von Trier. Released in 1991, it is von Trier's third theatrical feature film and is the final film in the Europa trilogy....
became the world's first mainstream film company to openly produce 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...
pornographic films, starting with Constance
Constance (1998 film)
Constance is an erotic film for women, directed by Knud Vesterskov and produced by Puzzy Power, a division of Lars von Trier's film company Zentropa...
(1998).
That same year, Zentropa also produced Idioterne (1998), directed by Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
, which won many international awards and was nominated for a Golden Palm in Cannes. The film includes a shower sequence with a male erection and an orgy scene with close-up penetration footage (the camera viewpoint is from the ankles of the participants, and the close-ups leave no doubt as to what is taking place). Idioterne started a wave of international mainstream arthouse films featuring explicit sexual images, such as Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat is a French filmmaker, novelist and Professor of Auteur Cinema at the European Graduate School.-Life and career:Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort...
's Romance
Romance (1999 film)
Romance is a 1999 French movie written and directed by Catherine Breillat. It stars Caroline Ducey, pornographic actor Rocco Siffredi, Sagamore Stévenin and François Berléand. The film features explicit copulation scenes, especially one showing Caroline Ducey's coitus with Rocco Siffredi...
, which starred pornstar Rocco Siffredi
Rocco Siffredi
Rocco Siffredi is the stage name of an Italian pornographic actor, director and producer of pornographic movies, famous for his rough sex scenes...
.
In 1999, the Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
TV-channel Kanal København started broadcasting hardcore films at night, uncoded and freely available to any TV-viewer in the Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
area (as of 2009, this is still the case, courtesy of Innocent Pictures
Innocent Pictures
Innocent Pictures ApS is a Danish independent film company founded in 2001, originally as a subsidiary of Lars von Trier's film company Zentropa.Innocent pictures best known production is the erotic feature film All About Anna , starring Gry Bay....
, a company started by Zentropa
Zentropa
Europa is a film directed by Lars von Trier. Released in 1991, it is von Trier's third theatrical feature film and is the final film in the Europa trilogy....
).
The adult industry
The global pornographic film industry is dominated by the United States, with the San Fernando ValleySan Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
area of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
being the heart of the industry. This being the case, most figures on the size of the industry refer solely to the U.S.
In 1975 the total retail value of all the hardcore pornography
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...
in the U.S. was estimated at $5–10 million. The 1979 Revision of the Federal Criminal Code stated that "in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
alone, the porno business does $100 million a year in gross retain volume." According to the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, American adult entertainment industry has grown considerably over the past thirty years by continually changing and expanding to appeal to new markets, though the production is considered to be low-profile and clandestine.
The total current income of the country's adult entertainment is often rated at $10–13 billion, of which $4–6 billion are legal. The figure is often credited to a study by Forrester Research
Forrester Research
Forrester Research is an independent technology and market research company that provides its clients with advice about technology's impact on business and consumers. Forrester Research has five research centers in the US: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California;...
and was lowered in 1998. In 2007 The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
newspaper also gave a figure of $13 billion. Other sources, quoted by Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
(Adams Media Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, and IVD), even taking into consideration all possible means (video networks and pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite, web sites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys, and magazines) mention the $2.6–3.9 billion figure (without the cellphone component). USA Today claimed in 2003 that websites such as Danni's Hard Drive and Cybererotica.com generated $2 billion in revenue in that year, which was allegedly about 10% of the overall domestic porn market at the time. The adult movies income (from sale and rent) was once estimated by AVN Publications
AVN (magazine)
Adult Video News is an American trade journal that covers the adult video industry. The New York Times notes that AVN is to pornographic films what Billboard is to records...
at $4.3 billion but the figure obtaining is unclear. According to the 2001 Forbes data the annual income distribution is:
| Adult Video | $500 million to $1.8 billion |
| Internet | $1 billion |
| Magazines | $1 billion |
| Pay-per-view | $128 million |
| Mobile | $30 million |
The Online Journalism Review, published by the Annenberg School of Communication
USC Annenberg School for Communication
The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism comprises a School ofCommunication and a School of Journalism at the University of Southern California . It is led by Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, Ph.D....
at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, weighed in with an analysis that favored Forbes number. The financial extent of adult films, distributed in hotels, is hard to estimate—hotels keep statistics to themselves or do not keep them at all. A CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
investigation in November 2003 claimed that 50% of guests at the Hilton
Hilton Hotels
Hilton Hotels & Resorts is an international chain of full-service hotels and resorts founded by Conrad Hilton and now owned by Hilton Worldwide. Hilton hotels are either owned by, managed by, or franchised to independent operators by Hilton Worldwide. Hilton Hotels became the first coast-to-coast...
, Marriott
Marriott International
Marriott International, Inc. is a worldwide operator and franchisor of a broad portfolio of hotels and related lodging facilities. Founded by J. Willard Marriott, the company is now led by son J.W. Marriott, Jr...
, Hyatt
Hyatt
Hyatt Hotels Corporation , is an international operator of hotels.Hyatt Center is the headquarters for Hyatt corporation...
, Sheraton
Sheraton Hotels and Resorts
Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's largest and second oldest brand . Starwood's headquarters are in White Plains, New York.-Sheraton history:...
, and Holiday Inn
Holiday Inn
Holiday Inn is a brand of hotels, formally a economy motel chain, forming part of the British InterContinental Hotels Group . It is one of the world's largest hotel chains with 238,440 bedrooms and 1,301 hotels globally. There are currently 5 hotels in the pipeline...
hotel chains purchased adult movies, contributing to 70% of in-room profits. The income of cellphone porn
Mobile porn
Mobile porn also known as mobile adult content, mobile erotica or cellphone adult content, is pornography distributed over mobile telecommunications networks for consumption on mobile devices; mainly mobile phones and smartphones....
is low, when compared with other countries. The absence of V-chip
V-chip
V-chip is a generic term for technology used in television set receivers in the USA, Canada, and Brazil which allows the blocking of programs based on their ratings category. It is intended for use by parents to manage their children's television viewing...
-style parental controls however has encouraged American consumers to use cellphones to access explicit content.
The world's largest adult movie studio Vivid Entertainment
Vivid Entertainment
Vivid Entertainment Group is an adult video producer, featuring a catalog of VHS and DVD titles and internet content. In 2006 it was described by Reuters as one of the handful of studios that dominate the U.S. porn industry....
generates an estimated $100 million a year in revenue, distributing 60 films annually and selling them in video stores, hotel rooms, on cable systems, and on the internet. Spanish-based studio Private Media Group
Private Media Group
Private Media Group, Inc. is a production and distribution company that distributes adult entertainment via print publications, DVDs, the internet, and mobile....
is listed on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
. Video rentals soared from just under 80 million in 1985 to a half-billion by 1993. Some subsidiaries
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
of major corporations are the largest pornography sellers, like News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
's DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...
. Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, the nation's largest cable company, once pulled in $50 million from adult programming. Revenues of companies such as Playboy and Hustler were small by comparison.
Pornographic actors
Arguably the first pornstar to become a household name was Linda LovelaceLinda Lovelace
Linda Susan Boreman , better known by her stage name Linda Lovelace, was an American pornographic actress who was famous for her performance of deep throat fellatio in the enormously successful 1972 hardcore porn film Deep Throat...
from the United States, who starred in the 1972 feature Deep Throat
Deep Throat (film)
Deep Throat is a 1972 American pornographic film written and directed by Gerard Damiano and produced by Louis Peraino and starring Linda Lovelace ....
. Casey Donovan
Casey Donovan (porn star)
Casey Donovan was an American male pornographic actor of the 1970s and 1980s, appearing primarily in adult films and videos catering to gay male audiences....
, star of the first mainstream pornographic hit Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand is a landmark American gay pornographic film. The 1971 film was directed by Wakefield Poole and stars Casey Donovan. Boys in the Sand was the first gay porn film to achieve crossover success and one of the earliest porn films of any genre to gain mainstream credibility, preceding...
in 1971, achieved name recognition nearly a year before Deep Throat debuted. The success of Deep Throat, which grossed millions of dollars worldwide, spawned a slew of other films and pornographic film stars such as Marilyn Chambers
Marilyn Chambers
Marilyn Chambers was an American pornographic actress, exotic dancer, model, actress and vice-presidential candidate...
(Behind the Green Door
Behind the Green Door
Behind the Green Door is a 1972 feature-length pornographic film, widely considered one of the genre's "classic" pictures. It was the first hardcore film widely released in the United States. It was the first feature-length film directed by the Mitchell brothers and starred Marilyn Chambers...
), Gloria Leonard
Gloria Leonard
Gloria Leonard is an American former pornographic actress who later became the publisher of High Society magazine.-Early life and career:...
(The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Opening of Misty Beethoven is an American hardcore pornography film released in 1976. Produced with a relatively high budget and filmed on elaborate locations in Paris , New York City , and Rome , with a musical score, it owes much to its fastidious director Radley Metzger .-Premise:In a...
), Georgina Spelvin
Georgina Spelvin
Georgina Spelvin is the stage name of Michelle Graham, a former American pornographic actress who is best known for her appearance in the classic film The Devil in Miss Jones.-Early life:...
(The Devil in Miss Jones
The Devil in Miss Jones
The Devil in Miss Jones is a pornographic film, written, directed and produced by Gerard Damiano and starring Georgina Spelvin. It is widely regarded as a classic adult film, released during the Golden Age of Porn. Damiano made the film after his 1972 success with Deep Throat...
), and Bambi Woods
Bambi Woods
Bambi Woods is a former pornographic actress best known for her appearance as the title character in the 1978 film Debbie Does Dallas. She was advertised on theater marquees and in advertising as a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, although this was not actually the case.Woods appeared in only a...
(Debbie Does Dallas
Debbie Does Dallas
Debbie Does Dallas is a 1978 pornographic film starring Bambi Woods. The plot of the film focuses on a team of cheerleaders attempting to earn enough money to send the title character to Dallas, Texas, to try out for the famous “Texas Cowgirls” cheerleading squad. The fictional name "Texas...
). Other well-known performers from the '70s and early '80s included Seka
Seka
Seka is an American pornographic actress who appeared in many pornographic films during the late 1970s and the 1980s.-Career:...
, John Holmes
John Holmes (actor)
John Curtis Holmes better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd , was one of the most prolific male porn stars of all time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and pornographic feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s...
, Ginger Lynn Allen, Veronica Hart
Veronica Hart
Jane Esther Hamilton is an American former pornographic actress and current porn director who performed under the name Veronica Hart during the 1980s. She is sometimes credited as Jane Esther Hamilton, Jane Hamilton, V. Hart, Veronica Heart, Victoria Holt, Kathryn Stanleigh, Randee Styles or just...
, Nina Hartley
Nina Hartley
Nina Hartley is an American pornographic actress, pornographic film director, sex educator, feminist, and author.-Early life:...
and Amber Lynn
Amber Lynn
Amber Lynn is an American pornographic film actress, Model and exotic dancer.- Early life :...
.
Attempts were made in the 1970s to outlaw pornography in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by prosecuting porn stars for prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
. The courts in California were where the case was initially made, and stopped short of advancing the case to the United States Supreme Court for a final decision. It was this decision and acceptance to let stand whereby the California Court made a legal distinction in the case of People v. Freeman between someone who took part in a sexual relationship for money (prostitution) versus someone who takes on the act of merely portraying role where a sexual relationship was engaged in on-screen act as part of their acting performance. It is this specific legal distinction between pornography and prostitution in California law that has allowed California to become the porn center of the United States.
The primary focus of heterosexual sex films are the women in them, who are mostly selected for their on-screen appearance. Most male performers in heterosexual pornography are generally selected less for their looks than for their sexual prowess, namely their ability to do three things: achieve an erection
Erection
Penile erection is a physiological phenomenon where the penis becomes enlarged and firm. Penile erection is the result of a complex interaction of psychological, neural, vascular and endocrine factors, and is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal...
while on a busy film set, maintain that erection while performing on camera, and then ejaculate
Ejaculation
Ejaculation is the ejecting of semen from the male reproductory tract, and is usually accompanied by orgasm. It is usually the final stage and natural objective of male sexual stimulation, and an essential component of natural conception. In rare cases ejaculation occurs because of prostatic disease...
on cue.
Most male performers in straight porn are paid less than their female counterparts. Ron Jeremy
Ron Jeremy
Ronald Jeremy Hyatt , usually called Ron Jeremy, is an American pornographic actor. Nicknamed "The Hedgehog", he was ranked by AVN at number one in their "The 50 Top Porn Stars of All Time" list...
has commented on the pay gap between women and men in the sex film industry: "The average guy gets $300 to $400 a scene, or $100 to $200 if he's new. A woman makes $100,000 to $250,000 at the end of the year. " and "Girls can easily make 100K-250K per year, plus stuff on the side like strip shows and appearances. The average guy makes $40,000 a year."
Sub-genres
Current pornographic movies can be divided into a number of sub-genres by the sex of the performers, the types of sex act portrayed, and the intended audience.AIDS and condom use
In the 1980s, an outbreak of HIV led to a number of deaths of erotic actors and actresses, including John HolmesJohn Holmes (actor)
John Curtis Holmes better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd , was one of the most prolific male porn stars of all time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and pornographic feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s...
, Wade Nichols
Wade Nichols
Wade Nichols, aka Dennis Parker, was an American actor and singer who started his acting career in pornographic movies.His first feature film role was probably in the 1975 gay adult film Boynapped!...
, Marc Stevens and Al Parker
Al Parker
Al Parker was a gay American pornographic actor , producer, and director. He died from complications of AIDS at the age of 40....
. This led to the creation of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation
Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation
The Adult Industry Medical Associates P.C. , also known simply as AIM or AIM Medical, was an organization that tested erotic actors for HIV and other STDs on a scheduled basis....
, which helped set up a system in the U.S. adult film industry where erotic actors are tested for HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
, Chlamydia and Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea is a common sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The usual symptoms in men are burning with urination and penile discharge. Women, on the other hand, are asymptomatic half the time or have vaginal discharge and pelvic pain...
every 30 days-and Hepatitis
Hepatitis
Hepatitis is a medical condition defined by the inflammation of the liver and characterized by the presence of inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ. The name is from the Greek hepar , the root being hepat- , meaning liver, and suffix -itis, meaning "inflammation"...
, Syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
, HSV
HSV
HSV may refer to:* Herpes simplex virus* HSV color space * HSV television station, the Melbourne station of Australia's Seven television network...
annually. Since the introduction of the AIM testing protocol, adult film actors have a lower rate of STI's than the general population.
Legal status
In many countries pornography is legal to distribute and to produce however there are some restrictions. Pornography is also banned in some countries, in particular in the Muslim worldMuslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, but can be accessed through the internet in some of these nations.
See also
- Adult theaterAdult theaterAn adult movie theater is a movie theater where pornographic films are shown to an adult audience. There are usually continuous showings. The movie posters in front of the theaters normally feature no nudity.- Films and patrons :...
- Amateur pornographyAmateur pornographyAmateur pornography is a category of pornography that features models or actors performing without pay, or for whom this material is their first or only paid modeling work. Reality pornography is professionally made porn which seeks to emulate the style of amateur pornography...
- Cum shotCum shotA cum shot, cumshot, come shot, pop shot, or money shot are slang terms used to describe a person ejaculating , usually onto a person or object. It is typically used by the cinematographer within the narrative framework of a pornographic film, and since the 1970s has become a leitmotif of the...
- List of pornographic movie studios
- Porn groovePorn groovePorn groove is a term used to describe the music soundtrack to pornographic films, or a genre of music that imitates such music. The electric guitar with wah-wah pedal is the most common instrument associated with porn groove, and synonymous with the genre...
- Pornography by regionPornography by regionThe production and distribution of pornographic movies are economic activities of some importance. The exact size of the economy of pornography and the influence that it plays in political circles are matters of controversy...
- X-ratedX-ratedIn some countries, X is or has been a motion picture rating reserved for the most explicit films. Films rated X are intended only for viewing by adults, usually legally defined as people over the age of 17.-United Kingdom:...