Many moons ago, towards the end of the last millennium, I spent a few days in Budapest reporting from the set of a big-budget hardcore porn movie called
Devil in the Flesh (photographic evidence above! – Ed). Every day, for hours on end, I watched silicone-breasted young beauties and big-dicked European studs copulate in just about every way imaginable. Fucking, sucking, double penetrations, anal, blowjobs, cunnilingus, analingus, threesomes, foursomes… you get the picture (you may even have seen the movie). What I remember most about the experience was the sheer boredom of it all.
Having sex yourself can be a thrillingly sensual and exhilarating experience.
Watching other people doing it rapidly loses its allure. It took up to six hours to shoot a 15-minute scene – at least it did back then before Viagra and digital cameras changed the game – and there could be lots of delays. I remember we all had to wait around in resigned embarrassment until the enthusiastically fucked vagina of one of the girls stopped farting air.
The boredom of shooting sex was one of the few surprising aspects of the adult entertainment industry captured in the first instalment of RTÉ’s two-part documentary We Need To Talk About Porn, which aired last night. Towards the end of the programme, we saw the film crew on a live online porn set in a studio in Los Angeles’ notorious San Fernando Valley (aka ‘Silicone Valley’). Far from being titillated by the bareback MFF threesome they were witnessing, they were openly yawning. What’s for fucking lunch?
Truth be told, the show probably didn’t otherwise reveal all that much that most people over the age of 16 don’t already know. “Over the past few decades Ireland’s relationship with sex has changed dramatically,” went the introductory voiceover. “So too has our consumption of pornography.”
The reason? It’s the internet, stupid.
This is hardly news. One third of the material currently available on the world wide web is pornographic in nature. That’s a lot of naked flesh and bodily fluids. By now, porn is almost as mainstream as football. Just look at the phenomenal success of Fifty Shades Of Grey.
In a survey conducted especially by RTÉ, it was found that a majority of Irish adults – hilariously, the figure was 69% - have watched porn (most of the remaining 31% are probably lying). Journalists, psychologists, addiction counsellors and anti-porn campaigners all threw in their tuppence worth as to what this meant. As did the disgruntled former partner of an online sex addict.
Nobody really knew. Quite a few voiced their grave concerns, but really it was like watching people complain about the weather. You mightn’t like it, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Really the only people seriously debating it were the older generations. The Irish teenagers interviewed, both male and female, were all blasé about porn. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve grown up with it.
Some see porn as degrading, exploitative and immoral, while others simply see it as a business. Either way, it’s here, it’s happening, and it’s just one click away.
If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, sex itself is its oldest obsession.
Even the cavemen drew pricks and cunts on their walls. Needless to say, times have changed and there are now varying degrees of acceptability.
Roman Polanski once said that erotica uses a feather while pornography uses the whole chicken. Ireland has come a long way from passing around sticky-thumbed copies of The Thorn Birds and The Betsy (two ‘saucy’ novels that the pre-internet oldies interviewed reminisced about).
Not just Ireland. In a futile attempt to curtail the spread of porn, the UK government recently banned a number of sexual practises – including spanking, facesitting and watersports – from being filmed on its shores. Given that these activities can legally be filmed almost everywhere else, here included, and then streamed in online, it will make zero difference to anything.
If you want spanking in Surrey, facesitting in Falmouth, or watersports in Wigan, it’s still all easily available.
The documentary raised concerns about violent and abusive gonzo-style porn.
However, the actresses they interviewed all appeared like empowered and intelligent young women. None of them seemed to have been coerced into the industry (though a few started very young). One girl complained about getting too much cum in her eyes during her first gangbang scene. And then being forced to drink a glass of the stuff. She was 20. However, she didn’t quit the business.
Bottom line: if you don’t want to be spanked, double penetrated and forced to fellate until you vomit on camera then go get a job somewhere else. Starbucks might be hiring – though they probably don’t pay porn star bucks.
That’s not to be glib about it. I’m quite sure that there’s abuse within the porn industry – there’s abuse within just about every industry in existence – but, if
there are any serious victims, RTÉ didn’t locate any. At least not in this first episode.
While the documentary gave voice to various worried feminists and anti-porn campaigners, it’s to its credit that it didn’t seem particularly alarmist. If there’s any cause for serious concern, it’s that children are being exposed to hardcore pornography at an unhealthily young age. However, short of banning the internet, there’s little that can be done about this outside of increased parental vigilance and more practical sex education in schools. As one commentator put it, “The genie is out of the bottle.”
Of course, much like the music industry, porn isn’t the big bucks business it once was. Decimated by the internet in recent years, there’s now such a glut of free material available online that it’s no longer anywhere near as lucrative to make (Devil in the Flesh, produced by Spanish company Private, had a budget of over a million pounds). Where is the free material coming from? Well, much of it is coming from people filming their own sexual activities and then uploading clips online for all to enjoy. Make of that what you will.
We Need To Talk About Porn also featured a facepalm interview with an Irish male porn star based in Los Angeles. A cocksure young braggart from Dublin, wearing a Hustler baseball cap, Bradly turned to making adult movies when his music career didn’t work out. When the film crew arrived at his L.A. home, he greeted them with an obnoxious, “Come on in, you broke motherfuckers!”
That lad might just come to a sticky end.
• Olaf Tyaransen’s Sex Lines is available from Hot Press Books. To purchase, click here