What ruins a porn scene for you?

[sto]

This isn't actually turn-off for me as I don't watch such porn, but I have been wondering what's the point of trend that has been going on few years now, one girl and there's five guys all over her when you almost cannot see her. Who wants to see a bunch of guys instead of the girl? P0rnbox seems to produce only this kind of porn, almost 100% anal oriented even.

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by sto

This isn't actually turn-off for me as I don't watch such porn, but I have been wondering what's the point of trend that has been going on few years now, one girl and there's five guys all over her when you almost cannot see her. Who wants to see a bunch of guys instead of the girl? P0rnbox seems to produce only this kind of porn, almost 100% anal oriented even.

IMHO, a gangbang is something that the majority of women would not be willing to get into. This is why it appeals to certain men. Visually, it's male domination stuff that shows submission and control, while maybe sending the wrong message to some men about how to treat women?

[bacchus1221]

Porn is a visual medium.

It doesn't have to be. That is the current state, but it's a fairly recent development.



I am old enough to remember when most of a porn shop's inventory was paperback books (the only picture was on the front cover). The remainder was mainly a smattering of picture magazines (mostly monochrome). Very few of the books could be classed as great literature, but a few of them were actually pretty good.


If you had a projector, there was a small supply of 8mm and 16mm films, but I think that business was more likely to be mail order -- and very few people had projectors. If you wanted to see a porn film, you went to a run-down older movie theatre in an inner ring neighborhood in a nearby big city (but in conservative Cincinnati, you'd go to Dayton, Ohio).


Paperbook book porn virtually disappeared when video stores started carrying VHS tapes. The independent video stores usually had a back room, in the same spirit as many of the newspaper and magazine stores that they largely supplanted.


As for the paperbacks, there were a few that were extremely well written. Pauline Réage's Story of O was readily available in mainstream bookstores, as was a collection of short stories by Anaïs Nin. (I think Nin wrote her collection between the two World Wars... I was still a baby when Réage's book appeared [mid 1950s].)


One of the nice trashier porn paperbacks from end of that period was a women in prison story -- very little plot, writing less literate than Nin or Réage -- but definitely sexy. I don't know whether I still have it -- that was several moves ago.


Later, when UseNet News feeds were popular (circa 1980-1990), a few of the feeds were devoted to literary porn (literary in the sense of writing, definitely not in the sense of fine literature). There was an occasional good story on alt.sex.stories. But, by that point, literary porn was mostly a nostalgia cult.

[BuschiMuschi]

I agree. I have read porn stories without images which were very erotic and a real turn on. I remember one in particular which still arouses me. Also, I liked the written part of the early CCC mags. Porn will be carried by whatever medium is available. However, there were pornographic images centuries ago, they were just not as easily available. What I was trying to say was, modern porn is visual first and foremost, and the cumshot is an important part of that.

[sto]

Originally Posted by BuschiMuschi

What I was trying to say was, modern porn is visual first and foremost, and the cumshot is an important part of that.

It's funny that in lesbian (and straight too) porn the "cumshot" or "squirting" has become quite common, but in reality very few women "squirt". In most cases its just piss (which I don't mind at all!). There's just no room for that amount of liquid in female anatomy except in bladder.

[imp44791]

I didn't want to pick on the "visual medium" discussion since I have nothing but respect for the poster and don't want to appear I'm getting into a one-upmanship contest. But since others have now posted and it's a discussion let me explain my own porn worldview:

Porn, or erotica rather, is above all a fantasy medium. Since it's not like real sex where all five senses come to the aid of the brain to give excitement, it has to depend on the brain to create exciting stories for itself. Hence the tired, but no less true, cliche of "the brain is the most sensitive erogenous zone of all". It's a joke sentence (it's even in the Big Lebowski), but it's true.

This is why erotic stories work. No visual stimulus there, just words. This is also why phone sex also works, for those people who find it works for them: no vision there either. Now, I'm pretty visual myself, so pictures, of the moving sort above all, are the best medium that excites my brain. But the images are only one of the ways that make the fantasy work (or ruin it if they are badly done). The "fantasy" bit is the most important thing of all. This is why in my sinful years my preferred paid sex channels was stippers/escorts (the type that sits with you at the table and gets tips via drinks) rather than prostitutes. Though of course I went with those too. The fantasy was stronger in the former case though, and it was more exciting.

Back to porn/erotica. What really "ruins it for me" (not just the scene, everything) if when something feels contrived and breaks the immersion. Note, that I'm not saying a setup or the action should be "realistic" - lots of hot movies are in a sci-fi or equally unrealistic setup: e.g. all the lez movies set in prisons where the inmates are all perfectly groomed, depilated and made-up models. But the setup has to be consistent and the action has to fool me that people are getting into it. This is why softcore doesn't really work: they go into so much trouble NOT to show the naughy bits/get into actual sexual contact, that the end result is cold and artificial. So, porn should provide the solution, right? It's actual sex after all, right? Right?

Well, wrong. Sadly. Most porn goes all the way to the other extreme. I'm not talking about the woman-hating attitude, or the disgusting acts, or whatever. These are other gripes for another day. I may not like them, but they can be -and occasionally are- consistent in the disgusting, woman-hating fantasy they project, for those who enjoy it. It's the contrived stuff that doesn't work.

Let me give an example: Rocco in his early 2000s movies was the epitome of aggressive, often disgusting male sexuality: spitting, putting heads down toilets, merciless anal penetration with women who clearly were uncomfortable. BUT, he at least projected an air of sexual frenzy, and one that occasionally -frequently even- got the girls to respond to that. The result is that -to my shame otherwise- I find some of these scenes very hot. For instance the threesome with Cassandra Wilde and Daniella Rush. It's fairly over the top, but when it comes to sexual frenzy you can almost smell it through the screen. Or the various scenes in "Never say no to Rocco".

Now compare this to Legal Porno. It's ridiculously crap. It's not the 7 men DAPing one woman that is the problem, it's the fact that it's what I call McDonalds Sex: processed, predictable and the only variation is to make eveyrhing bigger. 3 men, anal for most of the time? I see you, and raise you 7 men, 0% pussy and all DAP. And all that in that antiseptic white studio with all those stupid contortions to show the penetration of how many penises into one anus. How is this "hot", even for those who like anal (and I love anal scenes as a rule)?

Another example. Gangbangs. For a long time I dislike them, as they basically were circle jerks with the woman being physically at most able to service 2-3 men at any time. But then I saw some German movies which really put across this air of sexual frenzy and really a feel of a real orgy. No, not GGG, they are as contrived and silly as LP, although some of the very, very early stuff (early 2000s) worked in a way. The best that I can think is Magma's "Dominique's Fuck Academy" series, where 4-5 girls are really mobbed by a host of men. The acts are the same, but the setup and the shooting really succeed in building up this feeling of mounting frenzy. This is helped by the fact that the women come into the action gradually, with only a couple in the beginning and then the whole contingent. It also helps that it's hard to predict the sequence of acts: anal penetration can come at any moment, not just at the end after all the vaginal sex is done. And many men come inside. It really feels like a proper orgy out there, helped by the fact that there are no woman-hating displays - if anything it seems rather good natured. Of course, I know that there's organisation behind the session (for testing if anything else) and the editor has cut out a lot of the dead time, the toilet/water breaks, perhaps the tossing out of those guys who get out of line and become aggressive, and the jerking off of the men who are waiting etc. But it doesn't matter: cameraman and editor have managed to provide an end result that makes the fantasy work.

I wrote a lot about the more extreme end, but let's come to the more intimate one which is my preference after all. There the big immersion breakers are the contorted positions so that shaft is always shown, the changing of positions by predictable rota, and of course, and above all, the stopping of the action so that the stupid external come shot is shown. You have two people supposedly massively into each other, only they don't fuck in close body contact like real humans, but in desperate stretching away from each other so that the camera has a clear sight; and just at the point when everyone who's ever had sex in history is enjoying the getting lost in it all, the actual orgasm, they interrupt it, break what little body contact there was and jerk off like demented monkeys. It's stupid, and worse, it's unsexy, It's an idiotic relic of half a century ago, when hardcore porn was rare and consumers were ripped off by peeps that promised a lot and delivered cut films. It's the same thing with pre-legalisation Britain, with all the stupid Adult Channel and TVX soft-cut shows. Once the real thing became available people wanted proof.

But the real thing has been available for 50 years in the civilised world, and even 25 years in poor benighted hypocritical Britain. What do we need to prove any more?

Sorry, thesis length post again. I doubt anyone will read, but I had to vent. Let me go back at shouting at the kids on my lawn.

Imp.

[sto]

Thanks Imp, I think these "thesis-lenghth" posts of yours are very interesting read! so at least this one person reads those.

[LoveVintage15]

10 mins of the worst nondescript poppy musak playing while the model dances and slow strips around some apartment waiting for her male model(s) to magically appear. Yeah like I'm not going to fast forward..... sure.

Then to my dismay the awful musak continues for the whole scene which is drowning out the decent moan and groans so technically you are getting a music porno. I've even sometimes got earworm from these horrible tunes

[RibeiroLeite]

Originally Posted by rhaupenthal

Two things I hate:
Close up of the guys orgasm face when he pops his load

Roger Caine has to be the absolute worst at that. And I obviously don't put the blame on him per se, he wasn't directing the movies he appeared in (plus we all don't look at our best when we orgasm); but he takes the award for the worst orgasm face by a male actor. That a director would think it's not a bad idea to show this to a largely male audience makes no sense.