Why 1995 as the vintage cut-off date?

[dhream]

Hi All,
I did a search on the site with the algorithm 'why 1995?' and got nada.

I'm a Rex B*rsky AKA 'R*sebud Video' AKA Alex DeRenzy, and some of his best work goes beyond 1995... you see my dilemma?

How was 1995 settled on as the 'end of vintage?' why not 1999? Or even 2000 the true end of the millenium.

I know there has to be a cut-off date somewhere, but why 1995?

Any thoughts, rulings, votes, musings, or flames on the issue?

[Zombywoof]

Originally Posted by dhream

Any thoughts, rulings, votes, musings, or flames on the issue?

Yes. It should be 1985, not 1995. Are you for real? Why are you on a vintage forum?

[dhream]

Originally Posted by Zombywoof

Yes. It should be 1985, not 1995. Are you for real? Why are you on a vintage forum?

Because I was born in 1961. And used porn since 1976.

Why should it be from 1985?

Why not 1984 or 1986?

At what point does todays stuff become tomorrows vintage?

What, for example is a 'vintage' Mercedes these days? One from 1936 1944 or 1961? See the difficulty...

Please state your reasoning, we're all keen to know. Actually we don't give a shit, but you seem to think you're important enough here to send me a one-line insult, so back at ya.

[DTravel]

'Cause that's what the random number generator spit out.

There has been some discussion of "Why 1995?" and that date has moved I believe. It has been said that it is a bit arbitrary of a date to use. Mostly I think it boils down to there has to be some cut-off, 1995 is a nice round number and its about there that the people who gave a bleep felt was right. *shrug*

[burpman]

Originally Posted by dhream

Because I was born in 1961. And used porn since 1976.

Why should it be from 1985?

Why not 1984 or 1986?

At what point does todays stuff become tomorrows vintage?

What, for example is a 'vintage' Mercedes these days? One from 1936 1944 or 1961? See the difficulty...

Please state your reasoning, we're all keen to know. Actually we don't give a shit, but you seem to think you're important enough here to send me a one-line insult, so back at ya.

Because the 80's and start of the 90's marked the end of the "golden age" era. Movies were quickly being churned out direct-to-video, production values dropped, silicone and tattoos became commonplace and the women seemed to adopt a uniform inflatable Barbie bimbo look (read: All bottle blonde with basketball boobs) There are more reasons than this but these are some distinguishing characteristics.

[dhream]

Thanks for the intelligent and reasonable replies so far, and without disrespecting the rank of the recent posters, I was wondering if there is someone here who is recognised as a site founder or porn maven/historian (I'm thinking of the calibre of Al Goldstein or Bill Margold or the late Peter Van Aarle) to please give us the 'story' of why 1995 was settled upon, or was it just a collective unconscious thing? Such as the 'Sixties' actually ending -in spirit anyway- around 1974.

Er, Peace, man!

[dhream]

3 years later, still no definitive answer, we suppose what we have will have to suffice and be thankful anyone replied at all.

[Darth Joules]

I think we'd be all hard pressed to find the definitive answer as to "why 1995?" unless you where here at the very beginining when a box of old erotica magazines and loop reels hidden under a hedge was struck by lighning and the VEF was born.

However one way to see it is 1995 was, more or less, about when porn went "digital" and embrassed the early Internet. Thus a new modern area of smut was born.

Around the mid 90s most still got their kicks the old fashioned way, buying mags and videos you physically held a hand on (and no telling where the other hand was ). The mid to late 90s, and the proliferation of the Net, saw a seismic change in how we got our fix of grot. The porn industry had proved the Internet was a viable commercial vehicle for selling ones products to their consumers. No longer did you have to suffer the embaressment of hidding your purchase in brown paper bag or worry that your wife/GF/mum/postie would open that mysterious package from Germany. I think the last time I bought a mag off a newstand was circa 1998. And by the time the millenium rolled around, as they say, the rest was history.

So think of it as milestone when things changed forever. For good or bad.

[chip]

1995 seems to be a pivotal year in many aspects for porn. Not only in terms of technology related to delivery and consumption as pointed out by Darth Joules but also in terms of content.

As a consumer, my days of watching porn started in the early 90s: Late 1992 to be exact. That meant I had the new releases to chose from as well as a back catalog that stretched pretty far back into the 80s. So naturally that is what I cut my teeth on when I rented videos and bought magazines.

From a perspective of content there wasn't much of a shift (save for one thing) in terms of material from the latter half of the 80s to the early 90s. Many of the performers were the same and barring the changes in fashion, hairstyles, and pop culture references, a film from 1993 could have just as easily been from 1988.

That one shift was the gonzo genre. Groundbreaking for its time: gonzo turned the industry on its head. All of a sudden filmmakers could go out without a script and shoot some hot footage from a first person perspective and have a hit on their hands. This was a much cheaper way to make films that having to rent sets and hire all the attendant personnel required for a production. Even if you were just shooting in the same valley tract house as always.

The other piece of the puzzle is that camera technology came within the budgets of pretty much anyone with a little extra cash to throw around. Soon everyone could afford to have any skeevy looking couple bang on camera and it didn't look like it was shot on 8mm through a peephole in some squalid roadside motel.

This caused an absolute glut of product the likes of which still haunt the adult industry to this day. I saw it first hand. Things went from a respectable amount new releases a month on the racks, to racks of new releases every month and most of it was all low quality crap save for the shining jewels that existed before the technology explosion and the new jewels that came from it.

It didn't take long for things to get out of hand. Gonzo, amateur and other non-plot driven titles save for those made by the pioneers of those respective genres had been dumbed down by talentless hacks into wall2wall releases of useless screwing. The loops of old had gone high tech and flooded the market to the point that even the legends had to resort to making the crap to stay afloat.

The context behind the action was gone. We were then left with an avalanche of dreck like 'chix who slurp cum parts 1 through 74' and 'ass-eatin' hos volumes 1-122' That's where it is today. Where it has been for years and it all got its fledgling start in the mid 90s.

....By the way have you noticed that I'm a tad wordy about all this....

The other shift that occurred in the mid 90s were the female performers. Save for some true legends like Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell etc, many just weren't that prolific. Most females did a minimal to moderate number of films many under 100 titles, compilations notwithstanding. Many more did less than 50. In post 1995 terms doing 50 movies meant you were still a total newbie relatively speaking compared to some of the starlets that racked up a few hundred credits in just a few years.

These performers also were doing things on camera that were more extreme than their predecessors and they looked more extreme. Piercings, tats, surgical enhancements all became more common than not post 1995 or so. So did anal, ATM, bukakke and on down the line.

The last shift was in the look and feel of the movies itself. I can spot a movie made in the the latter half of the 90s just by looking at the screens. I can't put my finger on what it is exactly but I know it when I see it.

So yeah 1995. Classic movies has been bumped to 1997. Sure there will be some bleed-over where a true vintage style piece will have been made during a transition period and I suppose you could always argue that point on a case by case basis till the cows come home. But on average the mid 90s is where a major shift happened for sure.

[Jenny48549]

There is actually a reason why 1995 was picked as the cutoff year for Classic movies. All movies made before @July of 1995 are not subject to the records keeping act 18 U.S.C. § 2257 which imposes record-keeping requirements on a broadly defined category of producers of sexually explicit material.