Louis Theroux and the Porn Industry
As you can imagine we’ve seen some peculiar things in our time in the adult industry. But the novelty of the obscure is less interesting and life changing than the people we meet.
Last night we were watching Louis Theroux revisiting some of his 25+ years of documentaries, including those made about the porn industry. While we concur about some of his conclusions, even a journalist as talented and insightful as Louis can only scratch the surface of the workings of the porn industry. Being made for television also colours the way in which a subject is portrayed so the style of presentation alters the viewer’s perception of it too.
The conclusion that porn production is a mechanical and business-like process is true. It’s a business whose purpose is to make money just like any other so just like the production of a TV show or film there’s a level of professionalism that needs to be maintained. Not many movies would get finished if the sets were a bacchanalian orgy.
In terms of accuracy, at the time of filming in the late 90s the clips of the original program were pretty good. They showed a US porn business, duplicating video cassettes of scenes created on Californian sets and locations. Male actors struggling to keep erections in front of large crews, and most interestingly a wide range of ages on set.
As a consumer of porn you see those in front of the camera, who are mostly young performers. Certainly the female participants in the heaving, groaning, sweaty, sticky fiesta that is a porn scene tend to be younger women. The men range from the young studs to old faithfuls known for their ability to deliver a pop shot on cue.
We might look up the full show, see if it’s on iPlayer because there was an hour of program on a porn busines that existed before we got involved.
When we were covering porn sets the distribution was DVD, not VHS. Downloads were a thing but limited in scale because of the technology available at the time. Crews sizes had already reduced on the sets we inhabited, from a dozen people to just a handful as budgets were squeezed. Now with high quality video cameras the appetite for a new female performer every day to satisfy the voracious appetite of the online audience can easily be fulfilled. Porn production has moved from west to east, from California to Eastern Europe.
Pornography is still produced in every county of the world, whether that fact is acknowledged or not, whether it’s legal or not.
Porn made by a cameraman and sound guy then edited in an apartment for upload that same day seems to prevail on the now all-powerful “Tube Sites”. Who is making money from this vast amount of content and how they make that money is a source of constant wonder. There’s enough free pornographic video content available to satisfy the most prurient mind, isn’t there? So why pay to subscribe to a channel?
The performers often have pay per view movies, sometimes made for specific fans, for very specific needs. So that business model makes sense, so long as you have enough clients willing to pay the price for a personal service.
However it’s funded, download is the prevalent delivery method. No more stretchy, fuzzy video tapes that were often copies of copies of copies that would be passed around between friends. DVDs came, had a flowering and for many are now a thing of the past, though you’ll still find them stocked in some adult outlets.
Porn has adapted and embraced new technologies, even now VR content is being developed placing the consumer right at the heart of action – especially if they have the new generation of sex toys that are synced to the immersive VR world.
Always different with new faces and techniques but always the same pornography is the early adopter of technologies from photography to moving pictures to film and now online.