Showing posts with label porn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label porn. Show all posts

Wednesday, 7 September 2022

The thrills and spills of being hip...

Pam & Tommy (2022)
Disney + (8-episode miniseries)

The joyfulness of youth does not last forever. Its spills and its thrills fade with time. All the hormonally charged freshness of young adulthood eventually loses its mojo. They say we want to immortalise all these as you only live one (YOLO). Time and tide wait for no one too. Hence, there is a pressing need to freeze everything you have to last a lifetime. Time is man's greatest foe; the race between man and time always sided time. 

This country, this world is no place for older men or women. It is all about youth, vibrancy and freedom. Even Nature sides the young. With wear and tear, the facial musculature of the old naturally sags, giving its wearer a perpetual frowning facies. In the words of Schaupenneur, the world is a miserable place, and Nature knows it. Senescence is grim. Hence, the lips curve downwards with age, opposite to how a smiling face of innocence appears.

Pamela Anderson, in her iconic role
Photography and later video were God-sent. These can permanently capture the joy and visualisation of assets long after the battle scars of Hard Knocks of Life knock them down. With the advent of recording devices at everyone's disposal, immortalising that notable, intimate, non-event or pornographic material has never been easier.

It is a trend for newlyweds to digitally commemorate the image of their supple young bodies. As part of their wedding photography shootout, they even include a pose in their most sexually enticing pose in their birthday suits. This, they would like to admire way after the scars of life take over their mortal bodies. 

Since everybody is doing it, the peer pressure to get a full monty representation of the shames of the Garden of Eden is ever compelling. So every average Jane does it, and nobody gives a second look. Not when the player is every young man's dream girl - the buxom Pamela Anderson who gained stardom appearing semi-naked every week on Baywatch and had appeared without a thread as Hugh Heffner's bunnies.

Pamela and her then-husband, the wild cocaine-snorting Motley Crew's drummer, Tommy Lee, found out the hard way when their intimate honeymoon sex tapes were stolen that the world is not kind. 

Even though they laugh with you and encourage you to do whacky things, when you get on the wrong side of the law, you are actually alone. The world judges you through their conservative lens even though you think the world has changed. No siree. The media is there to yank you out of any shred of dignity still left you. Everybody just takes you to the cleaners. You are left shivering in the cold while everyone prospers on your account while you salvage whatever self-respect that is. Court injunctions and proceedings are just farce. It does not lead to anything meaningful.

The lesson here is that youth and love are many splendoured things. The underdevelopment of the neocortex of the frontal lobe makes you do many things. But remember, many of these things have long-term effects and ruin the rest of your remaining life. It is OK to be young and free, but freedom comes with specific responsibilities. You do not want to be stuck, on tenterhooks, for the rest of your remaining life with its aftermath.

Saturday, 26 September 2020

Normalising objectification?

Cuties (Mignonnes, French; 2020)

Back in secondary school, my friend AK, and I were engaged in an in-depth discussion on the topic of American situational comedies which later became to be abbreviated as sitcoms. AK was adamant that the depictions of teenagers, then in family dramas, were detrimental to the behaviours of people. The fighting back, the rudeness, the promiscuity of teenagers, the docile nature of parents were bound to have change on the local society. This would happen even though the storyline would indicate poetic justice at the end. Even though good virtues would prevail over bad, viewers tend to remember the bank heist rather than how the robbers suffered for their feat - their unsettling life whilst being on the run and the incarceration later on.

The same thing happened in this film. Even though the movie's storyline is genuine in highlighting the current societal obsession in adultification of preteens, the cinematography and wardrobe department just conveyed the opposite message. Viewers from the world over are up in arms objecting to the portrayal of 11 years pre-pubertal girls in age-inappropriate attires, twerking and engaging in dance moves that leave nothing to the imagination but are overt sexual postures ala-WAP.

After irritating Hindu audiences in India, now American viewers have joined the chorus of people who have started supporting #CancelNetflix. They accuse Netflix of promoting child pornography and have requested the FBI to initiate investigations along that line.


Depiction does not equate to an endorsement, they say, but as mentioned earlier, viewers only remember the awe factor. Five years down the line, people would only remember this movie as one which showed tween twerking, not the fact that it brought to the surface the constant peer pressure, the desire to fit in and the stress of coming of age. 

No one would remember that this film also showed how children of immigrants find it so difficult to be accepted by the natives of their newfound homes. Nobody can understand why the immigrant parents are hellbent on keeping alive their age-old traditions as their traditions failed to make a utopia in their homeland. It is the pull factors in the new countries that drew them like bees to the pollen. Indeed it is idiotic to consider that people in the new country are practising some kind of inferior way of life. It would not have made them so open-hearted to accept immigrants and bear with all the baggage that comes with them.

The film also shows the hypocrisy of societies that expects women to play second fiddle to all the antics of man whilst still appearing happy about it as if it the will of God to be subservient to men and live without a brain. On the one hand, it expects women to be pure but at the same time, objectifies women to fill the lust of men. This way of thinking is not limited to societies perceived as 'backwards'. Even progressive communities are guilty of this.

This presentation is a cautionary tale to remind us of our constant craving to push the limit of what is accepted as the norm. There was a time when there was no such thing as childhood. Little people feel grateful to be born and fed. They watch and learn and fit into societies as contributing individuals. Then the community decreed that little people need to be educated and have to have a proper childhood that develops character. Their biological requirements took a backburner. They had much more to achieve in life. Then the bar was progressively lowered. Social interactions and mingling of sexes were the standards. With affluence and reduction of responsibilities on the young shoulders, their interests peaked elsewhere. 

We should not forget that it is not easy for teenagers to grow up in the digital era. With so much scrutiny by peers and imaginary 'friends' in the social media sphere as well as pervasive cancel culture that is out to crucify anyone who does not conform to the general flavour of the month, emotional health can never be serene. At an age when they themselves are unsure of many things around them, the last persons they would listen to are adults. All the life experiences that adults preach will only fall on deaf ears. No matter how self-defeating their peers' action may be, it is nevertheless, more appealing to their age-group.

There is a difference in reading about young girls engaging in precocious activities than viewing them on screen. What is more unpalatable is when it is performed by underaged actors. In the name of art and wanting to pass a public message, is this justified?


Thursday, 14 November 2019

Sex sells

The Erotic Engine: How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google (2011)
Author: Patchen Barss


Pornography has always been frowned upon as the destroyer of civilised societies. It has been put in the same decadent basket of other vices of man including cheating and gambling.

On the contrary, the idea of voyeurism goes back as far as our cavemen ancestors. They had been so fascinated with human anatomy, like excited schoolboys and toilet graffiti, that they decided to draw what they saw during the day on the wall of their dwellings. The early human civilisations were quite liberal with sexuality and nudity. Ancient sculptures of couples in various stages of undress and in acts of copulation are general knowledge. The Indian book of Kamasutra is the living proof of this. Even as late as the European Renaissance, the human body was immortalised in paintings.

Science and technology propelled the human race forward to meet various challenges. It helps Man to explore newer frontiers. Before the industrial revolution and the introduction of Gutenberg’s printing press, books and illustrations were handwritten and drawn. It was expensive, and it catered for the rich, who was also coincidentally literate. The general populace could not read; hence, it did not matter what was written. The Books at that time were filled with erotica, but the learned were thought to be able to handle it.
© Roy Singh

The democratisation of printing opened this bag of worms to all. The middle class, who had their own moral standards, were ill-prepared to handle these. The Church which was the de-facto moral guardian of the masses intervened. The naked body became immoral, and its depiction against the law. Nevertheless, the interest never wanes but goes on underground. It created a new branch of a discipline called pornography to the masses but fine art to the high heeled.

The next wave of information dissemination came in the form of photography (pictures) and moving pictures (movies). Again the human body became the fascination of the makers and consumers alike. Peep shows, watching fuzzy pornographic plates became a cheap thrill. When a succession of photographs became cine, for the first time, people had the option of starring at a human body without raising the eyebrow of the other.

It was a godsend. To hide out in a dark theatre in anonymity watching ‘dirty picture’ in near lifelike visuals and audio.

Erotica continued tickling minds. The demand for it continued. It propelled advances in cinematographic techniques and optics to meet requests. Slowly explicit pictures made it to the mainstream. In the 80s, it became a norm for a Hollywood flick to have the mandatory flashing of breasts to hit it big in the box office.

Betamax - a relic of the past ©Yahoo
The video was the next thing to hit the market. Porn consumers were particularly enthralled. In the comfort of their homes with the company of a stag (or maybe mixed) party, in anonymity, they could watch all the smut they want to their heart’s content. The video was the in-thing in the 80s, creating trade wars and advances in the storage of visual data.

Computer games gave a shot in the arm towards this end. With interactive capabilities, the end user-provider barrier slowly starts to become interactive. Again and again, porn financed improvements in technology. VHS and Betamax graduated to LaserDisc and to DVD for that elusive high definition. UHF transmissions and cable TV were riding on pornography for profitability.

With time, silicon chips became a mode of the information revolution. Computer games gave users the freedom of creating their own avatars. It metamorphosed to their choice of a partner not only in the war games but something more intimate, like cybersex. From dirty talks using keyboards, it moved to joysticks and now the tip of the finger.

Next giant step in broadcasting must surely be the internet. Again, in its infancy, porn-related stuff was its best seller. It had an essential role in pushing the process of going on-line a breeze. For a seamless, uninterrupted flow of erotica, good bandwidth was needed. Poof, came protocol to this end. 


What is the meaning of all these if money cannot be collected properly? The model of consuming first and pay later is notoriously unreliable in the porn industry. As it is a shady business, its patrons, naturally act dishonestly. Hence, there needs to be a safe encrypted secure way of collecting money before consumption. This sole intention must have improved our current way of internet shopping and credit card transactions. The need for anonymity helped online privacy and data protection.
 Comfortably Numbed - VR © Slate.

To keep up with piracy of dirty pictures, the porn industry developed its own way of tracing the source of copying and protection of its 'intellectual property'. This was later found useful in tracking down paedophiles and serial rapists.

It appears like there is no limit in satisfying the demand for porn. Its consumers demand more even when newer avenues are made available. It seems that sensations acquired through virtual reality are insufficient. In the near future, the industry hopes to venture into the field of haptic stimulations. This technology tries to transfer temperature, texture, motion and pressure stimuli to its end-users to satisfy their ever-expanding sexual gratifications.

A deep link exists between pornography, the tools and techniques of human communication. Sexual depiction is a powerful source of creativity and a driving force in innovation. Many modern search engines, online retailers, video/photo sharing sites and media moguls owe their success to pornographic websites.   





Thursday, 10 January 2013

What is the difference?

So no private lawyer in the whole of India want to defend the six who stand accused in the recent infamous rape and murder of a physiotherapy student, Jyoti Pandey, (christened as “Nirbhaya” @ Braveheart)  in the capital city. Probably they are fearful of the public backlash on their career. The public response towards the sad incident has been anything but civil. Rape which used to be accepted as part of life in many remote areas of the sub-continent with no recourse, is not going to taken lightly any more after the recent turn of events. Gone are the days where the hassle of complain and judgemental attitude of those in power were a deterrent. The new change in social outlook is going to expose the 9/10 of the base of the iceberg (actually 1/6 of iceberg is visible) which had been hidden all this while. A social revolution is set to happen in a country where ladies all this while have been only placed on a pedestal in the temple altars and their mythological literature but not in real life.
On the other side of the world, not necessarily in the Western world, even in our backyard, another kind of humiliation of the female anatomy had been going on in the form of the oldest profession known to mankind and pornography. BBC in 2005 did a 9-episode documentary of the effect of the porn industry and the sad victims and sick people associated with it.
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, porn city of the world, has many sob stories of young girls from broken families and disturbed personality flocking here for fame and fortune. There was once a HIV epidemic which infected a young aspirant. After an intial scare and damage control, it was soon business as usual. What do you expect from a place where 60 gallons of male ejaculants are wasted in front of the camera annually and a record of 4000 sexual encounters occur daily!
Nobody knows what happened of 
Bambi Woods after the film. She may
have started life anew with a new
identify, putting her past behind.
Another theory is that her body is 
slouched somewhere hidden in
the USA! No one knows her
real name anyway.
What was supposed to be something private between two consenting adults, sometimes after the approval of the Gods, powers that be and the elders is out in the open. This craze to join the bandwagon of exhibitionism had spurred many amateur voyageurs. Partners who want to immortalize their sexual escapades on film call in the ever willing film-makers. Problems come a-knocking when they end their relationship but the reel is still available for viewing by everyone at the click of a button and the World Wide Web! All these impulsive actions will haunt them forever.
Then there are plastic surgeons would abandon their oath to do more harm on dysfunctional unstable individuals with dysmorphic view of their bodies. Lolo Ferarri, a porn star, an obviously disturbed lady had graduated to 54-J status and subsequently succumbed to loss of public attention as her popularity waned.
In spite of porn being a bad word, San Fernando Valley's industry is strictly legal. On one hand, they talk about equal rights but on the other hand, it is abuse and disrespect of the fairer sex too! So, what is the difference?

Please remove the veil of ignorance!