Sex News: Trading Places – Hollywood Shoots All The Things That Porn Can't. Porn Shoots Beverly Hillbillies.

by Coleen Singer

As the old saying goes, “Nature Abhors A Vacuum” and sometimes this happens in the most unlikely places. Over the past 5 years, the adult film industry has very much bowdlerized (i.e. removed material that is considered improper or offensive with the result that it becomes weaker or less effective).  

Faced with a complex maze of restrictions placed by billing companies, hosting services, ISPs and penalties in search algorithms on what can, and more importantly, can’t be in an adult films, the porn industry has now focused on predictable vanilla sex, or, seeking to create works with higher production values, have produced a large body of work in the “Parody” genre which has pumped out such entertaining, but not very edgy pseudo-adaptations of such mainstream masterpieces as “The Brady Bunch”, “The Beverly Hillbillies”, “Skooby Doo”, and “The Flintstones” to name just a few.  To be fair, there is a growing trend of making “high art” adult films by such notable directors as Max Candy, Graham Travis, Michael Ninn and others, but these are very much the welcomed exception to the rule these days. Even though today’s (or yesterday’s for that matter) standard for shooting adult movies never included non-consensual sex or violence, porn continues to bear the brunt for scrutiny and censorship.

Read on…

Regardless of that reality, “Prime Minister David Cameron recently announced online porn would soon become automatically blocked in order to “protect children and their innocence.” The filters will be implemented by the UK’s major internet service providers, which encompass 95% of British web users. Based on conversations with several ISPs, Open Rights Group says the new “parental controls” will reach far beyond pornography. By default, the controls will block access to “violent material,” “extremist and terrorist related content,” “anorexia and eating disorder websites,” and “suicide related websites.” In addition, the new settings will censor websites that mention alcohol or smoking. The filter will even block “web forums” and “esoteric material,” though Open Rights Group does not specify what these categories would include.” – Quoted from The Huffington Post

Is a double-standard in play here?  Non-consensual sex, violence and general sexual mayhem is one of the stock-in-trade devices used in mainstream Hollywood feature films.  With the recent release of LoveLace and the upcoming release of “Nymphomaniac“, Hollywood is now adding to its spicy arsenal full-on genital sex and even more violence than usual.

For his upcoming film Nymphomaniac, Danish director Lars von Trier (why is it the Danes always do this sort of thing?) is using the genitals of porn actors having intercourse and superimposing them underneath the torsos of the movie’s cast during sex scenes. (If I see Willam Defoe’s penis, even if it is not his, I think I might just run from the cinema!)

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in Cannes, the film’s producer Louise Vesth explained: “We shot the actors pretending to have sex and then had the body doubles, who really did have sex, and in post we will digital impose the two. So above the waist it will be the star and the below the waist it will be the doubles.” The same report highlights the extensive time demands to produce these scenes caused delays that prevented Nymphomaniac premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. Nymphomaniac is a drama and stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Uma Thurman and Shia LaBeouf amongst others. It reportedly follows the story of a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac (Gainsbourg) who is telling a man the history of her sex life, from teenage years to adulthood.

Uma Thurman with a super-imposed “porn pussy”?  Go for it Lars.  This sounds more interesting by the minute!

Wired Magazine goes on to say, “As surprising as the inclusion of real sex may be to some, it’s not just Lars von Trier pushing this boundary, nor is it uncommon for sex scenes in mainstream movies to be unsimulated. Aside from Antichrist, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs included several explicit scenes, including probably the first male ejaculation to feature in a film you could buy on the shelves of Woolworths.”

The trailer for 9 Songs blares out the announcement, “The most sexually extreme mainstream rock movie ever!“. The official trailer doesn’t show all this “male ejaculation” as it is SFW and on YouTube, but let’s take a look at it:

Looks pretty porny to me!

But let’s face it, as critically acclaimed as 9 Songs was, it’s sort of one of those Indie Festival Artsy Movies with minimal distribution.  With that in mind, I went searching for “bigger fish” to see just how naughty the BIG Hollywood movies can be, the focus on finding sexual violence in them.  Here is a sampling of three noteworthy ones, all of which can be found on the shelves at Walmart, the traditional canary in a coal mine for what isn’t acceptable for consumer consumption!

IRREVERSIBLE (2002) – Buy It At Walmart!
This long, controversial scene is difficult to watch for many people because it is filmed so realistically, with no dramatic music or anything like that. It is almost documentary style, forcing you to witness the savage assault that a nasty pimp inflicts on beautiful Monica Bellucci as she pays a high price for taking a shortcut home one night. After arguing with her boyfriend at a party and storming off alone, she tries to walk home through a rough area of Paris but bumps into the pimp. He can’t believe his luck and, producing a knife, drags her to the floor before viciously raping her. From HollywoodAbuse.com

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2009) – Buy It At Walmart!
Noomi Rapace stars in this acclaimed drama which features a gritty rape scene. An old guy handcuffs her to a bed face down and stuffs some socks into her mouth as she struggles to get free, thrashing about like a fish out of water but unable to break her tight bonds. He rips down her panties, exposing her ass and pussy, before mounting her and fucking her roughly as she screams.

THE ACCUSED – Jody Foster (2002) – Buy It At Walmart!
One night in a bar, a working-class woman, Sarah Tobias (Foster), is gang raped by several drunk bar patrons, while drunken onlookers cheer them on.

The list of mainstream studio films including extreme violence and non-consensual sex that are in DVD, online and cable distribution goes on and on and on beyond the scope of this article, so let’s move to the head of the class with probably the most intense rape scene ever shot from “The Color Purple“.

The backstory of this scene is one of the most dramatic in American film history. In a circa 1990 National Public Radio interview with director Steven Spielberg, he told Terry Gross that his only regret about the film was his conscious decision NOT to tell Oprah Winfrey the “little detail” that what was scripted for a chase scene, was to be a rape scene.  All of the other cast and crew knew what he intended, but Spielberg wanted to get an authentic reaction shot of the surprised Oprah when the scene was filmed with 11 cameras going in one take.  He did got his desired reaction (and, she did not speak to him for over two years she was so enraged.)

Let’s take a look (Also Available At Walmart!):

Ergo, the question now is raised and remains about how and why the legitimate adult film industry is held to a different set of standards than mainstream studios. “Adult” is subjected to high risk credit card processing fees, NSA-style robotic spidering for “dirty words”, the wrath of such anti-porn activists as Gail Dines, and even the Prime Minister of England now wanting to block pornography as much as possible. Hollywood, aside from the organic process of things just not getting released if they are too controversial, gets none of this, are enjoying low credit card processing rates, worldwide distribution on DVD and in “wholesome family values” retail stores like Walmart, and, aside from the occasional attacks from the tea-baggers and Morality In Media, pretty much have a free ride into the living rooms and bulging britches of customers seeking edgy sexually-charged fare. Whereas I, nor any legitimate adult film producer I know, haven’t even the slightest interest in “pushing the boundaries” into sexual violence and non-consensual sex, there does seem to be something out of whack here that anything deemed “mainstream” can have an anal rape scene or chase Oprah through a cornfield, and why “adult” is now relegated to producing “vanilla porn” with little depth, fantasy or edge to it.

Prime Minister Cameron and other high-minded civic leaders who seek to filter and ban “violent and nonconsensual porn” are just barking up the wrong tree. Hollywood films rely on it as a plot device. Retailers like that “last bastion of morality”, Walmart openly distribute their movies.  And what WILL the U.K. do about that little problem called Youtube?  Search YouTube for the word “rape” and get an astonishing 2,210,000 results. None of it is “porn”, but most of it is violent. Add to that the beheading and just generally sick movies on YouTube and there is definitely a problem in pointing a boney Victorian finger at the porn industry which avoids violence and nonconsensual acts like the plague.  Stick that in your filters, Mr. Cameron and see how far you get with YouTube and its parent company, Google to clean up THAT mess.

Most adult producers and directors that I know at this point just want to have a bit more freedom of plot than this shooting call:
EXTERIOR – DAY:
Bo and Luke chase Daisy Duke down and give her a gentle spanking and for burning the breakfast grits. They all lovingly laugh at the end. Pull back. Fade to black. Roll credits.

Heavens! That seems so much more wholesome that “Saw” or “Hostel” to me!

Maybe Uncle Jed, Jethro, Elly May or Grannie know for sure where this is all going…….