Rule 34 Has Finally Gone Too Far

Way back in the days of the Old School Internet (pre-Google, Wikipedia etc) I would occasionally amuse myself by going to Yahoo and typing in a random word, followed by “porn” (like Victorian Porn – which exists by the way).  Most of the time, I just ended up on a regular porn site that just happened to have that other word on their page for some unknown reason (or to fool Yahoo’s search engine – which was easily fooled by such tactics back then). But every once in a while, I’d find something funny (like old-timey, Victorian pornography).

Apparently, people that are actually in the porn industry like to play this little game too. And that’s how we ended up with “Occupy My Ass” a porn film that claims to be a “parody” of the Occupy movement (1). But it’s obvious from looking at the trailer that this is an all-sex film. There is no plot whatsoever and thus, no actual attempt to “parody” anything. The distributor, Evil Angel, doesn’t even make parodies.

The only mildly-satiral element of the whole thing is the box cover, which re-produces the look of several Occupy posters (which are based on Shephard Fairey’s “Hope” poster) and several slogans of the movement, namely, the now ubiquitous “We are the 99%”.

Oddly enough, the director (Bobbi Starr – one of many female directors) has actually expressed her dislike of parodies (which she sees as part of a misguided attempt by the porn industry to become “mainstream”) and the apolitical stance of the porn industry in general (2).

So is this recent film proof that she isn’t willing to literally put her money where her mouth is (by making an overtly political film that might alienate her fan base) or is this actually an attempt to test the waters in preparation for something more substantial? I suppose only time will tell us the real answer, but I have a hard time believing that even a politically active porn director is willing to take the risk of “sermonizing” in a sex scene.

Sources

1. The trailer

Warning: This video contains images of gaping (a close-up on a woman’s stretched out ass hole), lesbian sex with strap-ons and rough anal sex. There’s also a BDSM element (a woman with a mask on her face). If any of these things offend or disgust you, please don’t watch this video. Also (and quite obviously) this video contains images of un-simulated sex.

2. Porn Should get Political

Congress Declares that the Internet is for Porn

Congress has pulled a lot of stunts this year. There was that whole “let’s play chicken with the debt ceiling” debacle, the over-hyped “supercommittee” that couldn’t find a way to balance the budget in four months, when a much smaller committee of former congressmen hired by Esquire magazine managed to do the same thing in only 3 days. They even made Ron Paul (the guy that wants to end the Federal Reserve System) the chairman of the House Committee on Domestic Monetary Policy (the committee that oversees the Fed). But only one of this year’s stunts was actually funny.

During the debate over HR 3261 (or the Stop Online Piracy Act, as it’s called on the streets (or SOPA as it’s called in the Hood) ) Rep. Jared Pollis (D-CO) decided to read the entire lyrics from “Internet is for Porn” into the committee’s official record. “Internet is for Porn” is a song from the hit Broadway musical Avenue Q. Listen to the song here and then imagine this being “performed” in the presence of the otherwise entirely stuffy members of the House Judiciary Committee.

Don’t laugh too hard though, Polis’ prank wasn’t as silly as it sounds. SOPA will give the Attorney General the power to shut down sites that allow people to view copyrighted material for free. Unfortunately, as Polis pointed out, the vast majority of sites fitting that description are porn 2.0 sites that allow users to illegally download porn DVDs. This means that if SOPA passes, the majority of takedown requests will be from the porn industry. In fact, the porn industry has already started lobbying the Justice department to ensure that they will be the #1 priority if the bill gets passed.

Polis introduced an amendment that would avoid this embarrassing situation by exempting the porn industry from being affected by this law (which would, in effect, make it legal to pirate porn). Unfortunately, Polis’ true motives for writing this amendment were spotted early on. As Rep. Lofgren (D-CA) pointed out

“people have a legal right to create pornographic movies”

Polis’ amendment would have opened up SOPA to judicial review by the Supreme Court based on the amendment’s clear violation of the First Amendment (which protects pornography). The amendment was defeated after a vote of 18 to 9.

Sources

Balance (the aforementioned Esquire article)
http://www.esquire.com/features/balance-the-budget-findings-1110?click=main_sr

‘Internet is for Porn’ pops up during House SOPA debate

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57344507-281/internet-is-for-porn-pops-up-during-house-sopa-debate/?tag=mncol;txt

The Judiciary Committee’s record of the hearing

http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/transcript12152011.pdf

Porn Parody Trend Jumps the Racist Shark (NSFW)

Well, it finally happened. The recent fad of pornographic parodies of mainstream films has finally hit rock bottom. When they made a Seinfeld parody it was just another classic adventure in missing the point by adding explicit sex scenes into a show that was all about not talking about the very thing they were talking about. The Simpsons parody was just gross, on account of their decision to actually paint all of the actors yellow. And their parodies of horror movies were just well…redundant. But now, the masters of the un-neccessary have succeeded where even Hollywood has failed with all of its myriad remakes. They have managed to display a groundbreaking combination of racism, insensitivity and un-originality.

And how exactly have they managed to achieve this? Well you know…you already saw the picture. It’s a pornographic “parody” of Roots. For the unitiated, Roots is a book by Alex Haley that claims to present the history of his family, beginning with their Mandinkan Ancestor, Kunta Kente, and preceding all the way down to Hailey himself. Roots, a massive 704 page work was adapted into an eight part television series in 1997. It’s unflinching portrayal of the brutality of American slavery seered itself into the hearts and minds of millions of Americans, both Black and white and it’s final episode is still the third most watched episode in T.V. history, 35 years later.

So why on Earth would anyone think that it was ok to “parody” a movie about the kidnapping, mutilation and humiliation of an innocent man? Perhaps its best not to even ask such questions of the people who brought you “Hector’s Filthy Grandmas” and “Bangin’ Yo Mama”. But don’t worry, according to the director, T.T. Boy, the film is “pro-Black”. And how’s that, you ask? Well, as Mr. uh…boy, explains, “The slaves fuck all the white girls, the daughters and the wives of the masters”. Ah, ok. Now I get it. So first, he decides to re-enforce sexual stereotypes of Black men by casting tall, extremely muscular African-Americans males with large penises, and then he decides to go for another stereotype by having them “fuck all the white girls”, which is the very thing that (according to white people) is the reason why they had to murder so many innocent Black men, like Emmit Till (please don’t Google him, the pictures will traumatize you). Or as the back cover of the DVD states,

Watch the pretty daughters fall in lust with the studs and chase them around for some love! See how upset the husband is after he finds out his wife’s pussy has been stretched by a real dick and how useless he is! 

And that, is why this film is “pro-Black”. Cool. Not surprisingly, the local NAACP was not amused. They picketed the film set and attempted to have the production shut down, but unfortunately the video was practically done by the time they arrived.

Pornographers usually excuse incidents of unabashed racism by saying that it’s what the fans want, but in this case, they don’t even have that to fall back on. Despite the hype, the film didn’t even make it into the top 200 the month it was released. I guess even fans of racist porn films have their limits.

Sources

1. Evasive Angles Courts Controversy with ‘Roots’ Parody

http://business.avn.com/articles/video/Evasive-Angles-Courts-Controversy-With-Roots-Parody-449750.html

2. AVN Magazine December 2011*

http://www.thedigitaleditiononline.com/publication/?i=93457

3. Top 100 Rated TV Shows of All Time

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2009/03/21/top-100-rated-tv-shows-of-all-time/14922/

*The film was released on October 31, which would mean that most of its early sales would actually be in November, which is covered in the December issue. But I checked the November issue as well and it wasn’t there.

Bob Guiccone is Dead

The character of the “porn king” is one of the media’s favorite tropes. The porn king is the guy who started from simple beginnings and rose to the heights of power by creating an empire of filth. Although the term is thrown around quite regularly, there are three names that will inevitably come to fore in any discussion of porn; Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione, the founders of Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse. Oh sure, we have a few kings today, like Steve Hirsch, the founder of Vivid Entertainment (the world’s most profitable porn company) and Joone, the founder of Digital Playground, but they lack the cultural cachet of Hefner and the other true Kings. And then there’s the more pitiful of the lot, like Joel Francis, creator of the Girls Gone Wild series. A mere shadow of the power and influence of the Unholy Trinity of Hefner, Flynt and Guccione. But today Bob Guccione is dead.He died this Wednesday of cancer.  Larry Flynt is 67 and Hugh Hefner is 84, so it won’t be long now before they’re all gone.The irony is that in an age where porn is allegedly becoming more and more “mainstream” we know less and less about the people that make our porn than we did 50 years ago. But maybe that’s just because back then there were fewer of them and the fact that it was illegal gave them an aura of mystery and danger that few legal professions can muster. Only time will tell. But until then, it seems that the era of “porno chic” is coming to a close.

Source:

Steve Jobs vs. Porn

Let me just say right at the outset here that I’m not a fan of consumerism 2.0; over the last couple of years, it seems like cell phones have become celebrities. First the Razor, then the LG, the Blackberry and now the young upstart Android is trying to take down the reigning iPhone like some weird, nerdy version of All About Eve. I have not joined the cult of Apple and I don’t plan to anytime soon but when I heard that Steve Jobs had launched a personal/corporate war on porn, well I just had to find out more about this. So first a little background.

Apparently Jobs is well known for being uber-accessible. His personal email address is all over the Internet, he frequently responds to messages from customers and he doesn’t seem to mind that many of these private conversations have become public through being posted on the web directly or being quoted in various news outlets. One such example is Ryan Tate, a contributor to Gawker.com, who emailed Jobs at about 9:30pm one night, angered by an ad that claimed that the iPad was “already a revolution”. At about 1am the next morning, Jobs replied, saying that (among other things) the iPad was about “freedom from porn”. What?

So now we’re comparing porn to…the King of England? Pornography is oppressing us, sexiness is slavery, titillation is tyranny, and the valiant digital patriot will now write a Declaration of Independence from Pornography. Is this really happening? Is this guy really saying that we need freedom from naked women? Really? What’s next? Freedom from sex? It’s one thing to say that porn is bad or that he thinks he’ll get a bigger market by making statements like this but to say that we need “freedom” from it…it’s like he’s accusing the porn industry of being a bunch of terrorists. Sex tape terrorists.

So how did Mr. Tate respond to this mind-boggling comment? “I don’t want “freedom from porn”. Porn is fine! And I think my wife would agree”. Jobs’ answer to this was “you might care more about porn when you have kids”. So it’s all about saving our kids (who can’t buy iPads because they’re expensive and kids don’t have jobs and no parent would ever intentionally buy such an expensive item for any child under college age) ? And by saving our kids, he saves society. From porn. Who knew that lust could be so dangerous?

But later on in a somewhat unrelated and highly technical part of the same discussion when talking about his decision to prevent “non-native apps” (in other words, apps he won’t get money off of because his company didn’t make them) Jobs made the revealing comment that “it’s not about freedom. It’s about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users.” So I guess that’s a little better, right? Instead of trying to save America from blonde bombshells, he’s just trying to “do the right thing”. This claim would make a lot more sense if doing the right thing didn’t include stuff like banning an app with political cartoons. I’m sure that if asked, Jobs wouldn’t see that action as censorship (the app was later allowed, after he was criticized for not approving it in the first place) but obviously his decision to keep the iPad porn-free has nothing to do with morality. Exhibit A is that you can now buy Playboy at the Apple store. Well sort of. Even though it contains a “frequent/intense sexual content or nudity” warning, the digital Apple version features no nudity. So where exactly is the “intense sexual content”? It’s probably hiding in the same place the tyranny is.

Sources

Let’s All Email Steve Jobs!

Steve Jobs Offers World ‘Freedom From Porn’

I want the iPad porn-free, says Apple’s Steve Jobs

Playboy Magazine Available on iPad