Pornography in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Pornography may use any of a variety of media — written and spoken text, photos, movies, etc.
Pornographic journals published in the United States include Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. There is also a wide range of fetish magazines.
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Pornographic movies in the United States
Much of the of the pornography produced in the United States is however movies, due to this medium's visual and dynamic nature. The movie camera has been used for pornography throughout its history, but pornographic movies were for most of that time typically only available in the United States by underground distribution, for projection at home or in private clubs.
The 1970s
More permissive legislation permitted the rise of "XXX-rated" movie theaters in the U.S. in the 1970s. There was also a proliferation of coin-operated "movie booths" in sex shops that displayed pornographic "loops" (so-called because they projected a movie from film arranged in a continuous loop).
At that time, pornographic movies even approached acceptance into the mainstream movie industry, with films such as Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and Gerard Damiano's 1972 film The Devil in Miss Jones being shot on film with high production values, and grossing substantial amounts in movie theaters.
1980s and later
A few large companies operating out of Southern California's San Fernando Valley are responsible for much of the pornography produced in the United States.
The distribution of pornography has changed radically after the 1980s with videotape and cable television largely displacing X-rated theaters. Video distribution in turn is in the process of being replaced by DVD (and Internet distribution for niche markets). Distribution of pornography is a large industry which involves major entertainment companies such as AOL-Time Warner (which profits from pornography through its cable channels, and in-room movies provided by hotel chains).
The prototypical female porn star in the United States is a Caucasian woman in her mid-twenties, wearing high heels, with bleached blond hair and with large breasts (usually augmented by breast implants) and buttocks, and often with tattoos and/or body piercing and a dark suntan with tanlines. However, the prevalence of this stereotype has been decreasing in recent years. Men in heterosexual pornography tend to be older than the females and are often heavily muscled, whereas men in gay pornography are, on the average, younger. Gay actors, though, can range from slim and androgynous ("twinks") to very large and extremely hairy ("bears"). African American performers are abundantly male, while almost all Asian American performers in heterosexual pornography are female (the most notable exception being Rick Lee)
American pornography movies often attempt to promote pornographic stars, and the boxes for video tapes tend to be extremely gaudy. Plot in pornographic movies has diminished constantly over the last three decades and is now generally minimal. There are, however, some pornographic movies called couples films that are deliberately made for the female and/or heterosexual couple market, and these have more elements of plot in them as well as a generally more romantic treatment of the sexual aspects.
With the advent of AIDS in the 1980s, HIV transmission between performers resulted in a number of deaths, including that of the famous erotic actor John Holmes. After this, the pornography industry instituted a system of testing for HIV designed to prevent the spread of the virus within the industry. In general, the pornography industry does not depict safer sex: mainstream pornographic movies now depict a range of behaviors including anal sex that are high risk activities for sexually transmitted disease transmission, as if the taboo status of these activities has made them more thrilling for the consumers of pornography. Anal sex and other similar activities are now part of U.S. heterosexual pornography in a way that was unprecedented before the outbreak of AIDS.
In 1999 there were 711 million rentals of hard-core sex films. Subsidiaries of major corporations were the largest pornography sellers. The General Motors subsidiary Direct TV sold $200 million worth of sex films. EchoStar Communications and AT&T were also very large sellers, as were the major hotel chains. Video rentals and sales revenue exceeded $4 billion a year plus $800 million less explicit erotic works. Revenues of companies such as Playboy and Hustler were small by comparison. [1]
Pornography or obscenity?
The legal dividing line between legal pornography and illegal obscenity in the United States is controlled by the Miller test. This considers the community standards, whether specific sexual conduct is present and whether the work has serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. As was found in the Movie Buffs video store case in 2002, even towns which claim to be very conservative can actually have an unusually high consumption of pornographic material, making it hard to find that community standards have been exceeded.
See also:
External links
- Attorney General's Commission on Pornography Final Report. July 1986 U.S. Department of Justice, Washington D.C. 20530.
- American Porn Report by Frontline (PBS TV series) (first aired in 2002, updated in 2004), watchable online.
