GQ: I Mourn for Porn

[PacoFear]

I'm not much of a GQ fan. Frankly, the only reason I read the current issue was because the local barbershop had it out. I'm glad I picked it up though.

Bruno Maddox wrote an article that could almost be a kind of manifesto for the folks here at Lit. Maddox laments how video pornography has become so readily available online that an entire generation is missing out on written erotica and the imagination and creativity it has to offer.

I've toyed with the idea of sending Maddox a short note to say that Lit. is over here tending the sacred flame against the darkness of gonzo porn.

What do you guys think?

-PF

P.S. And because now I can't get this stupid image out of my head, I'll share it with y'all as a form of self-exorcism.

A huddled mass of gray-robed Literoticans gathered on a little stone bridge in the depths of MiddleEarth staring into the darkness and they speak with one choral voice:

"We are servants of the Secret Fire, wielders of the true flame of Passion. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of PornTube. You cannot pass!!!"

Or, uh, something.

 

[Handley_Page]

-PF

P.S. And because now I can't get this stupid image out of my head, I'll share it with y'all as a form of self-exorcism.

A huddled mass of gray-robed Literoticans gathered on a little stone bridge in the depths of MiddleEarth staring into the darkness and they speak with one choral voice:

"We are servants of the Secret Fire, wielders of the true flame of Passion. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of PornTube. You cannot pass!!!"

Or, uh, something.

Oh Flame of the Porn Tube, be gone from hence. We send you severally and singly to the outer darkness for eternity. Thou Shalt Not Pass.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I think you're right, Paco. Send the dude a letter. Who knows? He might even join in.

 

[xssve]

Well it's been said before, but porn really isn't storytelling in the usual sense: there is no conflict, no growth, no change - the characters are the same at the end as they were at the beginning, with the possible exception of rape/reluctance porn, where presumably the innocent and chaste virgin ends up shameless cock craving nympho.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, except that's it's such a cliche, that the "story" is still pretty meaningless, and remains basically a pastiche of penetrations and bodily fluid exchanges.

This is annoying when there is room for storytelling here: they used to at least attempt it, the flashback is an acceptable storytelling device, i.e., telling a "story" in the gossipy sense, you can flip the virgin/whore dichotomy, i.e., a nympho woman and a reluctant man, etc. hell that one, the femme fatale, woman as seductress is positively (or negatively) loaded with subconscious meaning, you could milk it indefinitely - you could make a motherfucker squirm - that would be art.

Thing is, actual sex itself is rife with potential conflict - in real life, it seldom comes without conflict - which is maybe why the real fantasy is basically a lot of no strings/no consequences/no drama, sex.

And you see that even in literary porn/erotica - the object is not about the psychological transformation of a character, it usually about evoking an "erotically emotional" (or emotionally erotic) response in the reader.

Anyway, just a rant - it does seem clear that erotica/porn is too important a subject to be left entirely up to professionals.

 

[Belegon]

Meh - I certainly don't mind the idea of promoting erotica, but I am not willing to start a vendetta against another form of adult entertainment to do so.

Divide and conquer is a strategy they've used against us far too effectively for me to endorse even a mild version of us doing it to ourselves.

 

[lil_elvis]

I'm with Bel in the live & let live - to each their own thing...but, then again, there's no harm in alerting the universe to our intellectually superior smut

 

[Boxlicker101]

Well it's been said before, but porn really isn't storytelling in the usual sense: there is no conflict, no growth, no change - the characters are the same at the end as they were at the beginning, with the possible exception of rape/reluctance porn, where presumably the innocent and chaste virgin ends up shameless cock craving nympho.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, except that's it's such a cliche, that the "story" is still pretty meaningless, and remains basically a pastiche of penetrations and bodily fluid exchanges.

This is annoying when there is room for storytelling here: they used to at least attempt it, the flashback is an acceptable storytelling device, i.e., telling a "story" in the gossipy sense, you can flip the virgin/whore dichotomy, i.e., a nympho woman and a reluctant man, etc. hell that one, the femme fatale, woman as seductress is positively (or negatively) loaded with subconscious meaning, you could milk it indefinitely - you could make a motherfucker squirm - that would be art.

Thing is, actual sex itself is rife with potential conflict - in real life, it seldom comes without conflict - which is maybe why the real fantasy is basically a lot of no strings/no consequences/no drama, sex.

And you see that even in literary porn/erotica - the object is not about the psychological transformation of a character, it usually about evoking an "erotically emotional" (or emotionally erotic) response in the reader.

Anyway, just a rant - it does seem clear that erotica/porn is too important a subject to be left entirely up to professionals.

I realize there isn't much of a story line in most of the written porn here, especially in mine. However, I do try to explain how and why the people happen to be doing the things they're doing. There's even less of a story line in porn on the internet or videotapes.

 

[PacoFear]

A draft letter below. Chime in if you want, gang. Not much else for me to do right now. We're getting snowed to death in the northeastern U.S. at the moment.

-PF

*~*~*~*


Dear Mr. Maddox,

I read your article in this month’s GQ and barely resisted yelling out an “Amen Brother!” in the middle of the waiting room of my local barbershop. I am in my mid-thirties and I too am afraid ours is the last generation of men that was weaned on written erotica. As your article shrewdly observed, the instant gratification of streaming online video is claiming the minds and, ahem, hearts of the younger folks.

I write to let you know, if you don’t already, that there are what I would call pockets of resistance to this ongoing brain drain to be found on the internet. Among them is www.literotica.com, a roughly twenty-year old website that permits the free posting and free reading of written erotic stories, i.e., literary erotica.

The beauty of Literotica is that it provides not just a ready repository of erotic stories, but also a forum for would-be authors to try their hand at writing erotic prose or poetry and to receive feedback from readers and fellow authors.

I invite you to have a peek at the site and, if you’re feeling brave, to pick a pseudonym, write out a fantasy or two and post them, Mr. Maddox. There’s at least one place left for us.

Yours truly,

PacoFear
Aspiring Young Literotican-at-large

 

[3113]

Thing is, actual sex itself is rife with potential conflict - in real life, it seldom comes without conflict - which is maybe why the real fantasy is basically a lot of no strings/no consequences/no drama, sex.

True! Porn/erotica exists first and foremost as wish-fulfillment/fantasy. I remember reading an essay on this years and years ago where the author pointed out that porn/erotica's primary aim is to present a scenario where your strangest, most embarrassing or problematic fetish would magically find it's mate and be seen as perfectly acceptable (no strings/drama/consequences). Unlike in real life, when a guy who is into pinecone sex (just made that up now) reads erotica he gets a story of a guy like him who meets a beautiful girl who--amazingly--is into pinecone sex! None of the real life drama that our guy with the pinecone fetish usually finds when he goes out on a real date: "Pinecones? Um...later!"

And we have to be fair in this instance, because (1) Why is pinecone guy gonna wanna read about sex with drama/strings/consequences? He gets that in real life, he doesn't need to read about it in fiction? and (2) "Literature" (with a capitol "L") is usually about the real world and its grand disappointments, so if pinecone guy is after a story that rings true why not just pick up something modern and literary?

Mind you, I'm not arguing that erotic writing should be just body fluid exchanges or character-less. Far from it. But I can't be quite so harsh on it being what it often is. Because what it is serves a particular purpose and was created for that purpose. At the very least, it keeps pinecone guy going with the false hope that maybe pinecone girl exists. Were it not for porn, he might end it all in despair

 

[Stella_Omega]

I wonder what written erotica Maddox found back in the day? Because there wasn't much, and most of that was pretty lame stuff. Penthouse letters?

 

[3113]

I wonder what written erotica Maddox found back in the day? Because there wasn't much, and most of that was pretty lame stuff. Penthouse letters?

Hey! There was Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and D.H. Lawrence back in the day!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hey! There was Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and D.H. Lawrence back in the day!

Those guys never got me off.

 

[Handley_Page]

I wonder what written erotica Maddox found back in the day? Because there wasn't much, and most of that was pretty lame stuff. Penthouse letters?

There was quite a bit for my young eyes.
Quite well told stories printed in France and exported to the UK.

 

[WRJames]

The strange thing is that the actual experience of sex is not that visual, at least not for me. Why is it then that visual pornography is so compelling?

 

[Boxlicker101]

Quote:
Originally Posted by 3113
Hey! There was Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and D.H. Lawrence back in the day!

Those guys never got me off.

There were also "underground stories" which were as raunchy as most of the current stories on Lit. (except mine) They were illegal, but not all that hard to find. In the Fifties and Sixties, there were Fabian Books and Saber Books, which were mild by today's standards, but pretty smutty for the time, as well as better known works of literature, such as Lolita.

I thought of Henry Miller as being on a par with what I read sometimes on the walls of men's rooms, but "Lady Chatterley"s Lover" was a genuine work of erotic literature.

I believe I will add my two cents to the proposed letter to the subject of this thread.

 

[Boxlicker101]

A draft letter below. Chime in if you want, gang. Not much else for me to do right now. We're getting snowed to death in the northeastern U.S. at the moment.

-PF

*~*~*~*


Dear Mr. Maddox,

I read your article in this month’s GQ and barely resisted yelling out an “Amen Brother!” in the middle of the waiting room of my local barbershop. I am in my mid-thirties and I too am afraid ours is the last generation of men that was weaned on written erotica. As your article shrewdly observed, the instant gratification of streaming online video is claiming the minds and, ahem, hearts of the younger folks.

I write to let you know, if you don’t already, that there are what I would call pockets of resistance to this ongoing brain drain to be found on the internet. Among them is www.literotica.com, a roughly twenty-year old website that permits the free posting and free reading of written erotic stories, i.e., literary erotica.

The beauty of Literotica is that it provides not just a ready repository of erotic stories, but also a forum for would-be authors to try their hand at writing erotic prose or poetry and to receive feedback from readers and fellow authors.

I invite you to have a peek at the site and, if you’re feeling brave, to pick a pseudonym, write out a fantasy or two and post them, Mr. Maddox. There’s at least one place left for us.

Yours truly,

PacoFear
Aspiring Young Literotican-at-large

An addendum to my colleague, PacoFear:

He's right about the stories to be found on Literotica. Some of them are pointless; some are just scribblings and some are true works of art. They range from not being erotic at all to stories of unbelievable lust and perversion, with mine being the dirtiest of all.
Boxlicker101

 

[sr71plt]

I am averaging 25,000 views of my stories posted here, which is significantly higher than the average sales of my mainstream books. So, 'nuff said about the poor state of written porn as far as I'm concerned.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

Mourn for porn all you want, sugar. They're downloading mine like it's going out of style over on Smashwords. Not too worried about it. Live and let live, I say. Some like their porn in visual format, some in written format. Thus it has been and thus it shall remain. There's even the sex simulation porn that's making a play for more technological porn-seekers. There's room for the whole spectrum.

 

[Pure]

paco, 3113

paco, while your letter's kinda fun, i'd drop the third para. it sounds like advertising.

3113. i have no issue with your position as such, but your concern with 'not real life drama' and 'false hopes', applies equally to fairy tales. 'cinderella', 'the ugly duckling'.

one might equally say, as ambiguous compliment, that 'cinderella', as example of its genre, 'serves a purpose' and keeps kids taken as domestic servants, from despair.

i realize you're probably tongue in cheek.



3113 True! Porn/erotica exists first and foremost as wish-fulfillment/fantasy. I remember reading an essay on this years and years ago where the author pointed out that porn/erotica's primary aim is to present a scenario where your strangest, most embarrassing or problematic fetish would magically find it's mate and be seen as perfectly acceptable (no strings/drama/consequences). Unlike in real life, when a guy who is into pinecone sex (just made that up now) reads erotica he gets a story of a guy like him who meets a beautiful girl who--amazingly--is into pinecone sex! None of the real life drama that our guy with the pinecone fetish usually finds when he goes out on a real date: "Pinecones? Um...later!"

And we have to be fair in this instance, because (1) Why is pinecone guy gonna wanna read about sex with drama/strings/consequences? He gets that in real life, he doesn't need to read about it in fiction? and (2) "Literature" (with a capitol "L") is usually about the real world and its grand disappointments, so if pinecone guy is after a story that rings true why not just pick up something modern and literary?

Mind you, I'm not arguing that erotic writing should be just body fluid exchanges or character-less. Far from it. But I can't be quite so harsh on it being what it often is. Because what it is serves a particular purpose and was created for that purpose. At the very least, it keeps pinecone guy going with the false hope that maybe pinecone girl exists. Were it not for porn, he might end it all in despair

 

[TE999]

Video porn is just plain boring unless you're a 14 yo and found dad's stash of VHS tapes and DVD's hidden under his golf shoe boxes.

The written word can set the mood for sex infinitely better than a vid porn plot (if there is one).

 

[lil_elvis]

I remember getting my hands on a copy of The Pearl when I was in 8th grade. It was a collection of Victorian era smut that had been an underground "newspaper" (or at least that is what I recall it was purported to be).

Couldn't put the damned book down

 

[Saucyminx]

I remember getting my hands on a copy of The Pearl when I was in 8th grade. It was a collection of Victorian era smut that had been an underground "newspaper" (or at least that is what I recall it was purported to be).

Couldn't put the damned book down

I've had a thing for Victorian porn since I got ahold of "The Autobiography of a Flea" in Jr. High. It is completely filthy, and funny at the same time. All the copious spending. . .

 

[glynndah]

Wait. Twenty year old website? Is that right?

 

[3113]

3113. i have no issue with your position as such, but your concern with 'not real life drama' and 'false hopes', applies equally to fairy tales. 'cinderella', 'the ugly duckling'.

Um, Yes? Also most of modern fantasy literature and romances. Does that make a difference? Erotica/Porn usually is a fairytale, no?

one might equally say, as ambiguous compliment, that 'cinderella', as example of its genre, 'serves a purpose' and keeps kids taken as domestic servants, from despair.

Undoubtedly. No tongue in cheek needed. Most fairytales originated back in the day when dirt poor peasant lives weren't going to get any better and the lives of their kids were going to be the same, ad infinitum so far as they could tell. How does someone avoid slitting their wrists in such circumstances? With no hope for betterment for themselves or descendants in sight? Well, you tell fairy stories which usually involve one of two things: (1) poor boy or girl by luck or wit gets to marry the aristocrat and never has to work again, (2) some evil king or queen makes a big mistake and dies and the poor folk rejoice and live happily ever after.

When you're poor, don't live in a land of opportunity and don't have "true life" American-sytle fairytales to tell your kids ("if you work hard you can grow up to be rich and/or famous! Just look at [Fill in name of poor person who got rich/famous here thanks to luck, talent, unknown criminal acts or, on rare occasions, hard work]"), you go for more fantastic leaps of faith. Especially if you're superstitious enough to believe they might actually happen...like you might really meet a magical dwarf with a hidden treasure or be granted a wish by a fairy godmother who appreciates all that hard work you've been doing....

Whatever gets you though the night. Right?

 

[xssve]

True! Porn/erotica exists first and foremost as wish-fulfillment/fantasy. I remember reading an essay on this years and years ago where the author pointed out that porn/erotica's primary aim is to present a scenario where your strangest, most embarrassing or problematic fetish would magically find it's mate and be seen as perfectly acceptable (no strings/drama/consequences). Unlike in real life, when a guy who is into pinecone sex (just made that up now) reads erotica he gets a story of a guy like him who meets a beautiful girl who--amazingly--is into pinecone sex! None of the real life drama that our guy with the pinecone fetish usually finds when he goes out on a real date: "Pinecones? Um...later!"

And we have to be fair in this instance, because (1) Why is pinecone guy gonna wanna read about sex with drama/strings/consequences? He gets that in real life, he doesn't need to read about it in fiction? and (2) "Literature" (with a capitol "L") is usually about the real world and its grand disappointments, so if pinecone guy is after a story that rings true why not just pick up something modern and literary?

Mind you, I'm not arguing that erotic writing should be just body fluid exchanges or character-less. Far from it. But I can't be quite so harsh on it being what it often is. Because what it is serves a particular purpose and was created for that purpose. At the very least, it keeps pinecone guy going with the false hope that maybe pinecone girl exists. Were it not for porn, he might end it all in despair

I agree there, I don't necessarily think dramatic themes need to do this, this is the drama we'd prefer to avoid - there are plenty of other forms of drama that could be incorporated, they may just not be as obvious.

Of course, that means work, and therein lies the rub - porn tends to work whether it's got a storyline to it or not.

Still, the democratization of the medium is creating huge economic pressures on porn producers via the proliferation of cheap, close substitutes, and one way they're fighting back is through the value added approach: Pirates is the most expensive porn movie ever produced, very CG intensive - but ultimately, a good story would be cheaper.

Like maybe a guy into pinecone sex.