BEFORE: This was probably the hardest film in this year's doc chain to link to, or so it seemed. I still feel like if the chain holds here, if the link to tomorrow's film is good, then it should be smooth sailing for the rest of the month. And I probably just jinxed it, didn't I?
Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah carry over from "American Symphony". One was listed in the IMDB as appearing archive footage here, and the other one wasn't. As always, I'm trying to suggest edits to IMDB as I go, leaving my trail of films a little more well-documented than when I passed through.
THE PLOT: Follow the rise of the most famous adult entertainment platform and the recent backlash it has received.
AFTER: Well, I can't help but feel ripped off just a bit today, I came here because the subject matter seemed very enticing, and also very American, capping off a week of very American topics, from Donald Trump to baseball to Burt Reynolds and American classical music. Porn just seemed a logical next step. No? Just me? Anyway, America is about freedom, and that's what we have in the new internet age, a lot more freedom, maybe even too much freedom online sometimes.
So the movie starts by explaining not only what Pornhub is (as if you didn't know) but also a history of what porn is, and isn't, and mansplaining how we came to be where we are. Porn used to be in the form of little Tijuana bibles, they were like very adult little comic books, and I guess before that porn was in book form and maybe even on scrolls before that. (The Vatican supposedly has a big stash of biblical porn, but I have been unable to verify this to date.). Then Hugh Hefner came along in the 1950's and printed nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in Playboy, and the whole world changed. But it was at least tasteful, until Bob Guccione and Larry Flynt came along in the 1970's. The 1980's brought VHS tapes and this thing called cable, and if you tuned in to certain UHF stations that were scrambled, you could ruin your eyesight and give yourself a headache trying to catch sight of a nibble by playing with the vertical hold.
And that's what porn was for the next 20 years or so, magazines and VHS tapes, then DVDs. When the internet came along, you could connect to a modem and maybe download a picture of a centerfold in about 6 hours, provided nobody in your house picked up the phone to make a call and broke your connection. You know what, just go down to the store and buy a Penthouse magazine, you cheap bastard, you could probably use the exercise anyway. I learned in high school that I looked very old for my age, and most newsstand vendors didn't really care who they sold magazines to, and if I went into Boston and found a "vintage" store, they didn't care at all. Those weren't just nude magazines, after all, they were "collector's items" and if some movie star like Joan Collins or Bo Derek posed in the buff, that was another one I needed for the collection.
It took the internet a while to catch on, because the porn industry was still making money from DVDs, but porn eventually finds its way into every new medium - still I'm sure that the Hollywood companies preferred it when you bought an hour-long DVD for $25 instead of signing on to a web-site and just downloading movies for $5 or cheaper. Even worse, when file-sharing sites came along it was the same problem that the music industry had with Napster and LimeWire, where one person bought a CD, ripped the tracks and then posted them, and then everyone who was internet savvy had them and didn't need to buy their own copy. But the music industry had to adapt and (eventually) embrace digital music, because even if someone didn't want to pay $10 for a whole album, they might buy individual tracks for 99 cents each, if the process was easy enough and they could then listen to those tracks on their Walkman. No, wait, Discman. No, wait, iPod? Yeah, let's go with that.
The porn industry's first attempts to stream porn files were disastrous, because everybody was doing something different - do you want to join THIS web-site for $19.99 a month, and perhaps in two weeks you will have watched every porn clip they have (you dirty animal) or do you want to find some site that will charge you by the download, will that be cheaper in the long run? Or do you just want to chance going on some pirate site and download a bunch of files you can't see, any of which could be infected with malware or ransomware or worse, just regular movies with no nudity at all?
And then an even worse problem popped up, with Pornhub allowing people to upload their own home-made pornos came the possibility that some of the acts in those clips were not consensual, either the sex was coerced or forced or recorded by a hidden camera, and all of that is illegal, although perhaps difficult to identify and prove. And this film also doc-splains that porn by definition has to be consensual where all participants are concerned, and if not, then that's not porn, it's rape. Instances kept happening where women would notify Pornhub that there was footage of them posted that they did not consent to (either the act or the posting thereof) but if they complained and Pornhub (eventually) agreed to take down that clip, there was nothing preventing the original poster or someone else from posting it again. So the victims could be victimized again and again by the same clip, or copies of that clip. Welcome to the digital age.
Is this an important issue? Of course it is, and of course nobody should see themselves in porn on the interwebs if they did not consent to making it AND allowing it to be posted. We never had "revenge porn" until there were sites like this. So it took a few years, but eventually Pornhub and sites like it had to come up with a process for verification, that the people seen in the clips were over 18, willing participants and OK with the footage being shared with the world. But this may not be why you came here to watch this movie, to learn about the legal processes that are now in place to protect people and (ideally) minimize victimization and potential sex trafficking. Maybe you just tuned in to see some nekkid people or learn about what the hot porn search terms are in each state across this vast country of ours. (What's up, Arkansas? Why is "divorced" the hot sex term that floats your boat? Do you need to talk about it?)
We do learn that Pornhub is owned by MindGeek, which is a Canadian company based in Montreal. Whoops, I guess maybe American doesn't have a lock on making porn after all. What the hell do Canadians know about porn, anyway? Isn't the whole industry based in L.A. for a reason, that being that the women (and OK, men) are way hotter out there, and it's much too cold in Canada for people to get all naked and stuff? Also, congratulations (?) for finding a way to make talking about porn boring as hell.
The world of porn is vast, potentially endless, and in the new and improved internet age, there's something for everyone (you sickos). Some sex workers now prefer the term "social influencer" and there's a change for women to control the narrative now as well as generate a positive income stream, and they can "go it alone" if you know what I mean and they don't have to perform with anyone else on camera, unless they're, you know, into that. It's not just a bunch of male directors telling women what to do or a select few writers (wait, porn has writers?) deciding who should do what to whom on camera.
We're also reaching a point where AI is getting involved, and so someday people may not need to be involved at all, we're already at a point where porn can be deepfaked or face-swapped, so you can see what your favorite actor, actress or cartoon character would look like if they made a pprn movie - and really, there are no limits except the ones on your imagination. Of course, there are legal issues, you can't make a XXX film where Marilyn Monroe has graphic sex with James Dean, for example, without hearing from the attorneys who represent their estates. But (and this is key) you CAN STILL make that film with the tech we have now, you just can't post it somewhere without maybe getting in trouble. But films like that are already out there. To me, that's a much more interesting topic than getting bogged down in the legal issues behind people uploading their own sex tapes. But your mileage, of course, may vary.
(Still, if you want to invest in some software and make your own AI or deepfaked parody porn, whether that's "Star Trek: the Next Penetration" or "Rodzilla vs. Dong", for PERSONAL use only, jeez, as a society we're already there. Just remember you can't get sued unless you share it with the world.)
Also starring Gwen Adora, Asa Akira, Michael Bowe, Whitney Burgoyne, Siri Dahl, Cherie DeVille, Natassia Dreams, Wolf Hudson, Allie Knox, Nicholas Kristof, Bree Mills, Martin Patriquin, Noelle Perdue, Dani Pinter, Yiota Souras, Michael Stabile,
with archive footage of Charlie Angus, Feras Antoon, Allie Awesome, Ginger Banks, Baby Girl Bella, Benrd Bergmair, Sam Butler, Serenity Ccx, Han Dong, DreamL0ver, Serena Fleites, Jade Jordan, Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Lisa LaFlamme, Lalia Mickelwait, Mary Moody, Kumail Nanjani (last seen in "Eternals"), Benjamin Nolot, Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Brenda Shanahan, Shannon Stubbs, David Tasslio, Fabian Thylmann, Corey Urman, Arnold Viersen, Chris Warkentin, Ye/Kanye West (also last seen in "Listening to Kenny G")
RATING: 3 out of 10 members of Canadian Parliament. (heh, heh, members...)
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