I think it has something to do with the marketing budget as well. Like Gray Goose vodka, erotica is sold as a premium product to an upscale customer for an inflated price. It might or might not have better tits in it.
You have certainly started an interesting topic here.
From the posts I see that there is some wild differences in opinion.
I’m not quite sure myself other than the obvious where a movie which categorizes itself as porn would be porn. On the other hand, there are some examples mentioned such as “Zach & Miri make a porno”, “Showgirls” and even “Flesh Gordon”. None of which I would consider porn. Flesh Gordon was a campy comedy based on Flash Gordon, and although it showed some nudity and simulated sex acts, it was far from pornographic.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned other movies where they show real sex acts.
So allow me to provide some examples and thoughts.
First and maybe an obvious one is Caligula. There is some real graphic sex scenes in this movie, but it is controversial in that the producer Bob Guccione added the explicit scenes against the wishes of the director Tinto Brass. As such, perhaps Caligula is not a good example.
Realm of the senses a Japanese movie based on a true story about a woman obsessed with a married man. Very graphic, and I would say at times erotic scenes. But the story is sad as you follow the woman becoming so obsessed it eventually makes her insane. It ends with her killing the man and cutting off his penis. Also quite graphic, and may I say it made me cringe. Realm, to me, wasn’t porno even though it had those very explicit sex acts. It was required for the story.
Or how about Baise-Moi a French movie. Depicting a very graphic rape scene. The girls go on a violent rampage afterwards. I’ve heard it depicted as a hardcore Thelma & Lois. But it is somewhat serious, in a movie sense, as to how they take revenge on society which basically shaped them. The fact is, the two main actresses were real porn actresses, from what I understand, the director couldn’t find mainstream actresses for the graphic scene, so he turned to these porn actresses who had no problems with doing that scene (and later other sex scenes). Again, I wouldn’t call this porn. Nothing exciting about rape nor rampage killing for that matter. (Side note Baise-Moi means “Fuck Me” in French).
Getting a bit long here, but there are other movies like this like:
The Wayward Cloud (Taiwan) (Fantastic, a bit mind blowing)
The Brown Bunny (USA) (Boring)
Shortbus (USA) (Interesting)
And more, but I haven’t seen them all and I can’t recall some of them now.
Point is, where real hardcore sex acts are shown, if it is within a context of a legitimate movie where the act is important for the story, I would not consider it pornography. Although I must concede that there may be instances where it’s added gratuitously. (I have to admit, The Brown Bunny may have been such as the movie was so bad).
But the sex scenes were the only reason I wanted to see it. IIRC, they were the only redeeming quality.
Which is why I did say it may not have been a good example.
However, the movie itself I didn’t think was that bad. Some great acting by some very good actors. You may be surprised if you watched the whole thing instead of fast forwarding to the orgy scene.
The Office of Film & Literature Classification (or whatever they call themselves nowadays) here have a notation for R-rated “Adult” movies- “Mainly Concerned With Sex”, which I’ve always thought sums it up pretty well.
Personally, I’d say that porn is movies or images substantially devoted to showing people engaged in sex acts, and to which the average person (not applying the extremes of Rule 34) might want to masturbate to whilst viewing.
I’m not sure how true the “Excuse Plot” qualifer is nowadays either, as there are definitely quite a few porn films with respectable attempts at an actual plot or storyline to accompany the hardcore sex (although the emphasis is still, understandably, on the hardcore sex.)
I would like to add that Pron is devoid of any emotional attachment what so ever. In movie sex there is the pretending of emotional intimacy and couples making their own “home movies” can have a lot of fun. It’s funny as a guy I was into sex scenes in movies but when I saw my first porn it was like , what the hell is this! I was completely turned off by the artificial purely mechanical motions of the “couple”.
I am guessing that when the title of this thread refereed to “porn” they meant only motion pictures…
to me porn can be a live show,a movie, or a story. I actually like written porn…sometimes a lot more then a movie! But then again sometimes a live sex show is even better
Movies: Any movie where people actually engage in sex acts on camera (hardcore) or simulating sex acts is the entire purpose of the movie’s existence (softcore).
Print: Pictures of naked people, even if they aren’t actually having sex, but not including things like pictures of naked tribal women in NatGeo or humorous stuff like mooning or gross out stuff. Playboy is porn, not good porn, but porn nonetheless in my definition.
I suspect you have only seen the now released DVD/VHS tape. I saw it when it was released in theaters, and it had far more explicit sex than the version you can get today. That one is very soft core.
Isn’t it usually the other way around? I haven’t seen the question, but it’s certainly my understanding that the DVD version usually has more footage (of whatever nature) in it than what the cinema release was.
TV Tropes notes (rightly, IMHO) that the bigger the label on the front of the DVD (typically covering a woman’s breasts) saying UNRATED! or something like that, the less likely it is to have anything “interesting” in it.
Yeah those *titillation dwarfs *are porn all right.
(Bolding mine of course, sorry to do this to your thoughtful reply B.Serum but that phrase just sorta jumped out at me if you know what I mean)
I’ll back that up. I saw the original version in an art house showing. There was a lot more sex. The scene where the black Amazon does Dale Ardor was WAAAAAY hotter, and longer, than what we see nowadays.
I’ll never forget the titillation dwarfs from “Kentucky Fried Movie” in the “Catholic High School Girls In Trouble” scene. Now THAT was gratuitous use of a titillation dwarf!
You’ve seen the data showing that it was not true in this case. Anyhow, that is true for movies cut for general release, not movies that do out as porn.
The video version really pissed me off. The cuts not only reduced the spiciness of it, but it also made the continuity very jumpy, and destroyed the quality of the story. Removing the sex scenes from Flesh Gordon was obscene.
I’ve hoped for years that the child of some vice cop will come across the footage that was supposedly destroyed. There is definitely hard-core action in the surviving footage. The scenes in Wang’s Throne Room with the orgy on the floor some hardcore survived the chopping. Right after “Did the nasty spy frighten my babies?” you can see several acts of masturbation going on at the same time, female hands stroking dicks and even fellatio and cunnilingus.
Post 56 reported.