So we’re all aware of all the cliches of conventional american porn. It got me wondering about what other cultures expect to see in their pornos. People often bash the whole fake boobs/blond/shaved look of female porn stars, but is other porn really different in look and style?
The only example i’ve seen is Japanese porn- women doing humiliating things in public, often looking like they are crying when they are having sex, pixxelated genitalia, bukkake,etc. I figure other cultures have their own gimmicks.
You know, that would make a funny gag gift- Porns of the world. Like those beer samplers they sell. Only porn.
Yeah, I used to date someone who did that crap during sex. Feigning pain. Whining. It was fake, over the top, and a complete turnoff. The icing on the cake is that she was freaking nuts even when we weren’t having sex. Anyway, I didn’t know this was ‘a thing’ in Japanese porn until quite some time after we broke up.
Paul Theroux, in The Pillars of Hercules, noted the prevalence of anal in Italian porn. When he asked the locals about it, he was told it was just their traditional form of birth control.
A lot of it is specific to what’s taboo and fetishized by a culture. Mark Twain wrote of how the Germans proudly displayed manure in their front yards, to show off the size of theri livestock holdings. It’s odd but not entierly surprising this would emerge in their sexuality.
That said, having read The Sword and the Chrysanthemum, I have no idea where the whole Bukkake thing came about. And as for Brazillian flatus porn: I’m at sea (with a stiff breeze filling the sails, thank you).
US (straight) porn cliches include bleach blond hair, shaved bodies, having sex with high heels on, spitting on vaginas for lube purposes, breast implants, contrived plots (plumber/pizza guy/teacher) etc. And funky music.
The whole Bukkake thing is fascinating. Only the Japanese would come up (no pun intended) with something like that. It’s all about humiliation, which the Japanese are apparently into in a big way. Similarly, they have a lot of sadism/mach porn and it is very elaborate. Again, humiliation.
I think in a culture where saving face is monumentally important thing, losing face in a dramatic way becomes sexualized and fetishized.
I dont know if it has any connection but it is also a fact that Japanese women are ‘easier’ than others.
I seem to remember that it was French porn that started the whole ‘chick spits onto your dick’ thing, which personally I find really really gross.
But ah, the Japanese! One of the funniest bits G4’s Web Soup did was the host put up a “Rate the country by its porn weirdness” tote-board which went:
*
“Ok, let’s see Norway’s way down at the bottom, next up is America, we’re kinda weird I guess, then Germany is up there a bit more and- OH NO! A Japanese man is humping the tote-board…”*
A “hot” (one not wearing a parka and snow boots) female is sitting in a Tim Hortons. A moose strolls in. “O Canada” (disco version) begins playing in the background. They go to a hockey game. The end.
There is a truly astonishing amount of Italian nun porn, which I assume is due to the power of the Catholic church in Italy. The British love their “girl next door” porn, which is a welcome antidote to the plastic American porn - the Ben Dover series is my favorite. For years, Swedish porn giant Private featured something you rarely see in American porn - smiles. Every one of their photo sets would have the woman or women in the scene smiling directly to the camera, usually while being double-penetrated, a welcome contrast to the slack-jawed “me so horny” expression worn by US porn starlets.
I can’t speak of other cultures, but I’ve noticed in the US there seems to be a growing prevalence of spitting, women gagging while performing fellatio, and men grabbing women by the throat during sex. None of the above is appealing to me, yet suddenly I can barely watch a scene without one of these things happening. Is the Japanese humiliation thing bleeding over to American porn? And do most men really enjoy this stuff? I don’t get it.
I read in “Confessions of a Video Store Clerk” that most American porn was made for a hard-core (heh) market of guys who rented, like, a dozen porn flicks a week, every week. Judging by how freaking weird and unpleasant American porn has gotten, with all the spitting, strangling, slapping, ass to mouth and so forth, this seems very credible to me.