I think romantic relationships in mainstream TV and film are absolutely unrealistic.
In fact, ironically enough, I was talking to my wife about one of her TV shows that I hate (Grey’s Anatomy) a while back, and I called it “feelings porn.” Much as porn shows improbably proportioned people doing improbable stuff in the bedroom, romantic dramas feature people saying improbably scripted-sounding and timely stuff at moments of high conflict or drama. It creates an unrealistic expectation of what your real-life significant other is going to say when he accidentally forgot your anniversary.
I’m having a hard time seeing that as much better than rape, ethically speaking.
I don’t disagree that her story isn’t necessarily typical of porn actresses at the time or today (though it isn’t necessarily atypical either). I’m sure some people have bad experiences, depending in part on era and on which segment of the industry they work in. Some people have good experiences. Some people are motivated to misremember – positively or negatively – their experiences, or to obfuscate or dissemble.
Since you mention romantic relationships, and since JohnClay mentioned the Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie Don Jon, I thought I’d point out the uniquely interesting “moral” of that movie.
In Don Jon, the guy is shown to be highly immature because of his addiction to porn, and he has to learn that REAL love is nothing like porn, and that he has to give up his pornographic fantasies if he’s ever going to have a real relationship.
So far, so conventional.
But what’s NOT so conventional is that Scarlett Johanson’s character, whose head is filled with romantic fantasies (fueled by hundreds of chick flicks and bodice-ripping novels) is ALSO shown to be immature. SHE needs to grow up too, and learn that her romantic fantasies are no more realistic than the guy’s sexual fantasies, that a REAL relationship is no more like a Harlequin romance than it is like a Jenna Jameson film.
Women often complain, justly, that porn gives men dangerously wrong ideas about love. But few movies or books ever dare ask whether WOMEN’S fantasies aren’t every bit as unrealistic and dangerous.
No, of COURSE Jenna Jameson isn’t a “real” woman. But Fabio and Christian Grey aren’t real men, either.
Sure. If real life relationships were that interesting as a whole, they wouldn’t take “reality” television and chop up and edit the happenings all to hell to artificially create drama and interest.
In the documentary (available on Netflix) Hot Girls Wanted, they address this. If the ‘barely legal teen’ actually lasts a few years instead of washing out, they are better off getting the boob job. It just doesn’t sell in that particular niche.
For those who might want to watch, I thought it was ok. To steal a line from a reviewer, it doesn’t shine a spotlight on the industry, more like a porchlight.
“Everyone that watches “Deep Throat” is watching me being raped"
Unless she’s claiming there is such a thing as “rape by proxy”.
None of the other actors in the film believed she was there other than willingly. They did believe Chuck Traynor was a jerk, and the director found that the only way to get a good performance was to make sure Traynor was not on the set. Then, she was friendly, happy and enthusiastic.
Claiming that everyone involved in the film, a low-budget film that wound up making, by some estimates as much as Titanic (which was stolen by the films Mafia backers). None of the other actors, the director or any of the crew has ever, to my knowledge, supported Linda’s claim. And before she left porn and fell in with a bunch of anti-porn activists, she had stated in numerous interviews that she was doing this entirely of her own volition. And in the two books she wrote (or had ghost-written) during the 70s.
…or if they only got paid a few thousand for a film which made hundreds of millions, and that money was taken by Chuck Traynor.
The weird part is that, post-Linda, Traynor was married for ten years to Marilyn Chambers. Either he mellowed quite a bit, he was not the monster Linda claimed or Chambers also sought out an abuser.
Straight guys are far, far less likely in real have sex with another man in real life than in porn. Then there’s the external ejaculation thing Jophiel mentioned; I’ve not had that happen in real life, at least not on purpose.
We got caught and my partner reflexively tried to stand up and ended up cumming on my forehead. :o
I was hanging out at a friend’s video store, and a black customer came in, trying to find some all-black porn. Tons of interracial porn in stock, mostly white women with black men, and fewer black women with white men, but no films featuring black men and women.
The problem is that '70s porn is all withdrawal, almost always ending in a facial.
There’s almost nothing that doesn’t exist in some porn genre. There’s almost no such thing as “mainstream” porn any more. Everything is a fetish of some kind.
Porn vids generally end before the cleanup. Real sex is messy, can get queefy or farty depending on the hole. You will not always get off every single time in real life. Boners die sometimes. You might try a position and can’t really get the angle right because the bed is too low/high and have to switch it up semi-awkwardly.
Oh, I know that. There’s something for everyone out there.
When I was in college (early 1990s), I worked with a straight guy who had a lesbian roommate, and one night, he came home and she and her butch friends were all watching a lesbian porno movie. First of all, he asked me if women ever got together to watch porn like men sometimes do (see footnote), and then told me that he had no idea that there was such a thing as lesbian porn. I told him, “Hey, if people do it, someone’s filmed it!”
Footnote: I never have, but I’ve had friends who did, but not to get off or anything. They would give it the MST3K treatment, watch it on fast forward, things like that.
