Porn Convention

The annual porn convention (Whorefest?) is going on in Vegas this weekend. Actually, it's two conventions in one, as the technology convention is on the floor beneath it (usually). I'm not there and I have no real intentions of ever attending either (though I received invitations for years), but I have read about this for years now and I wanted to address a few things I read in this BBC article on the event:

I watch porn as much as anyone (any regular person - I certainly don't spend hours a day looking for it or anything) and I don't think there's really anything wrong with it from a moral or religious standpoint. It is what it is: people having sex. That's really all it is and I don't think there's anything wrong with people having sex or with watching them.

My problem with pornography is the same problem I have with shows like Jackass, and it's pretty cut-and-dried: things don't magically become legal just because you film them. See, porn is, literally, filmed prostitution - that's all it is; those people aren't acting: they're not pretending to have sex and an audition for that line of work doesn't involve reading lines! And that's my problem with that - the whole nine - porn, Jackass, Borat, all those kinds of "reality" works.

And these people trying to make it into something it's not is dangerous and offensive. I'm not offended by naked people having sex on film; I'm offended that some snarky asshole calls it "acting" and expects me to accept that. In that article, some hooker (because that's what porn people are!) notes what I've been saying for years now, that porn is "mainstream" and there's no way to stop it. The numbers quoted are what make this a dangerous thing: an estimated $52 billion a year industry with over 200 porn films being made in America every week (porn industry people deny all of these numbers and have always insisted they are much lower, but they're real snarky assholes)!!!

But she's right: it's mainstream now and we, as a society, have to decide how we are going to handle that. It's reprehensible to me that our society thinks of pornography as being mainstream entertainment, while condemning those involved in it. Especially since the industry preys on young people - the disillusioned and disenfranchised, people who are down on their luck. And these people, while I believe they are aware of what they are doing, are not fully apprised of just how their one scene can affect their entire life. One 10-minute scene can be shown, repackaged, and redistributed any number of ways in perpetuity.

And don't think they only spent 10 minutes filming that scene, either.

My problem is that a lot of the people who make one scene tend to regret it and there's nothing they can do about it once it's done. How does someone like that move on with their life? At that point, it becomes extortion, and I know for a fact that this has directly led to the ruin of many otherwise good and upstanding people who would have contributed greatly to society in other venues.

Regardless of popular convictions and outlooks, based on some Bizarro World "morality" half-assed cribbed from a vengeful God, Cotton Mathers sort of ideology, we don't have the right to know everything about everyone and it's not up to us to hold them responsible for their actions in perpetuity. I feel the same way about criminal records: if someone has served their time and "paid their debt to society," then the debt should be erased. The time has finally come where we are forced to put the whole "you got what you deserved" mentality behind us and move toward "forgive and forget."

Because by the time the next generation comes to fruition, our world leaders will have appeared in porn films. And why not? We all watch them; it's mainstream entertainment.

But the real kicker is this: no one can uphold a contract for pornography. If you have ever appeared in one of these scenes or films, etc., and you wish to get your image out of it and have that film destroyed, all you need do is tell them that and somehow come up with the money to fight it. You can't uphold an illegal contract and you can't make something into something it's not. See, porn is not acting, it's filmed prostitution, and if you uphold a contract for hired sex, that legally sets the precedent which makes prostitution legal!

The same holds true if you enter a contract to buy drugs or take out a hit on someone or any kind of contract involving criminal activity and/or illegal goods and services: the contract cannot be upheld in a court of law. And the only reason more people haven't challenged this is because if they wish they hadn't done the scene or film or whatever, they certainly don't want to draw attention to it in a court of law - after all, that would defeat the purpose (not wanting people to see the "performance"), wouldn't it? And that's an extortive catch-22.

See, pornography may be a moral/religious grey area, but legally, it's very cut-and-dried: prostitution is illegal, and that's why vice can shut down a shoot anytime they want. They just get paid to look the other way, which is also illegal, but who you gonna tell? When in Rome, do as Romans do, right?

And, while we're on the subject, 200 films a week?! That's... excessive, to say the very least.