Kiss in the diaphragm
In fact, the first tape, which immediately after its exit the indignant public attributed to pornographic and "depraved", was removed just a year after Lumiere's "Arrival of the train." The film was called "Kiss," and it was created in 1896 by Thomas Edison himself, who made a name for himself not so much on inventions as on clever and prudent entrepreneurship. The unpretentious "film" showed how easy it is to guess by the name, the kiss of two Broadway actors - Mary Irwin and John Rais, stars of the popular production "Widow Jones". It turned out, to capture such moments on film - there is an insult to public morality. One indignant critic called the "Kiss" neither more nor less "a demonstration of beastly lust that a civilized man can not endure.
Meanwhile, the film gained popularity due to the original way of viewing: it was shown in special booths containing only one person (the prototype of the present booths for a peep show), and for each viewing it was necessary to throw a coin into a special slot. Yes, and in the world box office "Kiss" collected a decent amount: in Moscow he was shown at the Metropole cinema for five rubles, and in American "cinematographs" they were even cut for censorship reasons: from three minutes to two. Yes, the sample of the new film genre lasted just that much. And most of it was occupied not by the kiss itself, but by the gentle cooing of a couple, which we are not destined to hear, because to the sound cinema still had to live. However, the very same "Arrival of the train" lasted only 50 seconds, but this was enough for the public to leave the first cinemas in a panic.
The porno industry by the end of the XIX century already existed, although until now the top of its development were daguerreotypes of "hot" content - both in the form of tender erotica and explicit porn - stories of the popular industry with demonstrations of genitals and copulation scenes. "Moving pictures" opened the possibility to get a completely new experience - "the effect of presence." Suddenly, the photographs became chaste works of art in comparison with two "as if alive" people in the whole screen, kissing the viewer in front of their eyes. Henceforth, the human imagination has another powerful stimulant, as well as the ability to embody almost any imagination.
The porno industry continued to tread on the heels of high art. In the same year of 1896 in France, the first pictures of sexual content were removed, whose subjects are exhausted by the names: "The couple go to bed" and "Indiscreet". And the first surviving porn film is dated 1907th year. El Sartorio was shot in Argentina (the name of the director was not preserved by the story), and its plot was quite simple: the orgies of three naked girls bathing in the river are interrupted by a daemon that does not know where from, forcing young ladies to have sex with him. By the way, already in this picture we used the innovative reception of a "zoom" camera - then to view the process in all its details. And the German first-born of the genre, whose anniversary we celebrate, was called Am Abend ("In the Evening"). In it, a man peeked at the keyhole for a masturbating woman, then went into the room and, as Averchenko wrote, "everything is turning around! .." As you can see, since then the German porn industry has taken a step closer in terms of ideas for scenarios.
However, before the heyday of German porn - the history of the popular industry was still far away, while the olympic piquant cinema was occupied by the freedom-loving and uninhibited French. Up until the 30s of the 20th century, the name "French film" was an elegant euphemism for pornography, roughly like modern "adult films".
Sex by the rules and without
Meanwhile, elements of "debauchery" also penetrate into the big cinema, which thus silently acknowledged its kinship with the "low genre". In 1912, the Italian film "Ad Dante" first appeared naked man, a front view. And there was no sexual content in the picture: it was the adaptation of the "Divine Comedy", in which the main character contemplates sinners in hell.
American model and actress Audrey Manson became the first actress "with a name", stripped on the screen - it was in 1915 in the film "Inspiration", where she plays a beautiful model (the film, unfortunately, was not preserved). The fate of this girl of rare charm was tragic: her lover killed his wife, and Audrey was accused of complicity - and although the girl was acquitted, and the murderer was executed, Manson's career was over. In the late 1920s, Audrey became obsessed with reason and was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where she died, forgotten by everyone, already in 1996.
The theme of same-sex love was first revealed in the German film of 1919 "Otherwise than Others", and the first gay porn "Telegraphist", surprisingly, appeared much later - in the 1920s all in the same freedom-loving France. And in the first lesbian kiss on the screen, Marlene Dietrich ("Morocco", a painting of 1930) herself took part, which is not surprising: the goddess of a black and white screen never concealed her bisexuality.
In the 1920s, for a "hot picture" there was already a certain set of cliches that were transferred from one film to another, which was filmed for nothing, mostly from one angle and in decorations like a white sheet stretched out on the wall. Usually these were scenes of heterosexual pleasures of a single couple, usually spouses (of course, they were portrayed by actors who were not in any legal relationship with each other, but at least the appearance of decency was observed). In any case, this was the case in Europe: in the first American porn film ("The Trip" of 1915) a group sex scene has already been shown. And approximately since 1925, the orgies in pornographic pictures have become almost commonplace. One of these tapes - "The Lady's Cabinet" - can now be viewed in Prague, in the Museum of Sex. According to legend, she was removed by personal order of the Spanish King Alfonso XIII. This is a story about a doctor who has sex with his patients, and his wife avenges him by dragging a servant and a maid to his bed at the same time.
In the 30s, among the creators of porn - the history of popular industry appeared a fashion for interracial intimate scenes. True, not only fair-skinned ladies - to imagine an Asian or a Negro who has sex with a white woman, the society at that time could not and in a terrible dream. In addition, in addition to the possibilities of sound cinema, the directors of pornographic films discovered the montage - and with it the opportunity to arrange a real kaleidoscope of poses and foreshortening, with an easy movement of scissors, removing all unnecessary.
Porn boom
The 50s, with their "baby boom" and ubiquitous interest in the joys of the flesh, even though they were being blamed for public morality, provided porn films with many opportunities: the demand grew - the supply also grew. On the wave of this interest appeared the magazine "Playboy" - its first issue was published in 1953. The porno of those years was hardly different from the modern one: it was already completely colored, the actresses began wearing erotic lingerie, stockings and high-heeled shoes, as well as doing epilation of the bikini zone. In addition, girls and men, who were previously nameless, were given the right to the lines in the credits. So the first porn stars appear.
But the uninhibited 60's did not bring anything new to pornography - except that the erotic video spread: in an age of free love and contraceptive pills, people gradually got rid of complexes and sought to declare this to the whole world. Perhaps, interest in porn films has not increased in so far as real life in places has been much more exciting. It is symptomatic that the first picture of a non-erotic content in which actors actually had sex rather than imitating passion was filmed in 1962 - it's a Swedish film called "They Call Us" Mods. " But the genre "for adults" received public recognition: in 1969 the first of all countries legalized pornography Germany. That's where the shaft of German porn began - the history of the popular industry, with its busty Valkyries, and also the unforgettable "wunderbar" and "fantasy"!
Even earlier , in 1962, in Berlin, opened the first sex shop, under the decently named "Special Shop of Marriage Hygiene". Its founder, what is interesting, became a woman - Beata Uze. In her youth she was a pilot and the first woman stuntman, after the war she popularized the calendar method of protection (her mother, from which Beata learned about these subtleties, was a gynecologist) and, contrary to public outrage, began to sell condoms and books on sexual topics first by mail, and then in its own network of stores. Ahead of Beata was the conquest of the pornographic film market and the opening of the erotic television channel, as well as the Museum of eroticism in Berlin.
Beata Uze and creator of Playboy Hugh Hefner anticipated a new era - the golden age of porn, the 70s. It was then that the legendary pictures "Deep Throat", "Behind the Green Door", "The Devil in Miss Jones" were shot. Porn stars, Linda Lovelace, Vanessa Del Rio, Ron Jeremy, John Holmes (he inspired the movie "Boogie Nights") win crazy fame.
The word "porn" entered the everyday life, going to the "adult" cinemas, which were legalized in the USA in 1970, became fashionable - if you remember, in the "Taxi Driver", filmed in 1976, the hero De Niro leads the girl on the first date in such a cinema, and is very surprised by her indignation. Now serious filmmakers do not disdain more than frank scenes in their films, which are taken to festivals: "Decameron" by Paolo Pasolini, "The Last Tango in Paris" by Bernardo Bertolucci. Hollywood actors sometimes start their career with porn - like, for example, Sylvester Stallone, first appeared on the screen in 1970 in the movie "The party at the Kitty and the Herd."
But the 1970s were also the time of the biggest scandals in the porn industry. The victorious march of the genre did not escape the attention of the champions of morality. In 1974, Larry Flynt released the first issue of the magazine Hustler, and in 1978 he was charged with obscenity - and he won the trial. His main argument was the following paradox: why shooting from the battlefield, showing blood and mutilated bodies, are considered decent, and the display of beautiful naked bodies - obscene? But during the trial, Flint attacked a racist maniac, angered by the fact that the Hustler pages were not only white models. As a result of the attack, Larry remained permanently chained to his wheelchair for life.
I got rid of the lawyers and the "Deep Throat", the first porn film released on wide screens, and to this day remains the most profitable porn: with a budget of 25 thousand dollars, it earned 600 million. In 23 US states, the picture was banned for display. However, the biggest scandal erupted when the star of the film Linda Lovelace stated that her husband Chuck Traynor, who regularly beat her, forced her to shoot, which was a strong argument in favor of feminists who often talk about pornography as exploitation of women. Linda became an activist of the Women Against Pornography movement, but was killed in a car accident in 2002, without making a public career.
"Deep Throat", like other porn films of the "golden age", now looks much more fun than the modern "hot video". The old porn is witty and self-ironic (in the "Deep Throat" of which there is only an assembly gluing of the male orgasm with the rocket launch frames!), Its heroes are uninhibited and very emotional, each has an individual sex technique. In short, many of today's porn movies and videos look compared to this feast of flesh - plastic and thoroughly hypocritical.
Pornstar Factory
80's and 90's - the era of the final consolidation of genre pornographic stamps. The fashion includes obscene parody of a famous movie - from the "Terminator" and "Star Wars" to "Nightmares on Elm Street." In all the rest, porn does become the same, "everything is standard", everything is done: preliminaries and ejaculation. It's not for nothing that the queen of porn is now considered to be the standard blue-eyed busty blonde Jenna Jamison. On the set of training techniques that make the viewer believe in the impossible - like fake sperm and local anesthesia for particularly tough moments. Porn, positioning itself as the most outspoken genre, turns out to be the most fake in reality.
Pornography of the highest class has become quite respectable, for the last 25 years it even has its own award, which is called "porn Oscar", - AVN Awards. And she has more nominations than the Oscar Cinema: they reward not only the acting talents, but also the technical skills, and the last ones do not mean the art of the operator and the editor - there are nominations for the best blowjob, the best scene of anal sex and that similar elements of the process. Gay-porn, first received the award in special nominations, got a separate prize - GayVN Awards.
Continuing to imitate a big movie, porn borrows from him and technical achievements: so, after the recent noisy success of the fantastic (in all senses of the word) James Cameron "Avatar", the same Larry Flint announced his intention to release the first ZB-porn. The directors of the revolutionary cinema called Tinto Brass himself. True, the creators are somewhat embarrassed by the fact that the opportunity to show such a picture is not in all theaters.
Throughout its history, porn not only borrowed devices from a decent "older brother", but also something shared with the public. For example, the filters for movie cameras were first used by the operators of porn films - it was necessary to somehow hide the faulty skin of other actors, and at the same time irritation after shaving, scuffing and abrasions from multiple takes. Creams for depilation, so popular due to its convenience, first used porn actresses. For them, the invisible female condom was invented (femidom). In the 1980s, during the war of video formats Sony Betamax and VHS, the latter also won because on VHS-cassettes came out pornography. And in the late XX century, when porn won the Internet, it was on porn sites that for the first time appeared streaming video convenient for online viewing.
Only those unfamiliar with old pornography can think that the current "adult films" are more frank than the retro-pictures. After all, at all times pornography performed a completely unambiguous function, according to Georgy Selyukov, a sexologist, MD: "Porn has always been done so that the viewer - usually a man - could put himself in the place of one of the heroes and thanks to the mechanism of psychological projection experience excitement and sexual satisfaction. The only thing that differs our time from the former is that porn has now become more accessible than before, thanks to the Internet. "
However, if you look not at the form, but at the content, it seems that the audience at the beginning of XX and the end of the XXI century liked the same thing, no matter how the fashion changed. In this sense, porn is a very conservative genre, no matter how paradoxical this conclusion may seem. And what can be added to the process that has not changed in the history of mankind?