Until a couple of days ago, half of my wardrobe was
filled with cardboard boxes left over from our last move.
Since my friend is coming to stay for a week, I cleared the
cupboard out. There were several boxes of kids' clothes (one of the good things
about not finishing unpacking for a year is that by then the clothes are too
small for the children and you can throw them away in good conscience),
a box of assorted junk - necklaces, half-pairs of earrings, little notes
someone passed me in form three, one strand of pubic hair, address books and the
like. If such an assorted amalgam can be said to have any "like" -
and a box of old, unlabeled, video cassettes, left behind when my
ex husband walked.
So I decided to see what the videos were of.
Once the children were safely asleep, I put the first video tape in, and
pressed both mute and play.
George Lucas' face appeared, so I turned mute off and
listened.
The first three tapes were Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi, all with introductions by Mr. Lucas.
"you nasty-minded person" I said to myself. "Sure,
these are pirated, but that is not what you were expecting to see, is it?
Tisk tisk"
Feeling thoroughly chastened, I went on to the next tape.
A time coded tape of two films: Mars and Stranger in the House
Now, nicking Time Codes from work is a little more naughty than just making
illegal copies of films, but it's still not quite what I expected.
So I felt quite resigned as I slid the last tape home.
A picture formed on the screen, and it took me quite some time to resolve it.
There was the back of a blonde woman's head, moving in an unmistakeable
manner "Ah ha! Gotcha!" I think, and then I notice the
background of the picture is not quite what I would have expected.
It's... darker.
More sort of...
...?
furry?
Suddenly the picture zoomed out and I laughed.
This was by no means the "clean" porn I had been expecting since I
found the tapes.
This was a woman fellating a large, hairy, and highly embarrassed German
Shepherd.
So I watched.
I watched three hours of women with plaster smiles attempting sex with two German
shepards, one of which was only a pup, and both of which were dreadfully embarrassed
and confused about the whole thing, and with a couple of horses, neither of
which ever got a proper erection.
The animals' lack of interest did not seem to deter the actresses' though,
and the sight of a woman in a black, lace, crotchless body-stocking
trying to thread an eight or ten inch long lump of mostly uninterested flesh
(which looked remarkably like an uncooked sausage) into her cunt, failing,
trying again, sort-of succeeding, and then manually pulling and pushing it in
and out was... very sad.
I thought about the woman who was being filmed. How was she feeling? Not
excited - No one could hold the contortions of the horse woman during
excitement, and the dog woman had a dead face. I thought about the embarrassed
smiles on the faces of the dogs. They wanted to do the Right Thing... if
someone could just explain why the hell someone was messing with them like
that...
And then I thought about the audience.
Isn't the whole point of pornographic films to arouse the viewer? How can
an inept and mechanical display of simulating sex by obviously uninterested
entities be arousing, to anyone? I can understand that watching someone do
something you would like to do/have done to you and look as though they are
enjoying it can be arousing, no matter what the genre.
But this leaves me mystified.
And sad.