people

This page considers 'adult content' industry people and primers.

It covers -

• wetware - the people in the industry
• primers and other publications

     wetware

What of the people in the industry: the people in front of the lights and those behind the cameras or the digital cash registers?

Information about careers, recruitment patterns and remuneration is particularly anecdotal. The production of online content (and more generally work practices in the production of erotic images and texts) has received less academic attention than that focussed on sex workers.

It is thus difficult to assess with any confidence claims that people behind the camera in Australia and overseas have a steady income, that male performers receive better pay than female performers but have a shorter career, or that most personnel are self-recruited.

Does the online industry liberate employees?

Asia Carrera claimed that

It has been a real boon for me in countless ways, but building and maintaining a successful site that stands out in a vast sea of cyber-smut requires unimaginably long hours in front of a monitor, intensive cyber-education, and a lot more dedication than people would imagine. I used to try to convince other starlets that the Internet was a ticket to financial freedom, control over their own images and personae, maintaining and expanding their fan bases, etc., but I've given up. Unfortunately, most porn stars just don't have the time to dedicate to the task.

A hosting specialist similarly claimed that the industry embraces

students and retirees, attorneys, accountants, bankers, and bums. Single mothers who want to work from home while raising their children, and disabled people who are unable to function in a more traditional work environment. White collar, blue collar, or no collar ... We all have our reasons; we all have our dreams. The challenge before us is to transform our dreams into reality. All it takes is knowledge, effort, faith, and persistence

and, perhaps in an ironic echo of rhetoric about 'homesteading the digital frontier', that

the adult marketplace on the Web is an underdeveloped cottage industry, which gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to participate in a true free market. ... Most industry participants are individual webmasters or exhibitionists who work out of their homes rather than big offices. Since the market isn't dominated by a shrinking number of conglomerates with huge market caps, many small businesses can compete effectively for their own small share of the marketplace. These small businesses are able to compete due to the taboo that surrounds pornographic content. Most major companies won't engage in the production or export of adult content because their shareholders won't allow them. This provides individuals and small businesses the unfettered opportunity to service the large demand for such content all by their lonesome.

US figure Legs McNeil commented, presumably with some hyperbole, that

It's actually harder to get into the business than you'd think, because there are so many people who want to be in it these days, and I think a lot of people, and this goes for most of my friends in it, they always say that "we get to have sex in front of the camera, and not on the casting couch." They like the honesty of it. The people in the porn industry are thoroughly disgusted by Hollywood, by the traditional film industry, and they think that the traditional, mainstream Hollywood film industry is much more immoral and disgusting and evil. They all have horror stories about Hollywood. I think, without fail, they prefer the porn industry, or just the honesty. They're not big fans of Hollywood, probably because Hollywood is always coming around. They have a term for them. They're called 'Porno Marks'. Those are straight people who are enamored with the porn world, and people in the porn world have nothing but loathing for them. They're not big fans of Hollywood. Hollywood is disgusting.

     primers and other publications

Guides on how to be a pornmeister exist but largely aren't available through mainstream outlets such as Borders or Amazon.com.

We've noted titles such as Sex Sells: How to Build an Adult Website by AMD Inc. or Logging In: An Ethical Guide to Building and Marketing Your Adult Web Site by Magdalene Meretrix & Robert Furtkamp. Much expertise is presumably tacit and experiential, passed on by word of mouth or on the job, rather than academic works and certification.

Would-be pornmeisters can also consult more traditional primers such as Adult Video Business: How You Can Find Attractive Women to Star in Your Own Adult Films, Make Money, and Quit Work in 7 Weeks by Ray West, Sex & Camcorders: The Complete Guide To Producing Low-Cost, High-Profit Adult Videos & DVDs by Benjamin Cool or 1-2-3 Be a Porn Star! A Step-By-Step Guide to the Adult Sex Industry by Ana Loria.

My Year in Smut: The Internet Escapades Inside Danni's Hard Drive (New York: 1stbooks 2002) by Taylor Marsh is an account of the Danni Ashe site. Accounts by sexworkers in other parts of the industry are plentiful but of questionable value; a jaundiced reader might consider that much of the content is even more ephemeral than the videos or other publications described in those accounts. Richard Ramsdale & Trevor Ruppe collaborated on Confessions of a 21st Century Porn Star (San Jose: Writers Club Press 2001).

For phone sex see Dirty Talk: Diary of a Phone Sex "Mistress" (New York: Prometheus 1998) by Gary Anthony, Rocky Bennett & John Money or the more rigorous The Fantasy Factory: An Insider's View of the Phone Sex Industry (Philadelphia: Uni of Pennsylvania Press 1998) by Amy Flowers.

Other views from inside the industry are provided by The X Factory: Inside the American Hardcore Film Industry (New York: Headpress 2000) by Anthony Petkovich, Pornstar (New York: Simon & Schuster 1999) by Ian Gittler and Traci Lords: Underneath It All (New York: HarperEntertainment 2003) by Traci Lords.

How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale (New York: Regan Books 2004) by Jenna Jameson with Neil Strauss features gems such as "trying to maintain eye contact with him was like trying to read Dostoyevsky on a roller-coaster".

Industry groups in most countries produce newsletters and other publications of varying quality, often on a restricted distribution basis. Other publications such as AVN Online and XBiz are more readily available.





  next page  (tubes)