«PERSONNALY I LOVED PORNO AND I BOUGHT LOTS OF IT ALL THE TIME"

After years of pushing hardcore to its physical and ethical limits, all the sordid, comic and absurd possibilities of human intercourse have been thoroughly exhausted. And like any pop-culture fin de siecle, porn's lustre of excess has faded into something entirely banal. A sneaky glance at Pornhub, the leading tube site that currently gets more traffic than CNN, reveals a backlog of neatly categorised niche fetishes that would take years to consume, with new videos being uploaded on the hour. While the hardcore wing of the porno-industrial complex may have entered into unavoidable decline, softcore television programming continues to flourish. What this suggests is that contrary to what Jeremy says, pornography's dilemma is one of content, rather than copyright. In order for porn to move into the 21st century, the productions should be made to appeal to a wider audience and be able to hold a viewer's attention longer than say, two and half minutes. The most obvious move for the modern pornographer would be to create content aimed specifically at women, who have until recently been all but ignored. Indeed, many women enjoy what's currently available, but the vast majority of today's porn is still produced only with male tastes in mind. And though there is no shortage of diversity in terms of the sex acts that appear on screen, racial and gender stereotypes continue to be encouraged by the industry's status quo, allowing porn to remain one of the only mediums where racism and misogyny are still openly tolerated.

-The Guardian
May 21 2010