Female Performers
Most pornographic films are directed at a heterosexual male viewer, and the primary focus is on the women in them. Actresses are mostly selected for their on-screen appearance, as well as on their willingness and expertise in performing particular sex acts. Actresses are required to present a positive attitude to on-screen sexual performance with all sex acts being presented as enjoyable and joyfully entered into. Actresses are usually presented as always being available and willing to engage in any sex acts that their on-screen partners wish.
According to actor-turned-director Jonathan Morgan, "The girls could be graded like A, B and C. The A is the chick on the boxcover. She has the power. So she'll show up late or not at all. 99.9% of them do that." Less successful actresses are more likely to perform more extreme acts such as 'double-anal'. If an actress is willing to perform more extreme acts she will receive more offers of work. Older or less attractive actresses are more likely to perform such acts in order to get work. According to Morgan, "Some girls are used up in nine months or a year. An 18-year-old, sweet young thing, signs with an agency, makes five films in her first week. Five directors, five actors, five times five: she gets phone calls. A hundred movies in four months. She's not a fresh face any more. Her price slips and she stops getting phone calls. Then it's, 'Okay, will you do anal? Will you do gangbangs?' Then they're used up. They can't even get a phone call. The market forces of this industry use them up." Some film studios encourage their actresses to have breast implants, and offer to pay for the procedure.
Conversely, some performers are not unhappy with their job, while still noting that "a performer's pleasure is not of primary importance" and that "porn sex is not the same as private sex". Furthermore, there is evidence to say that porn production is not necessarily unethical or degrading. According to Lynn Comella, a women's studies professor at UNLV, presenting demeaning practices as representative of the entire porn industry is "akin to talking about Hollywood while only referencing spaghetti Westerns".
Due to the substantial amount of evidence both for and against the idea that women are degraded in pornography, it is likely that individual experiences vary depending on the director, the performer, and the type of porn being produced. As with other social phenomena, gross generalizations may be problematic.
Read more about this topic: Pornographic Film Actor
Famous quotes containing the words female and/or performers:
“Said an ape as he swung by his tail
To his offspring both female and male,
“From your children, my dears,
In a couple of years
May evolve a professor at Yale.””
—Anonymous.
“The reason I’m in this business, I assume all performers are—it’s “Look at me, Ma!” It’s acceptance, you know—”Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma.” And if your mother watches, you’ll show off till you’re exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)