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From: [email protected] (DolorosaX) First off, I do agree with the original poster on one point. Going solely by my own personal tastes, I'm generally not that thrilled with Anabolic product, because it does deliberately objectify and depersonalize the girls, and concentrates more on a macho frat-party attitude that I find highly anti-erotic. By my observation, men who get off on this sort of porn to the exclusion of other genres have some deep, deep problems with their own masculinity, and in dealing with women as human beings in general. {Hey, in my book, if you're gonna abuse women in your videos, at least abuse them as individuals :) } HOWEVER -- and it's a big however, that's why it's in caps -- to lay the blame at Anabolic's doorstep for "ruining porn" is misguided. Anabolic's product is simple, and caters to a lowest common denominator. But it's done very, very well for what it is, with pride in product and respect for the designated consumer audience. The camera work and editing are uniformly consistent and dependable, always accomplishing its goals. The packaging is attractive, never misleading, and doesn't insult the consumer's intelligence with bad hype and even worse grammar and spelling (a pet peeve of mine ...). Anabolic hires the best-looking women possible, never falling back on grotesque C or D-level girls just to fill out the release schedule. They don't beat their breasts and hype themselves with expensive AVN ads touting what a great job some high-paid art director did redesigning their boxes so that more consumers will be fooled into buying the same old shit in new packages. They don't call themselves "geniuses" or "the second coming of porn" or whatever twaddle (fill-in-the-blank) is e-mailing to the gossip columns this week. They don't brag about spending X amount of dollars to hire some moonlighting Hollywood FX team to make their horribly acted and scripted vampire epic (gack!) "the greatest porn film of all time." They don't trot out tired old whores as exciting new contract girls, and they don't care about getting on Howard Stern or having the biggest booth at CES. They are a totally consumer-oriented company. Only a tiny handful of companies have done what Anabolic has done -- shown constant pride and effort in their product -- and it has paid off for them, just as it has for Evil Angel and Max and perhaps Private. They are the most unpretentious company in the business, and from where I sit they never seem to rest on their laurels. If only ONE of the several "couples-oriented" mega-buck companies that specialize in features would apply the same quality control and pride in product rather than hype to ALL of their releases as Anabolic does, I think Frank and the other old-timers would have more than enough MOR product to their liking. Yes, I think it's a shame that the raincoater market has swallowed up alternate genres. But put that on the consumer, not Anabolic -- particularly the consumer who, ever willing to be fooled, rents/buys SUBSTANDARD raincoater shit from the proliferation of horrid, incompetent, cynical shitshovelers out there. Anabolic is not ruining porn -- look to the Israelis such as Sunshine for that -- they're the ones who try and flood the market with so much low-wholesale absolute shit comps and re-comps that it's harder than ever for the good stuff -- raincoater or "couples" to find shelf space. Does Anabolic equal McDonald's? -- Nah. As a hamburger aficianado, I'd say they're the Fatburger of porn -- well-prepared, all-natural, with no skimping on quality of preparation or product. No, it ain't filet mignon. But it doesn't claim to be.
From: [email protected] (DolorosaX) Actually, "sexual gymnastics" ARE pretty depersonalizing, Torris, by definition, since gymnastics are a set of well-practiced, rote movements meant to exploit the capabilties of the body, not the mind (or heart). And that generally bores me; I'm not passing judgement, just expressing a personal taste. I think Max, Rocco and the Anabolic boys all share similar levels of emotional/human disconnection from the actresses they work with, though Rocco at least seems rancor-free -- I mean, look at the guy. He's married, he's a father, he has interests outside porn. Sexual gymnastics used to be enough to give me a thrill, back when I was an unlaid adolescent, and all the way into my early 20s (when I was ocassionally laid). In those days the specific mechanics of sexual congress, women's anatomy
And Urania, my remarks above directly relate to the possibility of marginalizing the raincoat genre -- I think your wish is well-meaning but wrongheaded, because as long as guys will be guys, there will be conflict, battle and dissatisfaction between the sexes. This is who the raincoat genre primarily appeals to, by my observation. Which is not to say anyone who appreciates raincoater material is a disenfrancished proto-serial killer. Speaking for myself, there are indeed days when my best masturbatory release might come from a particularly vicious Max Hardcore opus, just as there are days when I'm feeling lovey-dovey and get off more on something a bit more, um, worshipful and/or real. I think the real tragedy is that because of sexual repression and legal oppression, porn has never grown up in the way that other forms of expression (notice I'm trying not to use the term "art form") have. With the ever-present social stigmata and possibility of prosecution, porn has been unable to attract the kind of truly ambitious groundbreakers and innovators on the more rarified, aesthetic end that would lead to a broader range of healthy genres. Those it has have burnt out or exited. After all, the rise of gonzo has to do with a lot more than merely the available technology of the handicam. If you look back at many of the movies that were busted during the Reagan era, they were in fact relatively expensive features that had a lot of work put into them. There's no denying that people like Russ Hampshire and David Sturman paid huge amounts of money in court costs and fines, and from a businessman's point of view, if the profits from your porn are liable at anytime to be sucked away by true-believer anti-porn prosecutors both in the federal goverment and every damn podunk municipality from Alaska to New Jersey, then wouldn't you look for ways to not risk so much money on production, and maximize your profits? Though this doesn't excuse the Johnny Porn come latelies of the mid-90s onward who have churned out so much absolute shit (blame THAT on the camcorder, I think), it does put certain mindsets and practices of the long-timers in a better perspective. I mean, you guys can rant and rave about VCA and Vivid's "cowardice" in not presenting more extreme material, but no one on this newsgroup has ever been to jail for renting porn, or been threatened with it. In that respect, porn "enjoys" a unique position that the legit movie, music, tv, publishing etc industry has rarely had to confront (sure, there was harassment of Burroughs, Miller, Elvis, Morrison, 2-Live Crew, but such efforts have been more vocal than literal, and in the big picture of the last 30 years in America, merely sporadic), and never on the pogrom-like levels that aimed at the entire industry and, well, um, .. art form.
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