The
relentless transfer of the means of production and distribution of
pornography to the proletariat continues; I guess Marx would be
proud. A few years ago Fisher-Price came out with the Pixelvision
camera, a cheap camera for kids that filmed in grainy black and white,
and recorded onto ordinary cassette tapes. Fisher-Price discontued
them a while ago (probably out of fear of something just like this),
so their supply is limited; but many have filtered into the hands of
avant-garde filmmakers, who like them for their minimal cost and the
'edgy' look of the films they make (sort of like super8 filmed in
natural twilight). Serious explorations in incorporating Pixelvision
into serious film include
"Barbie's
Audition",
"Strange Weather",
"Frisk",
and the David Lynch produced
"Nadja".
Somehow, an underground diy culture of amateur
pornography has sprung up around this technology; dozens of young
auters who can send their films to each other for the cost of a
cassette tape. Controversial art critic Deborah Teac (of "Art is Dead"
fame) is attempting to document this sub-culture with Pixelporn: the
first annual Pixelvision pornographic film festival, held on the
web. Entries were sent to her in cassette form and converted to jpeg
and put up on the Art is Dead website. There's a jury (John Waters!
Camille Paglia! Porn starts I've never herad of!), but feedback is
solicited from all viewers.
The medium seems inevitably adaptable to
porn. The sound is crude, and the entries were limited to eight
minutes: it's just not worth the effort to waste time on plot or
useless dialogue. The films just jump right in. I can hear the folks
who've strained so hard to come up with lines like "I'm here to fix
your pool, ma'am" and "My son never told me his friends had such big
muscles" breathe a collective sigh of relief.
The entries were pretty varied; with 187 films
virtually every sexual act known to man (well, known to my boryfriend)
is represented. Given the nature of the community, things tended to be
heavy on the experimental side, including the obligatory dog-woman
combo. But there were some more innovative entries. "You Tramp" used
the lack of sound to hark back to silent movies, complete with
dialogue cards; a Chaplin dress-alike and a younger man campily get
themselves out of tramphood and into bed on a rolling box car in a
grainy comedy. "Music Box" is an elegant S&M piece about a woman
forced to be a living version of ballerina in a popup music
box. "Union" is a slow, moody piece featuring a couple having
straightforward sex, but the real star is the continuous, smooth
camera motion that rolls around and around them, diving in and pulling
out like a dive bomber, making the sex feel like slow ocean waves. And
my boyfriend has a place in his heart for "Honey, I'm Home", one that
looks ripped right out of the Donna Reed show, circle-stitch bra and
all. "Crawling", the most disgusting entry (and there was plenty of
competition), featured a man shooting up on heroin, basting his
genetalia with pureed leaves, and then dumping a bucket of
caterpillars (I think; it's hard to tell for sure) all over his
crotch, followed by closeups of them crawling all over his
errection. To top it off, a woman comes over and mounts him, with the
caterpillars still there. Ugh. It feels like Clive Barker's version of
a douche commercial.
Although there is sound in Pixelvision, it wasn't
included in the files online. Instead, entries were required to
suggest music. The most popular suggestion was "porn music", although
various Parliament selections were also popular. "Crawling" suggested
Spiritualized's "Shine a Light", and "Union" asked for the Cocteau
Twins' "Oil of Angels". Unfortunately, none of the suggested music was
on-line; it would have improved the experience tremendously.
I won't begin to get into the issues of whether
porn is harmful, the difference between porn and erotica, etc. Minds
are already made up on the subjects and nothing I say would matter. It
is interesting, though, that Teac deliberately requested "pornography"
and not "erotica". However, the films here are much more experiments
in visual look and feel than explorations of subtext.
What I liked about the films is that most of the
time you couldn't tell exactly what was going on, due to the poor
resoution and framerate of the medium. Everything looks shadowy, and
fast motion left trails; forgive the hackneyed metaphor, but most of
the films really do look like watching your friends have sex in a
dimly lit room on acid. Penii shimmer into snake-like limbs; women's
genetalia appear even more convoluted and mysterious than
normal. Flesh melts into flesh which melts into the background;
oftentimes it's impossible the sex of the actors. If the suggestion of
what underneath really is sexier than exposing it all, Pixelvision has
a bright future in pornography.
Check it out at http://www.artisdead.org/pixelporn.html
before the communications decency act gets ahold of it. Oh, and
Pixelvision is undoubtedly a trademark of Fisher-Price, all rights
reserved.
