MY FIRST memory of watching pornography came about in Colin McCaffery’s living room in 1969 and it had far from the expected effect.
Colin had discovered a German kino movie at the bottom of a wardrobe and the intrepid 13-year-old came up with the wondrous idea of a secret, special screening for half a dozen invited friends.
The reel-to-reel was loaded up and as lights dimmed anticipations ran rampant at the very thought of men and women doing the unspeakable things to each other that we were finally going to be able to speak about.
But alas the whole plan went awry. The porn film played upside down. No one could work out why, and his dad had been inconsiderate enough not to leave instructions.
There was only one thing for it. Each of the dirty half dozen would have to stand on our heads, or lean over and watch the action from between our legs, which felt weirdly appropriate. However, the storyline, about a handsome young plumber who comes to administer to a glamorous, if slightly older housewife’s U-bend and feels an instant need to remove his overalls, was essentially the tedious plot line of every porn movie ever made.
And that realisation, plus the stiff neck experience, has been enough to suggest porn is, for the most part, nonsense. Sometimes it’s ugly nonsense. Often it’s exploitative and objectifying nonsense, and sometimes it’s even entertaining nonsense.
But if we’re setting out to understand what makes porn so attractive in 2019 (a new survey from BBC Three suggests that almost a quarter of people aged 18-25 who watch porn think they might be addicted) the last thing we want to do is watch five Mums Make Porn.
Read More: Phoebe Waller-Bridge is right to encourage women to kill on screen
The middle-aged mothers decided to make a sex film that was “suitable for their millennial offspring.” Porn was saturating the digital world, they reckoned, and so if the mums made porn this could be a way of connecting with their teenage children. What? Couldn’t you teach them to crochet? Or make a souffle?
The Mums say they were concerned about the expansion of porn, thanks to the development of technology. They say porn behaviour has become normalised by young men and women, and so terrified were they about desensitisation and objectification they had to make their own Kino lite.
But it’s laughable. Not educational. At one point, Emma (who keeps her surname secret) visits a porn shoot and at the end of watching two vigorous young performers declares “You’re both brilliant!” Brilliant at what? Rumpy-pumpy? Should it be a spectator sport?
This is the sort of asinine comment you’d expect from a woman way out of her depth, yet emerging with this high moral ground mission to rescue the children of the world from the dark murkiness. And we even learn one of the mumsies hadn’t watched Fifty Shades, because it was “too scary.”
So what are the porn Mums about? Self-aggrandising? Attention? It’s hard to see how they would hope to deflate the potency of porn by selling the world a softer version. You don’t keep kids away from gambling by taking them down the amusement arcade and giving them a fiver in ten pence pieces. You don’t introduce young people to cannabis in the expectation it will negate a desire to move on to opiates.
Yes, I’m old fashioned. I did once take in a porn show in Bangkok, with a girlfriend of the time, and it bored me rigid. The bloke on stage clearly gave the impression he was thinking about Man United’s European prospects that week rather than taking his partner to the peaks of sexual nirvana.
But how could the Mums ever convince their daughters that porn isn’t for the most part mechanical, that the commercial output is about moments in people’s lives that have little to do with relationships.
Yet, they wanted to introduce their daughters – and sons – to the idea porn could be considerate, a compassionate, enriching, shared experience. This is why they insisted on their porn performers looking ordinary. Ha. Come on. This is denying the purpose of porn; it depicts a fantasy. It tells a story of improbability. When have you ever seen a porn film featuring a wee, balding, ginger bloke from Cranhill who gets it together with a lassie who eats her body weight each day in steak bakes? Never. Porn features Love Island types who can lost longer than Theresa May. And if Mums’ porn is all about positive messages about consent, healthy relationships, safe sex and body image this isn’t porn at all; this is a Government information pack.
But on one level, I love the soft hypocrisy of this attempt. The tea and scones ladies have their cake and eat it. They and Channel 4 get to titillate while claiming to educate. They get to talk about objectification of women while choosing to ignore their own complicity. And they ignore the success porn has brought to the lives of filmmakers Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
TV ideas such as this are funny. Although not as funny as the upside down night in Colin’s front room.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel