37 Myths of Couples Porn
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This article is from the Sex Movies FAQ, by director@gti.net (The Director) with numerous contributions by others.
37 Myths of Couples Porn
A lurker known as Cinemaniac offers this for your consideration:
Before you begin, though, there are a few "myths of couples porn" that
I'd like to dispel:
MYTH #1: Women like different things than men do.
The more we watch, the more we find this to be nonsense. We
both like well- shot images of good-looking people enjoying
themselves while having hot sex. Sure, your individual tastes
might differ in some respects, but that's because tastes
differ, even among guys (monster facials leave me unmoved, for
example). Still, your *first* film as a couple probably
shouldn't be "Depraved Fantasies." Think of porn as Chinese
food; if you haven't had it before, it's probably best to
start with Cantonese, see if you like it, and then work your
way up to Szechuan. Candida Royalle is the Cantonese chef
extraordinaire of porn: mighty good, but not too spicy or
unfamiliar.
MYTH #2: A good story matters.
We don't find this to be so, I'm afraid, for two reasons.
First, when watching as a couple, we're rarely paying all that
much attention to the story anyway; lately, we haven't even
been watching with the sound on. Second, if you really love
a good story, porn will inevitably disappoint. Let's face it:
the very best porn film ever made is only a mediocre movie.
Don't believe me? Then try this experiment. Name the best
porn film you've ever seen. Now pick three other types of
film you like, and name your favorite film of each type. Does
that look like a list of four equally good movies to you? The
point is, you're not watching "Up 'n' Coming" for the same
reasons you'd watch "GoodFellas," and you're only going to be
disappointed if you use the same criteria to evaluate both.
Porn has its own rewards, and they're mostly non-narrative; if
you're paying enough attention to a porn movie to actually
*follow* the story, let alone care about it, then porn is
probably hindering your sex life rather than enhancing it.
MYTH #3: If it only turns one of you on, you shouldn't watch it
together.
It *is* true that you shouldn't make your partner sit through
something that actively disgusts her/him. Beyond that,
though -- hey, you're a couple! You're not always completely
in sync. I'll bet you compromise on regular videos all the
time; she sat through "Demolition Man" for you, you sat
through "Sleepless in Seattle" for her (or, if you're a less
stereotypical couple, vice versa). Why not with porn?
Besides, we've found that no film ever turns us on as much as
seeing the other person turned on does; when we rented gay
male porn, the film didn't do much for me, but her reaction to
it sure did! And that was enough.
So what *does* matter? We've made a little list. In order of
importance:
1) The illusion of pleasure.
Nothing casts a pall over the sex *you're* having than the
image of other people having sex while looking bored out of
their skulls. This is actually one of the big selling points,
for us, of Candida Royalle's stuff: however vanilla it is,
the actors look like they're having a good time. On the other
hand, this is the single biggest problem with Andrew Blake
videos ("Secrets" is an exception), though they have other
redeeming features. Actors who seem "into it" can even make
a lot of supposedly "non-couples" stuff a turn on for us;
we've watched Bruce Seven girl-girl films together with great
pleasure, for example, just because of the heat on the screen.
And a convincing performer in one place is generally a
convincing performer, period -- so learn their names.
We go out of our way to look for stuff with Nina Hartley or
Tianna, and avoid stuff with the late Savannah, for just this
reason.
2) Good looking people.
This may be the hardest thing to find, unfortunately, and guys
are often unaware of that. Straight male porn stars, with a
some exceptions (Rocco Siffredi, Peter North), tend to be
pretty unappealing; would *you* be turned on by the female
equivalent of Joey Silvera? It's easier with the women, but
you still have to deal with the boob job question (it's a good
bet that she'll be no more turned on by grotesquely artificial
breasts than you would be by a grotesquely artificial cock).
The presence of good-looking people is for us the big selling
point of Andrew Blake videos.
3) Variety. Here's a cautionary tale: recently we wanted to
see a bi film and brought home the only one the store had ("Bi
Madness" -- a must to avoid); we found ourselves watching the
exact same scene staged four different times with four
different sets of actors, right down to which positions were
used when. We've never been so bored. It rarely gets that
bad, but the more varied the sex is in every way, the better.
For us, this means varied positions, varied settings, varied
combinations of partners, etc. It also means (and we can't
state this strongly enough) varied shots, ranging from long
shots of the action to the typical gyno-closeups. Far more
than their stories, the variety of shots is for us the selling
point of "golden age" porn.
4) A high sex-to-story ratio.
This is the corollary of myth #2: if the story doesn't
matter, then it shouldn't get in the way of the sex. This is
not to say our favorite films ar things like "1000 Cum Shots";
far from it. But a little set-up leading to a lot of sex is
highly preferable to a lot of set-up leading to a little sex
(a/k/a The Paul Thomas Syndrome, though "Things Change" and
"Passages" 1-4 are partial exceptions). You wouldn't think
that Candida Royalle's "Urban Heat" had anything in common
with the "Sodomania" series, but we like them both because
they set up scenarios quickly and then cut to the chase.
5) Production Values/Competent Film-making.
As a general rule, we find that stuff that bears a passing
stylistic resemblance to something you'd see at a multiplex is
more stimulating than stuff that bears a strong stylistic
resemblance to the video of your nephew's bar mitzvah.
Unfortunately, the only way to get a sense of which directors,
performers, and companies will deliver the goods is to
actually watch the stuff. So what should you watch as a
couple? Well, the usual advice on places to start is pretty
good: Candida Royalle, Andrew Blake, some Golden Age stuff,
some Paul Thomas. But beyond that, our advice is: try
everything. And try it all at once. Once we decided we liked
watching porn together, we'd generally get two or three
different kinds of films at a time and sample them all; on a
typical evening, we might take a look at parts of "Hidden
Obsessions," "The Opening of Misty Beethoven," and "Sodomania
3," and talk about what we did and didn't like about each.
Then we'd try to gauge the patterns. Was it a particular
director we liked? An actor or actress? A series? Were
there whole companies which should just be avoided (like
Penguin)? We got a clearer sense of our tastes, we learned
about each other, and we did it all naked! What more could
you ask?
These are, of course, just our opinions, and, as always, YMMV.
But whatever your mileage is, we've found that the essence of
watching porn as a couple is the essence of being a couple,
period: be open, be generous, be honest, and communicate,
communicate, communicate.
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