Past porn, future porn

WARNING: While this post is by no means pornographic, as the title would indicate it does concern the subject of pornography. So if you think that a post on this subject is likely to cause offence or that when it comes to pornography ignorance is bliss then please don't read any further.

Well it looks like even old Hef is feeling the pinch in these increasingly tight economic times and if the bean counters have their way then some of the Playboy Bunnies may have to be given the flick. Can't say I'm feeling too sorry for the man who with truckloads of money (and now that he's in his 80s bucketloads of viagra as well) is still living the self-indulgent and misogynistic life of a spoiled prep school (in the North American sense of that term) brat.

This has got me thinking about the recent growth of the pornography industry and its future. At the risk of shocking some of my more sensitive readers I will admit to having more than a passing interest in the pornography industry. Unless I say something by way of explanation I can imagine the masses (if they read this blog that is!) lining up to ask what on earth I as a professed Christian am doing in blogging on the future of pornography. I can hear them thinking in the back of their minds: "How does he know all this unless he's into watching porn?" But before being too quick to jump to any conclusions, I don't think it's due to my own prurience. I am not interested in viewing pornography (although like most post-adolescent males with an internet connection I will admit to having done so in the past) and I certainly do not condone pornography. Personally I wish pornography didn't exist. On a somewhat selfish level, as a man who faces sexual temptation and who is seeking to live a chaste life I don't like the fact that pornography is so readily available. If it was much harder to get (eg you couldn't access it relatively anonymously online but had to trundle of to a seedy shop in a seedy part of town) then I wouldn't be nearly as tempted as I am and my life would be a whole lot simpler.

Anyway, pornography clearly does exist, and what's more it's readily available which puts an end to my wishful thinking. I also think pornography is both harmful and immoral. On a less selfish level I wish pornography didn't exist because of the tremendous damage it does to people's lives. And I think that even arguing on secular grounds a good case can be made to argue that pornography is immoral. So there is a very good case for governments intervening to regulate if not outlaw the production and supply of pornography. (Of course how feasible that would be in the internet age is another matter entirely). And as a Christian I also believe that pornography is idolatrous since it completely mangles the wonderful view of human sexuality as a mystery expressing the glory of God and something to be used in His service, replacing it with a cheap and pale imitation of the genuine article.

As well as people with views like mine there are those who are very much in favour of pornography being readily available, and there are also plenty of people who couldn't really care much one way or the other. In a democracy we have to let people put their arguments and be willing to engage with them by replying to their arguments. So that's one good reason why I have more than a passing interest in the pornography industry. If you try to read anything about the subject online you will soon find that most of the voices out there are pro-porn. But there is a small -- and growing -- group of voices expressing an alternative point of view. The anti-porn voices tend to be either Christians or feminists (although some feminists, particularly many lesbian feminists, are very strongly pro-porn -- just look at feminism's so-called "porn wars" for the division this subject has caused within that movement). Another reason for my interest is that behind all the glitz and glamour are real people -- human beings created in the image of God and precious in His sight -- and the more I learn about these people's lives the more convinced I am how destructive pornography is. I've started reading a few blogs and sites run by former porn stars and producers (some of whom are now committed Christians) as well as a few by people still in the biz. Not only do these make for very interesting reading but I can't help but think about the well-being of all the people who have worked and are working in this industry. My heart goes out to them. One thing I find particularly interesting is the growth in pornography that has taken place over the last 40 years and especially in the last 15 years with the growth in internet pornography. The relationship between the internet and pornography is a fascinating one and the rapid changes taking place in the industry raise a number of interesting questions about the industry's future.

For the pornographers there was a confluence of events which allowed for steady growth in their industry throughout the 1970s and 80s and then explosive growth in the 1990s and 2000s:

First, changing attitudes to sexual mores. Given that we are a long way today from the sexual permissiveness of the late 60s and early 70s this point really applies more to the initial period under discussion than to today. In other words, this change in attitude was enough to "get the ball rolling" but I think the other factors listed below are far more responsible for causing pornography to snowball to its present size. The "sexual revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s paved the way for increased respectability of pornography. This started with magazines such as Playboy but by the early 1970s (helped by growing circulation, social acceptability and explicitness of the "men's magazines") had moved on to include pornographic movies as well. For the generation who believed in "free love" there was less stigma attached to viewing (or performing in) pornography. At the time it was even touted as a legitimate form of artistic expression and for a few brief years in the early 70s (during the so-called era of porno chic when the latest porn films were shown in regular cinemas and were the topic of conversation at just about every dinner party in suburban America) there was a naive hope that pornography and "mainstream" cinema would merge into one new and unified groovy art form. Of course looking back now we are amazed (even the pro-porn people are!) at the incredible naivety of those years (1969-1974) and ask how anyone could seriously have thought such a thing. But they did. In the immediate aftermath of the sexual revolution people thought all kinds of weird things. But from the mid 70s onward life began to return to a semblance of normality and porn was no longer chic. Once again pornographic films were something for raincoat wearing men in seedy "adult" cinemas. Of course the combination of the legacy of the sexual revolution, the sixties generation growing up and settling down, a degree of dissatisfaction with free love, the AIDS scare of the 1980s, the growing awareness of other STDs (or STIs as they tend to be called nowadays) and soaring divorce rates (plus no doubt a host of other factors as well) means that we live in interesting times as far as sexual mores go. While we haven't returned to pre-revolution mores, by the 1990s there was a noticeable swing away from the ethos of the sexual revolution and return to a (slightly!) more conservative sexual ethic. But that's not the end of the story. Since then there's been a bit of a swing again in the opposite direction (with the rise of the religion -- yes, religion! -- of Sex and the City and the "hook-up"/"friends with benefits" generation). The sexual mores of today's society are far more schizophrenic than in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Paradoxically we want to be both permissive and moral(istic): casual sex is out, but casual relationships are in. Go figure.

Secondly, technololgical developements revolutionised the production of pornography. In the 1970s pornographic films were shot on film with relatively large budgets, typically (but by no means exclusively) financed by organised crime syndicates. The barriers to entry were very high but the video revolution of the 1980s made production much cheaper and easier and saw the rise of people getting into porn for (more or less) legitimate business reasons. It was now possible for pretty much anyone with sufficient money to make a pornographic movie without involving the mafia and also make a dollar or two at it (although wide scale distribution was still difficult without the right contacts or partners).

Thirdly, changes in attitude to the relation between human sexuality and the law (and the law's enforcement). While pornography is a worldwide phenomenon no matter where you are in the world you can't escape the fact that the vast majority of pornography is produced in the United States and the legal situation there is going to have an impact on the supply of pornography worldwide. Although the 1960s and early 70s saw a great deal of liberalisation in attitudes to sexual mores which in turn was reflected in the law, in the United States at least this didn't provide a legal carte blanche to pornographers. If you read anything by the American pornography industry you will soon come across the argument that pornography is protected by the constitutional right to "free speech". However, this is more wishful thinking than legal reality. Contrary to what the porn industry would have you believe, the U.S. Supreme Court has never held that pornography is protected as "free speech" under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The leading case in the U.S. today is still Miller v California (1973), a case from perhaps the most permissive time in American history (not to mention the heady days of so-called "porno chic"). What Miller said is that obscenity provides a legitimate exception to constitutional free speech. In other words if governments pass (and enforce) obscenity laws they will be constitutionally valid as long as they operate within the limits set by the Supreme Court in Miller. Of course if a government doesn't pass and enforce obscenity laws then pornography is "legal". But that wouldn't be because of any constitutional right to free speech; rather it would be on the far more fundamental legal principle operating in Anglo-American legal systems that whatever is not forbidden is permitted (compare this with another possible legal principle that whatever is not permitted is forbidden!).

What Miller does, then, is seek to define for the purposes of American constitutional law what counts as "obscenity" and therefore a legitimate exception from constitutionally protected free speech, should governments so wish to outlaw obscenity. While it is true that under the Miller test there is some room for diversity and change in the law on account of its reference to "contemporary community standards" (the Miller standard for obscenity is (1) "contemporary" which means it can change over time and (2) a "community" rather than national standard which means it can vary geographically -- what may be considered obscene in the morally conservative Bible Belt or Morman Utah may not be considered obscene in liberal and secuar New England or Los Angeles), in fact most "hard core" pornography available today would almost certainly still fall foul of the Miller obscenity test if prosecutions were brought (and assuming we can still point to a specific "community" which in the internet age may be a bit more difficult than in 1973).

There are three factors which need to be noted in the context of pornography and obscenity laws in the United States. (1) In many countries (including my native Australia) pornography is regulated both prospectively and retrospectively by a mixture of administrative and criminal law while in the U.S. it is regulated (if at all) retrospectively by crimial law. In most countries film classification is performed by a government body (such as Australia's OFLC or the United Kingdom's BBFC) according to legal criteria; what films are released to the public is therefore in the first place governed by administrative law and pornographic films are no exception to this principle. In the U.S., however, film classification is not performed by a government body but by a voluntary industry association (the MPAA) and does not cover hard core pornography. So if I want to release film in Australia (either to be shown in a cinema or to be distributed on video or DVD) then I first need to have it "pass the censor". That is a form of prospective regulation of what can legally be shown. Of course, nearly everything -- including pornography -- does pass the censor since the point of film "censorship" in Australia is not to ban inappropriate material but merely to classify all material into various legal categories so that consumers can make informed choices about what they watch. Although Australia's film censorship is fairly liberal in the sense that the vast majority of hard-core pornographic films do pass the censor, not all do (there are, for instance, fairly stringent restrictions on the depiction of violence in "hard-core" pornography [i.e. films with non-simulated sex]; if you want to release a "hard-core" pornographic film in Australia then it has to be non-violent in order to "pass the censor") and the possibility is still there to change the rules so that more films don't. This possibility doesn't exist in the U.S. where the only effective way to regulate it is retrospectively by prosecuting for obscenity after the film has been shown or made available for sale. (This possibility of retrospective regulation also exists in Australia; a pornographic film that has passed the censor may nevertheless still fall foul of state obscenity law). (2) Unlike in most other countries there is not a uniform national or even necessarily uniform state approach to obscenity laws. One state (or locale within a state) may outlaw obscenity (and vigorously enforce the laws) while another state (or locale within a state) may not. This approach is somewhat unique to the U.S., whereas in other countries regulation and enforcement tends to be far more centralised. (3) While regulation and enforcement of obscenity laws in the U.S. is not exclusively a federal government task, federal government policy (for example whether the federal government will provide funds or training for bringing obscenity prosecutions) will have a huge effect down the line. We see this in the number of prosecutions being brought which has now dried up to all but a trickle. Under the Clinton administration, promoting obscenity prosecutions became a political non-priority for the U.S. Justice Department which (when combined with the propitious timing of the internet revolution) led to a proliferation of pornography in the 1990s and 2000s. Of course whether the Clinton administration's attitude to obscenity prosecutions would have been any different had they been able to foresee the dramatic effect the internet would have on the production and distribution of pornography remains a question to which we'll never know the answer. But now the genie is out of the bottle it's almost impossible to put back.

Fourthly, technological developments revolutionised the distribution and delivery of pornography. In the 1970s pornographic films were (with the exception of the brief period known as "porno chic" where a few pornographic films were shown in "mainstream" cinemas) exclusively shown in special "adult" movie theatres and largely distributed by organised crime syndicates. Pornography had a dark side which everyone knew about and there was a definite stigma attached to viewing it. Moreover, it took a conscious effort and the risk of sullying one's reputation in order to view it (well at least the films -- by this time magazines such as Playboy had gained a certain air of acceptability). Then in the 80s came the video and cable/ satellite TV revolution and people could watch pornographic movies distributed by otherwise legitimate companies in the privacy of their own homes. Porn had cleaned up its image (if not its act). The third step in this process was of course the development and growth of the world wide web. This once again revolutionised the means of distributing pornography. The internet meant pornography could be distributed relatively anonymously and stigma-free direct to people's homes -- either by direct download (which until the availability of high bandwidths/ fast connections wasn't terribly practical) or by setting up a mail order interface for ordering videos, CD-Roms or DVDs. What's more is the internet led to a marked growth in the customer base; it wasn't just the old customers of the old pornography transferring over to the new technology. Rather, people who would never have subjected themselves to the stigma of going to a sex-shop to purchase pornography or subscribing to a cable or satellite channel could now do so from the comfort and relative anonymity of their own homes. Another step in this process was the "democratisation" of production. The internet removed many significant barriers to entry into the market making it possible for just about any (wo)man and his (or her) dog to get his product to market. So while the old companies continue to exist there is now a plethora of new start-ups, a few of which have grown substantially, others of which have already disappeared from the scene and the rest which aren't particularly profitable. A further step which led to a change in the way pornography was distributed was the technological and bandwidth revolution which made it possible to digitise and distribute high quality audiovisual media (such as compressed image and video files) direct to a home computer. This is something that has allowed for the rapid growth in pornography consumption, but rather interestingly is now causing all kinds of headaches for the industry as this technology has the potential to massively undercut the industry's profitability. This is of course a variant on the problem faced by record labels and "mainstream" movie studios as the technology now exists to copy and distribute in high quality audiovisual content (whether pornographic or otherwise) free of charge. But with pornography there is an important difference. At the end of the day there is very little variability in pornographic movies: they all show the same thing -- people engaging in sexual acts. While the possibility of free file distribution has the potential to seriously dent the commercial viability of the movie and music businesses, there will still be a place for them given the nature of the content. There is sufficient diversity in the output of recorded music and conventional movies that at least some people will be prepared to pay for something in the face of competetion from inferior free downloads. With pornography this is not so obviously the case. Pornography is at its heart very formulaic (the point of every movie the depiction of people having sex!) and limited in what it can depict (there are only so many things you can do sexually!) and while there may be a difference between the paid content and the free stuff, one's got to wonder if it's enough to encourage significant numbers of people to continue to pay for the stuff (as they probably would with some recorded music and conventional movies).

Well that's where we are at the moment and this of course raises the question as to whether the factors which have led to the phenomenal growth of the pornography industry will end up cutting off the hand that has been feeding the industry's growth and if so what will happen next. While there are certainly voices predicting the demise of the industry I'm not so sure. I think it all depends on how you measure the industry (eg profitability vs sheer quantity of product available) and also what kind of feedback mechanisms (if any) there are in the whole process -- particularly the possible positive feedback loop of "pornography addiction" versus the possible negative feedback loop of pornography becoming such a commonplace that it loses its appeal.

In short I think we will see (1) a marked decline in the dollar value (profitability) of the commercial pornography industry, (2) probably a slight decrease in the overall quantity of pornography produced, (3) (assuming you accept that there is such a thing as the "quality" of pornography!) probably a marked decline in the "quality" of the pornography being produced as the traditional style of commercial operator is forced out of the market and replaced by ultra-low budget and amateur pornography and (4) if -- and it's a big if -- there is negative feedback caused by overexposure to pornography or saturation of the market (I think the positive feedback loop of pornography addiction is much more certain, but the effects of this possible negative loop are not to be discounted) then also a decline in overall demand for pornography, as people start to feel pornography is passé; but in any event we won't see a return to anything near pre-world wide web levels. In other words, despite a decline in the profitability of the industry and perhaps an overall decline in the "quality" and quantity of pornography being produced an abundance of pornography is here to stay unless we see (a) a marked change in society's sexual mores against pornography reinforced by (b) legal regulation and enforcement. Personally I don't see either (a) or (b) on the horizon any time soon. As far as I can judge these things, sexual mores in Western societies are increasingly pluralistic and polarised so I don't see much of a consensus about pornography ever developing. And without the societal moral imperative legal sollutions will not be forthcoming.