Taking it in the traditional sense, it is interesting to state up to what point the above mentioned kind of audio-visual production has been kept during decades to the margin of the pre-established standards that they govern the rest of products, constituting not a separate genre, but another way of making films. The most habitual critique that one has come using against it has arisen, and it is not surprising, of the extremely debatable idea of that a pornographic movie is comparable to a mainstream movie, and that therefore must be abided by the same narrative standards and applicable qualit scales to this one. The appealed phrase they're bored by force of repeating itself made a dense curtain of prejudice and false moral that has isolated pornographic films condemning them to the dark jail of incomprehension and scorn -without prejudice, of course, of their fat economic benefits-. That is to say, once pornographic cinema has been tolerated in our society, even with restrictions, and therefore the moral censorship has been abolished to a great extent, another subtler censorship has been applied on it, based on formal criteria.
Nevertheless, X-rated filmsnot only doe not deserve similar opprobrium, but they demonstrate in fact the true possibility of conceiving works to the margin of the pre-established standards -and without spirit of alternativity-. Along its path X cinema has could re-adapt its production ways to the technical and environmental requirements of every moment, for example introducing the use of video format, when similar attempt on the quality accepted standards just could be had to realized by mainstream films in few occasions, and almost always needing to find justification in conceptual or aesthetic subterfuges, thing that X films have never done, satisfied and happily to be able to be employed at a more economic and adaptable system to their needs.
Liberated of intellectual prudishness' ties of mainstream industrial system, X-rated cinema has moved during decades in the most absolute technical, moral and aesthetic freedom inside the margins of its economic possibilities, thing that nobody any more has done of such a systematic way. With enviable sloth, the X filmmakers have ignored in fact and repeatedly the established norm, worrying about carrying out only a product where the form has to remain subordinated to the content; a product in addition not focused to critique not to great audiences, but to that specific segment of related people to the X genre to which in concrete they're concerned.
X-rated films are, therefore, a radically independent and emancipating cinema, so much in the process of production, carried out to the margin of external directives, as in the consumption, since this is the first one and till now the only interactive cinema conceived as such. And this is because any spectator can use mouse or remote control to choose at random or voluntarily the fragments of a conventional movie that he/she sees on DVD or internet, but in case of the X cinema the use of the control gives itself implied, since the spectator always will look for those scenes that are of his/her pleasure and will choose the number of times that he needs to see them. It is film à la carte, and that's enough to become discredited at a stroke the accusation of tedious film, only applicablly in certain occasions to conventional films. Certainly this is not applicable to the exhibition in theaters, but the film exhibition of X movies does not stop being an archaic remaining form in an industry that has thrown happily roots in the fertile area of video, digital distribution and internet.
Nevertheless life is not all a bowl of cherries: also it runs risk of being absorbed, and the best form consists of injecting infectious bacillus of the assumed standards by alienated majority. As the X cinema tries to emulate the recognized forms, by means of costly productions of refined technical device, contests and multitudinous festivals that value of increasing form the technical invoice -applying belonging qualit criteria to another films-, in the end trying to replace the genuinely subversive mien with the politically correct bundle of the decent industry, as this is happening, in major degree it loses its sense and more vulnerable is to the equalizer critical funnel. A X movie conceived to be seen on video by a varied public, in one go, and without using mouse or remote control, is firmly a suspect of not being already a X movie.
Lucky always there will continue existing, it is intrinsic to nature of this cinema, a X-rated product deafly to the claim of sirens of stupidity, and also a X spectator more interested in the satisfaction of his/her personal curiosity that for the product technical quality. Or in any case interested in a few criteria of quality that are not the habitual ones -with regard to to the script, lighting, etc.-, but others specifically applicable to X films, which always they will remain imprisoned in the impassable domains of personal taste.
There is a point where the strong link remains clear between moral and formal critique, and its the debate about the figure of X films actor. In general one denies the merit to the X performer of calling as such, reducing the role of the X actress just about that to a sort of prostitute - a clearly moralist, and sexist reason, since the masculine performers are not accustomed to be applied in equal terms.
It seems to be that to consent willingly the acceptance of X actors inside the number of actors in general, it would degrade the condition of the last ones, relativizing the value of their work. Many theater and film actors, probably the most, sign the latter appraisal, and justify it denying categorically that the work that the X actors carry out should be to play.
The nature and limits of so called interpretation there are fixed, once again, for tacitly established standards, but not very concrete judging by the lack of clarifiers terms that one gives at the moment of defining the term. Vaguely it is supposed that an actor plays when he establishes with the spectator, of univocal and unidirectional way, a transmission of emotive recognizable type for this one. The actor transmits feelings and emotions, even ideas sometimes, from a few written or agreed in advance guidelines. The simple mechanic crackle of X performer does not enter so inside this definition. Hitherto the explanations that drama art official version offer us.
But immediately, and without putting a lot of effort for our part, we see how this vision of things is suffering from a serious myopia. First, we would have to begin to value if an theatrical actor unable in a certain moment to transmit a certain emotion, has a bad day, it is a bad actor or simply he is not an actor, since the most important target of his function has not been given. The same thing we would think of a silly fireman unable to point the water of his hose towards the build in flames. Also we should consider if, in view of this case of disability to transmit the ruled, the audience will not receive another more stimulant emotive information, or not, but another emotion in any case, and perfectly valid since the spectator is not necessarily knowledgeable of the ruled. That's because belonging both, issuer and recipient, to mankind nourished group, and therefore interchangers of empathic flow, hardly they will be able to avoid the receipt of a certain type of emotion when they are situated ahead not of an actor, but of any fellow.
We find an illustrative example in the amazing popularity that often actors considered bad for experts reach for the public. The great public is not used to worry for technical trivialities, and if a multitudinous survey was carried out brings over of whom they are the deserving maximums of the title of actor, or of good actor, probably defenders of the interpretive orthodoxy would take a disagreeable surprise. An actor's popularity owes often more to his charisma and physical attraction that to his skill and performing talent, and for very deplorable that this could be, nothing can do to it in against.
As a last resort, we should wonder if the player of a X sequence is not transmitting any emotion, for superficial and epidermal that this one would be. The conceptual depth of the transmitted is a question of degree -and very debatably, as everything deep is- and it would be out of place to demand the transmission of abysmal ideas and feelings from an X actor, as well as it is not demanded from the actor of an action movie either. Certainly, I am not not trying to be unworthy of the interpretive virtues of an intelligent and talented actor, capable of transmitting a wide variety of feelings by means of fine shades of voice and gesture. A great performance is an admirable work, and it´s necessary loads of talent and great intellectual and often physical effort to obtain it, and the satisfaction that there feels the spectator capable of estimating it is perfectly comparable to that of the melomaniac in front a virtuous musician. But that has existed Thomas Mann does not mean that the author of far west novels of fast consumption is not a writer, and the activity of the latter does not degrade the condition of that one. Furthermore: it is very stupid to think that a writer of pulp novels is unable for life to give us some day a work, or many, of great intellectual significance. Maybe is it impossible? … How many considered minor authors in life are living now at Parnassus of musicians and immortal poets?...
So, performing work´s limits and essence are vague and undefinable. With certain romantic sorrow acquired after many years of enjoying admirable interpretations -what more I wanted that only good actors were actors, and good journalists were journalists-, I meet obliged to affirm that, an actor is, quality appraisals and prestige apart, who devotes itself to acting professionally, this is, that one who accumulates a such number of performances that any other dedication remains displaced during long periods of time to the second term. In short: dedication and not skill grants the title. This one is not an exclusive definition, does not try to affirm that the sporadic actor is not an actor, simply it neither steadies nor contradicts, and as a last resort I prefer admitting also that he is, since I prefer sinning for excess that for fault, and I believe it is responsability of they who have clearer than me to demonstrate that he is not. But that one who devotes itself professionally to performance, certainly is an actor, whatever way we look at it.
So, in front of artists as Queeny Love, Cytherea, Dillan Lauren, Sasha Blonde, Priscilla Milan and great others that have taken part in dozens and even hundreds films, with great success of public, a public honestly unable to sign a document for which it was denying the existence of an empathic link with them, in front of persons, I say, that they exercise normally before the cameras a work targeted to provoking stimulus in the spectator, how could we continue supporting their condition of non-actresses or, do I insist on the term, of non-artists? Let's stop to look for a moment at Queeny Love: I, that I have followed her development on internet from the beginnings, I can affirm that she's much more than just a porn star: Queeny Love is not only an amazing beauty but a great artist, exciting, self-sufficient and innovative. Her performances wonder me once and again. It is even much interesting than the great majority of current films (porn and no-porn). If Marshall McLuhan were alive and could see her, sure he were fascinated with her work, that conjunction of performance / internet / video / porn wich forms a new media for a new time. Queeny Love deserves a very much greater acknowledgement and I am sure she will have it someday.
Any additional critique that refers to the absence of acting work in a scenic result consequence of a physical real pleasure is not any more than the moralist censorship trying to relegate X actress to the brothel. It matters for nobody if the laugh of an actor in scene is a consequence of a real or feigned pleasure. The only thing that matters is the aptitude to generate this laugh. And what actor plays is less important than what the public interpret over of what the actor is playing. So the public has the last word.
Going beyond: does classification as X on an actor depend on an alone sequence or on the whole movie?, that is to say, can a conventional actor playing a X sequence into the a conventional movie? If for X sequence we understand the concatenation of one or more planes that exhibit the practice of explicit and detailed sex, we see that the possibility of being given in a conventional movie not only is not unthinkable, but it has been given in occasions. It is significant that mentioned occasions are scanty, and there would be necessary to ask why. The intention of being mainstream is not shared by all the movies, and nevertheless, even in them conceived for adult public, a clear unpreparedness is demonstrated to include explicit sex in them. The pre-established hierarchy of procedure for the industry imposes the rule shared by many people of which the sex not treated about subtle and suggested way is intellectually sterile, slightly worthy of film with pretensions of Art. They vindicate the eroticism as sublimation of desire to see, and this desire itself is condemned. It is believed that two actors who should interpret an erotic sequence in a conventional movie can give, unlike the X sequence, the before mentioned transmitter way of feelings.
The sex for itself would be, following this reasoning line, slightly emptily, lacking in interest and dirtily, unworthy of being showed publicly, apart from inside the marginal parameters of X-rating and focused towards a vicious public, of relaxed morality. Curious reason from the hegemonic social mentality that on the other hand does not stop in insisting on the achievements obtained by our standardizer culture of sex. One more sample of hypocrisy that also has correspondences in education. Educational videos that appear at schools with the zeal to provide sexual information to the lads are, first, directed a segment of postadolescent public, ignoring the sexuality of the smallest and appealing the prude pretext of not convenience of this type of education giving them, for unnecessary, foreign and incomprehensible for them; and secondly, ridiculously conceived in the form, always prefering symbolic representation and cartoon to the clear image with real actors, manifestly prohibited. Curious type of education, unthinkable in other areas, where it happened to nobody to discuss that the education of minerals is much more effective, for example, with real samples or photographies that with drawings or water-colors of the same ones. If the sex cannot appear with a clarity without mufflers, to what speaking about it?, perhaps is to conceal something the best way of showing it?, ¿ or perhaps does not real intention take root in the sexual education, but in the early introduction in the captivations of the suggestive eroticism? One notice that we are not speaking of showing, certainly, cartoon to five-year-old children, but to anxious teenagers, much better informed of what a drippy person in charge of education is able of admitting, and surely amazed before the disneyfying show that they attend and, certainly, perfectly deserving of a clearer education and with fewer subterfuges.
Carlos Atanes
Barcelona, 2001 - Madrid, 2009
