Source: Adult Industry News
By: Miss Charlie Latour
Can JohnPersons.com and AINews.com Really Save the Art Form Called Pornography? This change is being led by spectacular artists, whose drawings and imaginations have once again lifted sex from the grasps of the censors and money changers. People like John Persons… I urge all of the AINews.com readers to search out these artists. Without them you better get use to vanilla, because that is all you are going to get.
Rejoice, Pornography is Saved!
Unlike the poster carrying street prophets who grimly announce the “End is Near”, but can not give you a specific date and place, my pronouncement has a time frame and a very public place. The time has now started and the place is the superconductive internet. Pornography, as an art form, has changed and the results will be an upsurge from the depths that pornography had fallen. Just as business has cycles and trends, pornography has started the climb back from a horrific down cycle to a position as a viable and important art form.
This change is being led by spectacular artists, whose drawings and imaginations have once again lifted sex from the grasps of the censors and money changers. People like John Persons (JohnPersons.com), an internet artist, whose sexual drawings capture the very soul of sex. He is energetic, purposeful and talented. His particular art form deals with the social issue of race relations and the myriad of sexual stereotypes and fantasies associated with inter-racial sex.
Many years ago a fantastic movie called Behind the Green Door thrust the issue of inter-racial sexuality into the face of all Americans. The scene with Marilyn Chambers and, my very good friend, Johnnie Keyes was and is a milestone that will forever be remembered.
John Persons continues to thrust the issue forward and we all should be grateful he does. Race relations needs to remain an issue before all of us. The pure genius of the Pioneers of Porn: Damiano, Picard, Braun, Sprinkles, Royalle, Margold and Hampshire can now be joined by internet artists, like John Persons, and internet pioneers, like our own Steve Nelson.
I include the brilliant work of the Anime artists, who have recently surged forward with their exceptional animated motion pictures. Together the internet artists, the artists who produce animated material and internet pioneers are bringing to the surface the passion, thought, meaning and consequences of sexual images. They provoke us, they challenge us and they hold up a mirror for us to see what we look like. Not in the sense of an Anime multi-headed monster, but what we look like on the inside.
Pornography had become vanilla because it was forced to be vanilla. There was no challenge, no incentive to do anything but follow the format that would produce the highest return, for the lowest cost with the least resistance.
“Art imitates Nature and necessity is the mother of invention” was a key phase in the Northern Memoirs written by Richard Franck in 1658 and published in 1694. When I entered the arena of adult performances in the mid-1970s pornography was considered an art form. Many of the theaters which featured adult movies were called “Art Houses”. The original pioneers were film makers, who chose to express their art in the form of adult expressions. There was passion, thought, meaning and consequences to their productions. To a great degree, the adult industry’s Garden of Eden was in New York and San Francisco, two cities so similar, yet so far apart.
In many cases there was a religious overtone. The Devil and Miss Jones, in my humble opinion the greatest adult movie ever produced, was a stunning example. Miss Jones was cast into Hell, not for being licentious or promiscuous, but for committing suicide, the one unforgivable sin in the Catholic Church. Mr. Damiano was brilliant in his writing and directing. He captured the essence of the sin, the failings of the human existence and exposed the ludicrous societal correlation of sex and sin.
The art of making adult movies, pornography if you will, was to imitate Nature. What was happening around us, what we believed in and what we were taught was being challenged. Sex has been with us since Adam first banged Eve and it has been great ever since. God didn’t cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because of sex, they got tossed because they failed to follow his rules (commands).
Porn did not get cast out the Garden of Eden (New York and San Francisco) and into the desert of the Valley just north of Los Angeles because of sex, they got tossed because they failed to follow the rules set up by the censors and money changers. Porn, as an art form, has attempted to imitated Nature and no one will ever deny that the growth and development in technology has been driven by adult material.
The VCR would have NEVER reached the universal popularity it achieved without adult material. DVDs are just the next generation, but driven by porn, hence, “The mother of invention”. The internet, camcorders, you name it and adult material is the driving force. But as with everything there are cycles. The production of adult material has changed. No longer are scripts important, consequences be damned and the thought of a plot that actually makes a statement is laughed out of the production studio. Gonzo, sanitized and vanilla are the new keys words. Four-six-eight hour tapes and DVDs are the key. The only statement made by porn today is “immediate satisfaction” and the “bottom line”. Enter John Persons and those like him. They are reason why we can “Rejoice, Pornography is Saved!”.
I urge all of the AINews.com readers to search out these artists. There are many and any good search engine will lead you to their sites. I am very partial to JohnPersons.com because of the depth of his art work and his proclivity to emphasize race relations, an issue close to me. You will enjoy John’s work, and you might find others that address issues close to you. The key is the person you see in the mirror every day… you. You control what you look at and what you purchase.
The guardians of our freedoms, the Supreme Court, have on many occasions overturned reckless and authoritarian legislation that would stem this trend. Conservative, liberal and moderate judges have banded together to prevent this from happening.
You, the consumer of adult material, should take full advantage of the opportunity. Support the internet artists, the animators and the internet pioneers who are free to bring you the images that make you think. Without them you better get use to vanilla, because that is all you are going to get.
