http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,821332,00.html Lights, camera, phwoar!
Pamela and Tommy did it. J-Lo did it. John Leslie, of course, did it. And Ulrika, we learn, rather wishes she hadn’t done it with Stan. Why do people video themselves having sex? And is it just oversexed celebrities, or are millions of ordinary people at it too? Libby Brooks on the generation that thinks a camcorder’s place is in the bedroom
Tuesday October 29, 2002 The Guardian
‘It was entirely unplanned on my part and, I think, on his: although whether any bloke with a camcorder acquired it with entirely pure intentions is a debatable point.” Molly, now 28, was a year into her relationship with John when a quiet evening in, drinking wine and fooling around, culminated in the pair filming themselves having sex. “I did want to do it, but Dutch courage definitely played a part. John managed to set up the camera and link it to the television so that we could watch ourselves on screen as it was taping.” She laughs. “I’m not sure that the technical challenge wasn’t more of a turn-on for him than the alleged point of the exercise.”
From the excruciating scene in Martin Amis’ Money, where John Self realises that the ugly man in the home porn movie is himself, to the candyfloss innuendo of a recent episode of Friends, the making and misappropriation of intimate videos has regularly proved a compelling creative device.
It has similarly been a staple of tabloid scandal: an explicit honeymoon video featuring Pamela Anderson and her then husband Tommy Lee made £55m when it was distributed on the internet, despite the couple’s desperate attempts to prevent its circulation. A number of other celebrities have fought through the courts to suppress similar material: Jennifer Lopez, Jordan and, most recently, Ulrika Jonsson who, last week, was granted an injunction restraining her former boyfriend Stan Collymore, from selling a video showing her engaging in sexual activity.
But while the humiliation of those thus exposed and exploited does not diminish, there is a prevailing sense that society has lately extended the parameters of what constitutes acceptable – consensual – sexual experimentation. And that more and more ordinary couples are turning their video cameras on the sort of activities that are not likely to feature on You’ve Been Framed.
“I think filming yourself is quite normal,” says Molly. “I was talking about it with female colleagues at work the other day and about a quarter of us had done it. And I suspect a lot of others weren’t ‘fessing up. I’d certainly do it again.”
As the requisite technology becomes more accessible, has the private taping of sexual congress become the contemporary equivalent of the mirrored ceiling? In his most recent novel, Porno, Irvine Welsh documents what he sees as a burgeoning subculture of porn made by ordinary people in their own homes for their own consumption. “The internet and digital video have changed the whole face of porn,” he said in a recent interview. “Home-made porn is everywhere. It’s easy to get a knocked-off DV camera in a pub, and shoot your own stuff and put it on the net. It’s become a massive operation. And because it’s been taken away from the backstreets, you get more women consumers involved. It’s become a mainstream thing.”
From the earliest etchings to the Polaroid boom, the impulse to document the erotic has always been with us. According to Euromonitor, 10% of households in the UK own a camcorder. “As soon as the tools are there, certain people will take them into the sexual arena,” notes Sam Roddick, owner of the erotic boutique, Coco de Mer. “People’s appetite for naughtiness is insatiable. Technology expands your capacity to have a view on your sexuality. How far depends on your own creativity.”
Dr Petra Boynton, a psychologist specialising in sexual relationships at UCL, identifies a number of ways that lovers are incorporating filming into their sex lives. “There are some people who will do it as a one-off, and keep it to themselves. Others do it more regularly, and there is quite a trend on the internet for swapping tapes or even broadcasting live using a webcam. Then, some do it to sell. Problems arise when people are not aware that they are being taped, or when they make the tape in the bloom of a relationship and later regret it. A lot of people do get off on it, but I worry that some women only do it to keep their partners happy.”
While she is pleased to witness the expansion of possibility, she warns against pushing sexual boundaries for the sake of it. “There is a danger of setting things up as precedent – so you can only enjoy sex if you do it this way.”
For Molly, the experience of making the film was the source of excitement: “The feeling of being watched was the turn-on, but being able to see the TV screen out of the corner of my eye and knowing the writhing figures on it were us was a bonus. The sex was great – though I was glad I’d been going to the gym – and we did it on the floor, on the chair, on the table, me on top, from behind, and so on. Nothing too extreme, but on the other hand you don’t want to waste the opportunity by sticking to the missionary position. You might as well record a sewing machine for 20 minutes!”
The morning-after screening was less erotically charged, she admits. “Watching it in the cold light of day was the visual equivalent of hearing your voice on the answerphone; you can’t believe it’s you, and you just pray that’s not how you come across to other people. And of course the hangover from the wine that gave you the bright idea in the first place adds insult to injury. We didn’t watch it again throughout the remaining five years of our relationship, and destroyed it by mutual consent when we split up.”
The growth in videoing sex at home is evidence of a rebellion against the unrealistic images and unappetising associations of mainstream porn, argues Amory Peart, porn director and presenter of Channel 4’s Future Sex. “People are fed up with the traditional porn-star look – silicone, long hair, big muscles. Late teens and twentysomethings have lots of different street images which they want to see represented. The skater look is really prevalent in gay porn at the moment, for example.”
He identifies a growing “porno generation” of young, technologically literate and sexually exploratory individuals. “People are now sophisticated enough to know exactly what they want, and if they can’t find it then they’ll do it themselves.”
Peart notes that the most popular contemporary pornography is “Gonzo porn”, which is deliberately amateurish and naturalistic in style. “It’s a lot more intimate. You see a vulnerability that doesn’t come across in more professionally made films, and it’s also very cheap to make.”
Ben Dover, the highest-paid porn star in the UK, is a Gonzo artist, who travels the country knocking on doors and “persuading” ordinary women to have sex with him. “He talks to camera, the settings are very suburban and domestic, and the girls are usually amateurs.”
If it is indeed the case that women are embracing the erotic potential of the camcorder as eagerly as men, it raises some profound questions about the nature of our sexual responses. The debate over whether women are as aroused by visual stimuli as men continues to rage. Some argue that any remaining disparity is merely the result of persistent assumptions that women have smaller sexual appetites than men. Others suggest that women are simply more discerning, with a higher aesthetic standard. And it is hard to isolate a woman’s visceral response when so much of what she is responding to – be it lad mags, car ads or hardcore porn – is steeped in the commercial exploitation of her sexuality.
Rachel Morris, a consultant psychotherapist and sex editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, grappled with these contradictions when she made her own home porn movie with a partner. “As a feminist, I have an enormous problem with mainstream porn. You can’t get away from the fact that women in that industry are horribly abused and exploited. We are increasingly fed the line that these women are in control and powerful, but how powerful can you be when you’re performing naked in front of strangers for money?”
For Morris, making her own film was about subverting the notion that women’s erotic power can only be located in their role as paid-for sexual objects, rather than as active sexual subjects. “It felt like a very safe thing to do. It also showed a deep level of intimacy and trust in the relationship. It was really good fun, and we laughed a lot. Any sexual games you play bring you closer together because they make you quite vulnerable.”
The impulse to watch and be watched, to be seen to be desired, is elemental to sexual fantasy. What do you look like when you’re having an orgasm? We are a nation of voyeurs, more desperate than ever before to validate our experiences through the camera lens. It’s not surprising that the values of reality TV, Kilroy-style exposure and tabloid hounding have been translated into the private realm.
And on a more mundane level, technology has transformed sexual etiquette. Email and text messaging have evolved as a new forum for flirtation-at-one-remove. And for some, filming doesn’t lead to intimacy but to a side space, where the theatrics of sexual contact can be explored without the emotions.
Richard, who is 29, has filmed himself with two partners. “In one sense it distances you from the act because there’s another presence there, even if it is a piece of machinery. You’re used to abandoning yourself to the moment, and then it being over. But with this other eye there, suddenly it’s about seeing a different side of yourself because you can enjoy it afterwards too.
“If I wanted to have a really emotional sexual experience I certainly wouldn’t imagine filming it as being part of that. There’s something about watching or recording which is quite dirty and lacking in intimacy, though it can be incredibly arousing.”
But with more erotic templates than ever before are we really any better at understanding what we want and why? One of the great ironies of society’s saturation with sexual imagery and detail is that it doesn’t tally with any great rolling back of inhibition. We can know that Angus Deayton once danced naked with two women to the Oasis song Wonderwall, but we still can’t talk about rape fantasies.
Perhaps the camcorder is providing people with a safe and satisfying method of reclaiming and recreating public images of sex for their private pleasure. And with that comes a better understanding of the potential of desire – that we might transform ourselves into anyone and anything.
· Additional reporting by Lucy Mangan
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