Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-Rated Video - Softcover

Stoller, Robert J.; Levine, I. S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300066619 ISBN 13: 9780300066616

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1996

Synopsis

What do porn films tell us about our own erotic impulses? What can we learn about our culture's sexual attitudes, fears, and fantasies from the ways that porn films are designed and produced? In this book, Dr. Robert J. Stoller, one of the world's leading experts on human sexual behavior, joins with I. S. Levine, a professional writer with long experience in X-rated video making, to examine the ideas and psychological makeup of the participants in an adult heterosexual X-rated video, Stairway to Paradise. Their interviews with performers, writers, directors, producers, and technicians provide extraordinary insights into the technical aspects of this type of video, the motivations and backgrounds of the people involved, and the porn industry's view of the video's intended audience.

 

Stoller, Levine, and the porn filmmakers have wide-ranging discussions about the aesthetics, ethics, and etiquette of the porn industry; the hostility that Dr. Stoller claimed underlies all erotic excitement; the liberating—and educational—function of porn in a puritanical culture; the misconceptions of antiporn crusaders; the impact of aids on the participants; and the future of the porn film industry. The authors hope that if we understand how and why a pornographic work is created, we will be better able to understand the implications of the legal and moral issues it raises.

 

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The late UCLA psychiatrist Stoller ( Porn: Myths for Our Time ) and Levine, a journalist and screenwriter with X-video credits, have collaborated on an unusual (and necessarily explicit) oral history of the world of erotic films. The voyeuristic and curious may learn much, as well as lose what Levine calls "lurid misconceptions," through such interviewees as a male actor who confesses fears of AIDS or a female counterpart who cites Piaget in discussing the emotional unreadiness of 18-year-old women for the trials of public sex. There are provocative observations: one porn director calls her work "a document of contemporary Western sexuality"; a male producer believes it's healthy for men to see violence against women; a female actress maintains that women from dysfunctional families go into porn for "adoration and love." Levine himself dubs the industry a "hideout for arrested development cases." Surrounded by much incidental verbiage, these points would benefit from more explication. There are no photographs, either.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0300066619
• ISBN 13: 9780300066616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256