Charles Saatchi: Is it only perverts who download sex filth onto their computers
Do you feel that the willing contemplation of vice is vice? And would you welcome the installation of a robust new branch of the security services, the Thought Police?
Pornography, even the most grotesque kind, has become a pandemic that crosses all age, class and geographical barriers, at all levels of intelligence.
Nobody seems to quite know how to fathom the reality of so much slimy stuff being available on everybody’s home screens.
Our new Porn World has taboos of its own, the main taboo being an open understanding of the needs it fulfils, and the consequences. To many people, porn merely represents harmless fun; not to everyone’s taste but neither the sole province of strange and seedy men.
China is the world leader in revenues spent on pornography, at over $30 billion. South Korea is only the 26th most populous nation, but with exceptionally high internet use, came in second at $27 billion, followed by Japan and the US.
The pornography business has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and Apple combined. 25 per cent of all search engine requests are for pornography, and 80 per cent of 15-17 year olds have had multiple hardcore internet exposure.
The US still proudly leads the way in porn production, offering the world over 250 million web pages to browse, and a new porn video produced every 30 minutes.
For all I know, this pornographic ebullience is wholly positive and liberated, clearly meeting the needs of modern society, and doing so effectively with a giddying choice. Even if you, like me, are a bit of a dud at investigating advanced sexual enhancement, wouldn’t you like to know more about why we are out of step?
I never did see Deep Throat, the first porn movie that entered the mainstream, and was regarded in the public consciousness in a largely positive light.
Deep Throat, reputedly funded with organised crime backing, starred Linda Lovelace and was viewed by 250,000 people in a cinema in Times Square, New York, before censors succeeded in banning the screening in 1973. But by then it was considered chic to view pornography and celebrities at the time, including Charlton Heston, Jack Nicholson and Sammy Davis Jr, were open in their admiration for the film. Its premise is that Linda cannot achieve orgasm because her clitoris is to be found low in her throat. I won’t add a spoiler here, in case you want to see the outcome, but I am told there are many examples of what would be considered hardcore sex scenes, with various methods of penetration, and numerous “money shots”.
The most famous pornstar of the 1970s was an all-American young lady, Marilyn Chambers, who starred in a wildly popular escapade, Behind the Green Door, after she was discovered as the wholesome face of Proctor and Gamble’s leading detergent brand, Ivory Snow.
Both Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers fared better than the founder of modern pornography Marcantonio Raimondi; during the Renaissance he published a series of engravings in 16th-century Rome, depicting Greco-Roman figures enjoying the pleasures of copulation. Pope Clement VIII had him imprisoned.
Fanny Hill, first published in 1748, was the first widely read pornographic novel, though banned from public sale in Britain until 1970. Not so long after that, Playboy magazine, which had never shown photos of pubic hair or genitals in its early years, would be rivalled by a more graphic newcomer, Hustler, with a much more open-door policy. Of course, they have long been overtaken by the swamp of top-shelf material widely available, and a multitude of sex channels on TVs across the globe.
Hurtfully, I have never been asked to star in a porno film, so I find it easy to take a superior air about the whole issue.
But I was asked if it is true that when men die, they get an erection. I don’t know yet, but if you wish, I will contact you after my passing, and let you know if it is indeed the case, by flushing your lavatory three times at midnight.
I consulted a doctor friend who told me this spectacle was observed only in the corpses of males who were executed by hanging. The phenomenon is attributed, apparently, to pressure on the cerebellum created by the noose. Ladies who were executed were also found to have engorged labia.
Is this why S-and-M adherents go in for asphyxiation to heighten their sexual peak?
Sorry, I’m simply too squeamish to try it and see.
In general the S-and-M and bondage aspects of sex make me go Eek! They sound a bit arduous so I’m not really a suitable candidate for treatment, I’m afraid.
I did once ask room service at the hotel I was living in after a divorce to send out for two large bags of cat litter. My girlfriend who had come round needed them for the cat back at her flat. But the young concierge who delivered them up to the hotel room couldn’t hide his blushes, and I can’t think what he assumed we might need the cat litter for. His imagination was clearly more colourful than mine, so I must be a bit of a dullard in that department.
Have you ever written crude words or images on a toilet stall? I really don’t recall, though it is fairly likely as I was a disappointing child in a multitude of ways.
I have enjoyed much lavatory graffiti over the years.
“Please do not throw cigarettes in the urinal, it makes them difficult to light.”
“Express lane: Five beers or less.”
“Since writing on toilet walls is done neither for critical acclaim, nor financial rewards, it is the purest form of art — discuss.”
“No wonder you always go home alone.” [Sign above washroom mirror] “Members only.” [Sign above entrance to gentlemen’s lavatory]
Welcome to my world of cultured, urbane humour.
Note: The world centre for the Mormon Church is in Utah, and by coincidence of course, a Harvard study found that the state has the most online porn subscriptions per thousand broadband users in the US.
Be the Worst You Can Be by Charles Saatchi is published by Booth-Clibborn Editions, price £9.99.
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A drama producer who has worked in both television and radio once told me that the great benefit of working on the wireless was that there was never any hassle from actors or audiences over nude scenes. Apart from strong language, nakedness is the most frequent complaint in TV feedback forums and, in both cases, the objection is that these elements are unnecessary or gratuitous. The difference is that whereas opinions on language are largely generational – the more recent the viewer's birth-date, the less likely they are to be offended by swearing – objections to nudity are more widely shared because of changing attitudes to women on screen, often influenced by feminism.
In this context, one of the striking aspects of new Sky Atlantic drama Hit and Miss, Paul Abbott and Sean Conway's compelling drama about a transgender assassin played by Chloe Sevigny, is that it contains a moment that attempts to make the case for a full-frontal nude scene that is dramatically crucial and completely non-gratuitous.
Sevigny's character Mia, who is undergoing hormone treatment prior to the final transformative operation, stands naked in front of a mirror. The unusual complexity of this image is that the viewer is seeing male and female nakedness simultaneously, being shown genuine breasts and a prosthetic penis.
It might possibly be objected that this scene is prurient – offering up a transgender patient as a sort of freak-show – but Mia is explicitly a character tracking the transformations of her body and it is relevant to the narrative for the audience to know what she has under her clothes at this stage: the information pays off in later scenes when her long-lost son surprises her in the bath and a local lothario tries to grope her between the legs. Abbott and Conway are surely right – and Sevigny seems to have agreed – that the reveal was necessary.
Most dramas, though, can't claim such an easy absolution. In British cop shows of the 1970s and '80s, it sometimes seemed almost obligatory for the central detective to be interrupted during love-making by a call-out to a crime-scene. As he heaved discreetly out of bed – often conveniently wearing boxers or even trousers – his big-busted girfriend would walk, in the foreground of the shot, naked past him to the bathroom. Memory suggests that The Sweeney was a particular offender.
Greater sensitivity to the exploitation of women has reduced the popularity of such shots, although one contributor to the Guardian's letters page reported that he had stopped watching Homeland after episode four because of the frequent female nudity. The correspondent found these shots of women's bodies "misogynistic" and accused reviewers who admired the series (including me and Sam Wollaston of the Guardian) of either ignoring or privately revelling in this woman-hating parade of flesh.
My view was that the other qualities of the series (acting, shooting, writing, plotting) were enough to overlook the inequalities of its costume policy. And the far greater quantity of female than male full-frontal scenes in screen drama results from something more complicated than just male chauvinism in the production process.
The standard compositions of TV sex scenes – the woman, with her breasts showing, on top of the man; or the man on top of the woman, whose breasts are showing – follow from the widely acknowledged theory that sexual arousal in men has a more dramatic visual indication than for women, and the regulatory and legal convention that erect penises are seen only in pornography or, more recently, 18 certificate movies. So, on television, if an actor is shown walking fully-naked towards a bed before a passionate love scene, application of the editorial guidelines raises distracting issues about his enthusiasm for the relationship.
But, while this excuse is true, it does also encourage lazy direction. The fact that an actor can't be shown fully naked during sex but that an actress can doesn't mean that the latter has to be. It is possible to film bedroom scenes while protecting the modesty of both participants – and certainly Homeland would not have suffered from a lower nipple count. Hit and Miss, however, fascinatingly fleshes out the debate over how naked bodies should be shown.
• Hit and Miss begins on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday 22 May at 10pm
Pornography, even the most grotesque kind, has become a pandemic that crosses all age, class and geographical barriers, at all levels of intelligence.
Nobody seems to quite know how to fathom the reality of so much slimy stuff being available on everybody’s home screens.
Our new Porn World has taboos of its own, the main taboo being an open understanding of the needs it fulfils, and the consequences. To many people, porn merely represents harmless fun; not to everyone’s taste but neither the sole province of strange and seedy men.
China is the world leader in revenues spent on pornography, at over $30 billion. South Korea is only the 26th most populous nation, but with exceptionally high internet use, came in second at $27 billion, followed by Japan and the US.
The pornography business has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and Apple combined. 25 per cent of all search engine requests are for pornography, and 80 per cent of 15-17 year olds have had multiple hardcore internet exposure.
The US still proudly leads the way in porn production, offering the world over 250 million web pages to browse, and a new porn video produced every 30 minutes.
For all I know, this pornographic ebullience is wholly positive and liberated, clearly meeting the needs of modern society, and doing so effectively with a giddying choice. Even if you, like me, are a bit of a dud at investigating advanced sexual enhancement, wouldn’t you like to know more about why we are out of step?
I never did see Deep Throat, the first porn movie that entered the mainstream, and was regarded in the public consciousness in a largely positive light.
Deep Throat, reputedly funded with organised crime backing, starred Linda Lovelace and was viewed by 250,000 people in a cinema in Times Square, New York, before censors succeeded in banning the screening in 1973. But by then it was considered chic to view pornography and celebrities at the time, including Charlton Heston, Jack Nicholson and Sammy Davis Jr, were open in their admiration for the film. Its premise is that Linda cannot achieve orgasm because her clitoris is to be found low in her throat. I won’t add a spoiler here, in case you want to see the outcome, but I am told there are many examples of what would be considered hardcore sex scenes, with various methods of penetration, and numerous “money shots”.
The most famous pornstar of the 1970s was an all-American young lady, Marilyn Chambers, who starred in a wildly popular escapade, Behind the Green Door, after she was discovered as the wholesome face of Proctor and Gamble’s leading detergent brand, Ivory Snow.
Both Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers fared better than the founder of modern pornography Marcantonio Raimondi; during the Renaissance he published a series of engravings in 16th-century Rome, depicting Greco-Roman figures enjoying the pleasures of copulation. Pope Clement VIII had him imprisoned.
Fanny Hill, first published in 1748, was the first widely read pornographic novel, though banned from public sale in Britain until 1970. Not so long after that, Playboy magazine, which had never shown photos of pubic hair or genitals in its early years, would be rivalled by a more graphic newcomer, Hustler, with a much more open-door policy. Of course, they have long been overtaken by the swamp of top-shelf material widely available, and a multitude of sex channels on TVs across the globe.
Hurtfully, I have never been asked to star in a porno film, so I find it easy to take a superior air about the whole issue.
But I was asked if it is true that when men die, they get an erection. I don’t know yet, but if you wish, I will contact you after my passing, and let you know if it is indeed the case, by flushing your lavatory three times at midnight.
I consulted a doctor friend who told me this spectacle was observed only in the corpses of males who were executed by hanging. The phenomenon is attributed, apparently, to pressure on the cerebellum created by the noose. Ladies who were executed were also found to have engorged labia.
Is this why S-and-M adherents go in for asphyxiation to heighten their sexual peak?
Sorry, I’m simply too squeamish to try it and see.
In general the S-and-M and bondage aspects of sex make me go Eek! They sound a bit arduous so I’m not really a suitable candidate for treatment, I’m afraid.
I did once ask room service at the hotel I was living in after a divorce to send out for two large bags of cat litter. My girlfriend who had come round needed them for the cat back at her flat. But the young concierge who delivered them up to the hotel room couldn’t hide his blushes, and I can’t think what he assumed we might need the cat litter for. His imagination was clearly more colourful than mine, so I must be a bit of a dullard in that department.
Have you ever written crude words or images on a toilet stall? I really don’t recall, though it is fairly likely as I was a disappointing child in a multitude of ways.
I have enjoyed much lavatory graffiti over the years.
“Please do not throw cigarettes in the urinal, it makes them difficult to light.”
“Express lane: Five beers or less.”
“Since writing on toilet walls is done neither for critical acclaim, nor financial rewards, it is the purest form of art — discuss.”
“No wonder you always go home alone.” [Sign above washroom mirror] “Members only.” [Sign above entrance to gentlemen’s lavatory]
Welcome to my world of cultured, urbane humour.
Note: The world centre for the Mormon Church is in Utah, and by coincidence of course, a Harvard study found that the state has the most online porn subscriptions per thousand broadband users in the US.
Be the Worst You Can Be by Charles Saatchi is published by Booth-Clibborn Editions, price £9.99.
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Richmond park / London / 2012
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Hit and Miss bares some interesting questions about nudity on television
* 'full frontal' by Chloe Sevigny
Nudity on screen can often seem unnecessary or gratuitous – but Sky Atlantic's new drama suggests this isn't always the case
Dressed to kill … Chloe Sevigny as Mia in Sky Atlantic's new drama series Hit and Miss.
A drama producer who has worked in both television and radio once told me that the great benefit of working on the wireless was that there was never any hassle from actors or audiences over nude scenes. Apart from strong language, nakedness is the most frequent complaint in TV feedback forums and, in both cases, the objection is that these elements are unnecessary or gratuitous. The difference is that whereas opinions on language are largely generational – the more recent the viewer's birth-date, the less likely they are to be offended by swearing – objections to nudity are more widely shared because of changing attitudes to women on screen, often influenced by feminism.
In this context, one of the striking aspects of new Sky Atlantic drama Hit and Miss, Paul Abbott and Sean Conway's compelling drama about a transgender assassin played by Chloe Sevigny, is that it contains a moment that attempts to make the case for a full-frontal nude scene that is dramatically crucial and completely non-gratuitous.
It might possibly be objected that this scene is prurient – offering up a transgender patient as a sort of freak-show – but Mia is explicitly a character tracking the transformations of her body and it is relevant to the narrative for the audience to know what she has under her clothes at this stage: the information pays off in later scenes when her long-lost son surprises her in the bath and a local lothario tries to grope her between the legs. Abbott and Conway are surely right – and Sevigny seems to have agreed – that the reveal was necessary.
Most dramas, though, can't claim such an easy absolution. In British cop shows of the 1970s and '80s, it sometimes seemed almost obligatory for the central detective to be interrupted during love-making by a call-out to a crime-scene. As he heaved discreetly out of bed – often conveniently wearing boxers or even trousers – his big-busted girfriend would walk, in the foreground of the shot, naked past him to the bathroom. Memory suggests that The Sweeney was a particular offender.
Greater sensitivity to the exploitation of women has reduced the popularity of such shots, although one contributor to the Guardian's letters page reported that he had stopped watching Homeland after episode four because of the frequent female nudity. The correspondent found these shots of women's bodies "misogynistic" and accused reviewers who admired the series (including me and Sam Wollaston of the Guardian) of either ignoring or privately revelling in this woman-hating parade of flesh.
My view was that the other qualities of the series (acting, shooting, writing, plotting) were enough to overlook the inequalities of its costume policy. And the far greater quantity of female than male full-frontal scenes in screen drama results from something more complicated than just male chauvinism in the production process.
The standard compositions of TV sex scenes – the woman, with her breasts showing, on top of the man; or the man on top of the woman, whose breasts are showing – follow from the widely acknowledged theory that sexual arousal in men has a more dramatic visual indication than for women, and the regulatory and legal convention that erect penises are seen only in pornography or, more recently, 18 certificate movies. So, on television, if an actor is shown walking fully-naked towards a bed before a passionate love scene, application of the editorial guidelines raises distracting issues about his enthusiasm for the relationship.
But, while this excuse is true, it does also encourage lazy direction. The fact that an actor can't be shown fully naked during sex but that an actress can doesn't mean that the latter has to be. It is possible to film bedroom scenes while protecting the modesty of both participants – and certainly Homeland would not have suffered from a lower nipple count. Hit and Miss, however, fascinatingly fleshes out the debate over how naked bodies should be shown.
• Hit and Miss begins on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday 22 May at 10pm
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Hot Trailer: ‘Hit And Run’
Parenthood‘s Dax Shepard wrote, co-directed (with David Palmer) and stars in Hit And Run, and the trailer for the action romantic comedy begins playing ahead of The Dictator this week. The movie, formerly titled Outrun, is about a nice guy (Shepard) with a questionable past who risks everything when he busts out of the witness protection program to deliver his fiancé (Shepard’s real-life wife-to-be Kristen Bell) to Los Angeles for her dream job. They are chased by feds and gangsters. Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold and Kristin Chenoweth co-star. Comes out on August 24.
* R-rated comedy so it's possible (but unlikely) we get a tit flash from Kristen. Maybe a test run before actual nude scenes in House of Lies (again unlikely). Poor Dax. Working with your girlfriend is bad mojo, dude. Even worse : casting Tom Arnold. Nothing against Tom - nice guy and all but the guy is box-office poison.
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