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Monday 12 December 2011

My first porno

Not all men are porn-obsessed smutmonsters. Honestly, we're not. On Saturday evening I watched my first ever porn film along with my friend 5olly. It was his first porn film too, and at 40 years of age he is nine years older than me. That's a combined 71 years of dispelling all sorts of popular notions about the male of the species. We should be very proud.

Sadly, we then watched Sexboat and blotted our copybook to some extent.

It's hard to know exactly what to make of Sexboat. It being our first and only pornographic film experience, our plane of reference is seriously lacking in calibration. Are you supposed to compare it to other films you have seen? In which case, I can tell you now that Sexboat is not as good as Citizen Kane or The Apartment. Or anything, actually. It is in fact the second-worst film I've ever seen.

Yes, the unlikely saga of two male stowaways - in drag which is less believable even than Bernard Bresslaw in Carry on Matron, mind you - aboard an entirely female cruise ship and featuring rapist pirates, gratuitous sex scenes and next to no plot is still better than Sliding Doors.

However, I rather suspect that the pornographic film is something of a genre apart. Not least because its rating on IMDb is a surprisingly generous 7.2 out of 10. That's from over 100 ratings. Could it be that I missed something? It's described as an "adult comedy". Were there all kinds of knowing pornographic in-jokes and people playing with generic conventions to confound the viewer's expectations? It's possible there were and that I'd have to watch it again to spot them all.

I really don't want to watch it again.

It was horrible. Before we started watching the film, as well as drinking really quite heavily, 5olly and I were planning to make a podcast of our experience. I'd suggested we had a bell or a hooter we could sound whenever we became aroused, from the point of view of full disclosure. It was a nice conceit. However, in the end we recorded it as a video podcast so it was not a necessary device. That, and the fact it was the least arousing thing I'd ever seen.

You could probably find more titillation in a film of an abattoir. Bits of meat shot from certain artistic angles could offer some sort of figurative aspect that may excite the imagination. Imagination is not the key consumer of Sexboat. The people who watch Sexboat are not going in to use their brains. You needn't have to conjure up any mental images, unless the mental images you're after are something other than: cock, fanny, spunk or tits.

Ideally, to be a real student of cinema, I will need to watch more pornographic titles so as to better understand the language and conventions of the genre. Maybe then I could explain why anything that happens in a porn film happens. But then I'd be the sort of person who could explain the mise-en-scene of Donkey Scud Tit Shooters 3 and I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable with that.

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