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Sex sells, so the old adage goes, and when it comes to cinema that sentiment is especially true. There is no shortage of films about the porn industry, but a representation of this world that finds empathy and understanding without glossing over the real flaws in the system is a long-standing work in progress with varying degrees of success.
It is therefore not surprising that Pleasure of Ninja Thyberg – set in the heart of the American adult film industry – caused quite a stir when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. Ninja Thyberg’s drama, about a young Swedish woman (an electrifying debut performance by Sofia Kappel) who moves to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming the next porn star, goes to the heart of a notoriously closed industry, with a cast of real adult film actors alongside Kappel. Particularly, Pleasure, currently available to watch on Mubi, challenges the perception that porn is inherently immoral or degrading, highlighting that many of the industry’s negative aspects stem from power imbalances and unscrupulous business practices; a sentiment that almost all workers can deal with, regardless of their profession.
Pleasure seems like a cornerstone in its nuanced but no-nonsense portrayal of the porn world, but the history of on-screen sex work is a long and controversial one, with myriad examples of both good and bad portrayal. With Thyberg’s film taking center stage, there’s no better time to examine the evolving landscape of porn as it appears in classic and contemporary cinema, and consider how the film industry views its titillating cousin.
The best movies about porn
Hardcore (1979)
Famed for having one of the finest movie posters of all time, Paul Schrader’s 1979 neo-noir sees a religious, middle-class father (played by the incomparable George C. Scott) grapple with the disappearance of his daughter Kristen and the subsequent revelation that the girl is shooting a porn film in Los Angeles. To help him find Kristen, porn actress and prostitute Niki (Season Hubley) assumes that she was forced into the adult film industry. But for Kristen, porn is an escape from her conservative upbringing and she finds release in being able to decide what to do with her body. Schrader is no stranger to sex work movies, having written the screenplay for Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, e Hardcore remains a brave retelling of “every father’s worst nightmare”that at the same time he affirms that it is possible to be a porn star and break free – quite a bold idea for 1979.
Videodrome (1983)
Despite being deemed a box office flop after failing to recoup even half of its $6 million budget, David Cronenberg’s psychosexual body horror about a TV executive who resorts to dark methods to boost ratings has become a classic cult following in the years following its release in 1983. The Canadian filmmaker has frequently explored the intersection of sex and violence, but Videodrome is one of his best works: Max Renn (James Woods) becomes obsessed with a mysterious satellite television channel that broadcasts snuff movie violent and sexual. Debbie Harry plays her lover Nicki, a sadomasochistic radio host, who decides to audition for Videodrome after Max tells her about it; things go as smoothly as one might expect in a film by the master of the macabre. However, Cronenberg’s view on the excessive consumption of violent – especially sexual – images is one gripping, if not grotesque spectacleAnd asks uncomfortable questions about how the normalization of extreme imagery desensitizes us to the horror of the real world.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Paul Thomas Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley, the heart of the Los Angeles porn scene, and his 1997 drama about a rising porn star named Dirk Diggler (played by Mark Wahlberg) is rightfully considered a modern classic. Freely based on the life of porn star John Holmes, Boogie Nights presents the golden age of porn in all its gory glorywhile Diggler’s meteoric rise to fame – and the inevitable fall from grace – comes with girls rollerblading, drug dealing and a very memorable scene to the tune of Jesse’s Girl by Ricky Springfield. Anderson does a great job of capturing the glamorous aspects of the adult film industry during its heyday, but the highest highs are accompanied by the lowest lowsand the balance between the two is what makes it Boogie Nights so memorable.
room (2018)
Based in part on screenwriter Isa Mazzei’s personal experiences working as a camgirl, Daniel Goldhaber’s psychological horror puts audiences in the shoes of Alice Ackerman, who broadcasts live camera shows from her apartment. She’s obsessed with becoming the site’s top-rated camgirl, but her situation takes an ominous turn when a lookalike takes over her account. How Videodrome, room plays with ideas of voyeurism and how social media rewards extreme content, but it also highlights the parasocial relationship between sex workers and their clients; at one point, Alice realizes that a fan has moved to her city without telling her, and when she turns to the police for the hack, she is immediately critical. The horror genre has a history of puritanical attitudes towards sex work, so it’s refreshing to see a film with a more nuanced approach, especially one that featured a real cam girl.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)
There dramedy by Romanian director Radu Jude about a teacher who gets involved in a scandal when her homemade hardcore video is released won the first prize at the Berlin Film Festival 2020, where his sense of humor about society’s attitudes towards sex resonated with audiences. Jude’s film offers him the opportunity not only to present porn in a domestic context (amateur porn is still porn!), but also to rant against the hypocrisy of modern life, where a woman’s personal life can be so obscenely violated and yet she still comes out as a villain. Representing porn as something that happens between people in a relationship and actors on a set is an important step in truly addressing its prevalence and potential for good and bad in the modern world.
The worst porn movies
The girl next door (2004)
This “romantic comedy” about a high school student who discovers his sexy neighbor was a porn actress is now something of a cult favorite, but its rhetoric of “porn stars are people too!” with Daniella (played by Elisha Cuthbert) so understated that it seems like her only character trait is that she’s been in adult films, it doesn’t work. The film is much more concerned with its male protagonist, an ambitious and questionable chap with questionable views on women. The moment he realizes that Daniella is a porn actress, Matthew (Emile Hirsch) treats her as a sex object, setting off the events of the film, and even then sees her as someone who needs saving rather that as a grown woman she can make her own life choices.
Sex Tapes (2014)
In her penultimate role before retiring from acting, Cameron Diaz stars opposite Jason Segal in a comedy about a married couple who decide to spice things up in the bedroom by creating a sex tape. In an effort to erase the video, they end up syncing it to the cloud and sending it to a number of iPads they’d given away to friends over the years – a mad dash to retrieve the iPads ensues and erase the video before any of their friends get it. see. Even though the film is relatively short (95 minutes), the jokes are cheesy, the idea is ridiculous and, when the teenage son of one of their friends tries to blackmail the couple by threatening to upload the video to the Internet, everything becomes more distasteful. than the star cast would lead you to believe.
A Serbian Film (2010)
A film with disturbing content isn’t necessarily without merit, but in the case of Srđan Spasojević’s 2010 horror, that is absolutely the case. Spasojević argues that the film – in which a financially struggling porn star accepts a role only to discover it’s for a violent snuff movie – is an allegory for Serbian politics, but this nuance was lost after the film’s release, as A Serbian Film became famous for its graphic scenes of rape and necrophilia that are incredibly difficult to digest. Grotesque example of creating horrifying images for the hell of itSpasojević’s film was banned in several countries, and despite its claims of political relevance, few saw a silver lining in this story of degradation and misery.
I want candy (2007)
Tom Burke is now a darling of the British film industry, but he was just another actor back then, which presumably led him to star in this dull sexy comedy about a pair of film students who, in an attempt to get funding for the their first film, they turn it into a porn film and secure the involvement of porn actress Candy Fiveways (played by Carmen Electra). Gritty, predictable, misogynistic, and reliant on tired porn and porn star stereotypes to piece together its thin plot, it’s a blessing that this British flop has all but been forgotten.
x (2022)
American director Ti West claims to have been inspired by several films and the amateur porn movement of the 70s for the making of this sex slasher about a group attempting to shoot a porno on a rural Texan ranch owned by a strange elderly couple, but x end up having less to say about the adult film industry than you think. Teen stars Maxine Minx and Bobby-Lynne may be openly excited about their prospects of becoming porn’s next big thing, but West seems to equate porn representation with point of view, and the idea of sexual desire among older people is unnecessarily cruel. X purports to be a love letter to slasher classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacrebut ends up being an empty regurgitation of images drawn from far superior workswith nothing interesting to say about porn or its function within the seventies.
READ ALSO:
13 films from the history of porn that aren’t porn
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