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Pornographic movies appeared shortly after the creation of the movie technology that made them possible. Pornographic films have much in common with other forms of pornography. Pornography is often referred to as "porn" and a pornographic work as "a porno".
The movie camera has been used for pornography throughout its history, but pornographic movies were for most of that time typically available only by underground distribution, for projection at home or in private clubs.
Pornographic movies were widespread in the silent movie era of the 1920s, and were often shown in brothels..
More permissive legislation permitted the rise of "XXX-rated" movie theaters in the United States in the 1970s. There was also a proliferation of coin-operated "movie booths" in sex shops that displayed pornographic "loops" (so-called because they projected a movie from film arranged in a continuous loop).
At that time, pornographic movies even approached acceptance into the mainstream movie industry, with films such as Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and Gerard Damiano's 1972 film The Devil in Miss Jones being shot on film with high production values, and grossing substantial amounts in movie theaters.
With the arrival of the home video cassette recorder in the 1980s, the pornographic movie industry grew massively, allowing people not only to view pornography in the privacy of their own home without having to go out to a theater, but also to make their own pornography. Video production is much cheaper than shooting and editing on film, and has thus displaced production on film for almost all pornographic movies.
With the advent of the Internet and DVDs, the production and distribution of pornographic movies has become even easier and it is a huge business involving at least hundreds of filmmakers all over the world, and thousands of performers. With ~20,000 feature length films a year in the US alone, the adult movie industry is the biggest branch of film industry in the world.
Current pornographic videos can be divided into a number of sub-genres by the sex of the performers, the types of sex act portrayed, and the intended audience. Some of the most popular include:
* Straight porn, designed principally to appeal to heterosexual men
* Couples porn, designed to appeal to both heterosexual men and women
* Lesbian, "girl-girl", or "girl-on-girl" porn designed to appeal to heterosexual men or homosexual women
* Gay, "boy-boy", or man-on-man porn, designed to appeal to homosexual men and to a lesser extent heterosexual women.
* "Bisexual" porn, involving both heterosexual (and often lesbian) and homosexual male acts
* Pregnant and Milking porn, involving sex with pregnant women and/or drinking and squirting of breast milk (although this does not necessarily require a pregnant woman).
* "Shemale" porn, involving transwomen (male-to-female transgender persons) that have breasts (either through hormone replacement therapy or through breast augmentation and usually other female secondary sex characteristics), but who have not undergone genital reassignment surgery, in other words, women with penises (often called 'chicks with dicks').
* "Gonzo" porn, which often purports to recruit amateur performers off the street (but does not actually do so, because of the need for HIV testing, and to satisfy record-keeping requirements in the age verification of the performers)
* Spanking and BDSM porn
* Fetish porn
At the same time, a distinction can be drawn across all genres between those movies with some semblance of a story and those which are simply assemblies of sequences of sex acts, the latter sometimes referred to as "wall-to-wall". A related distinction is between regular and "amateur porn", in which performers are not or appear not to be professional porn stars as seen by the lack of noticeable makeup, overblown dialogue, or discontinuous plot and motives. Third, porn involving roleplaying puts the performers into occupations which often are in real life thought to be unethical, unprofessional, or otherwise troublesome to have sex with another, for the thrill of forbidden relations, such as between doctor and nurse, cheerleader and team member, dad and babysitter, or professor and student. Another divides softcore and hardcore porn, the former common on premium cable channels, which do not show genitalia or bodily fluids at any time in the movie, and the latter on adult channels, which can and do.
Pornographic movies are notable for their extensive use of sequels, probably due to the lack of plot: a successful new movie will often generate dozens of numbered sequels in essentially the same format.
There are various subjects that are common in pornographic movies of the late 1990s and early 2000s. These sex acts are typically presented in a ritualized manner not representative of common sexual behavior and often perceived as objectifying one or more of the performers. In the jargon of the pornography industry they are referred to as:
* Anal: anal sex is engaged in various positions, equivalent to the various vaginal sex positions. Additionally, this is, obviously, the most common type of gay pornography.
* Orgy: group sex, more than two people having sex at the same time. Specific types of orgies are:
o Threesome: group sex of three people.
o Gang bang: one woman or man having sex with more than two men or women at the same time. Although a gang bang can be done with one man and more than two women, that is more often called a reverse gang bang.
* Double penetration (DP): a woman is penetrated by two men: one inserts his penis into her vagina, the other (or both men) into the anus.
* Double vaginal (DV): a woman is penetrated by two men, both inserting their penises into her vagina at the same time.
* Double anal (DA): a person is penetrated by two men, both inserting their penises into the anus at the same time.
* Creampie: a man ejaculates inside a woman's anus or vagina leaving the semen dripping out the orifice.
* Cumshot or Money Shot: a man withdraws his penis before ejaculating onto the person's body, usually onto the face, mouth, sometimes onto the sex organs, or the buttocks. Some cumshots are more specifically called:
o Bukkake: a group of men ejaculating on a woman's face, mouth or eye often while the woman is kneeling, usually followed by the consumption of the sperm. This originated in Japanese movies.
o Facial: ejaculating on a person's face.
o Pearl necklace: ejaculating on a woman's chest.
* Gape: a gaping body orifice, usually an anus, occasionally a vagina.
* Anilingus: contact between the tongue and the anus, usually licking.
* Ass to mouth (A2M): indicates the removal of a penis or other object from a partner's anus followed by the insertion of the penis or other object into the same or other partner's mouth. A2M scenes are considered properly done only if they are filmed in one camera take, without later edits. |
