vid - Closer - meta porn

[kiki_miserychic]

vid title: Closer ("For Jamie")
music: String Quartet Tribute to Nine Inch Nails
source: 9 Songs, Lie With Me, and Shortbus
duration: 3:35
warning: This vid contains full name and female nudity, as well as sexually explicit scenes. You must be over 16 or over the age of consent for your country, whichever is greater, to view this vid.
summary: A meta!porn vid using movies with various levels of real sex. I wanted to explore the point when voyerism becomes participation, the nature of vidding, the blurry line between art and pornography, and sex itself.
notes: I promised kuwdora I would post our chat to go along with the vid, so those are here:


download: 30mb avi

XneyStripped (11:34:04 PM): A lot of it is waiting for source. I doing one that's porn meta and I have a long wait for the last movie from Blockbuster.
kuwdora (11:35:10 PM): Ohh, porn meta huh.
XneyStripped (11:35:22 PM): It uses Shortbus, Lie with Me, and 9 Songs, which are movies of various levels of real sex. I used the Jamie footage from Shortbus to make a meta statement about how vidding...
XneyStripped (11:35:48 PM): pretty much is fan porn
kuwdora (11:36:35 PM): That is fucking awesome.
XneyStripped (11:36:49 PM): For research I watched a bunch of porn and I was left with one question: why is there so much spit in porn?!?!? There is not that much in my sex life. Am I doing it wrong? o_0
kuwdora (11:37:06 PM): Someone on my flist awhile go actually recced a video that was a porn pairing, using thesee two porn actors I didn't know and making it into a storyline to the Magnetic Fields.
kuwdora (11:37:11 PM): LOL
XneyStripped (11:37:37 PM): Coolness. I think every vid should have some porn to go with it.
kuwdora (11:37:37 PM): You definitiely should make sure to put that comment in your vidder's notes.
kuwdora (11:38:03 PM): Yes.
XneyStripped (11:38:26 PM): I am going to because I'm seriously concerned. How is *haaacktooo* a sexy sound?
kuwdora (11:38:52 PM): *facepalms and laughs*
XneyStripped (11:40:37 PM): And who actually says, "oh yeah, fuck my tight little pussy" during sex? Only porn stars whose vagina is probably like throwing a hotdog down a hallway.
kuwdora (11:41:19 PM): Perhaps you should make a vid that comments on those kinds of particulars. >_>
kuwdora (11:41:42 PM): real sex vs. commercialized fantasy sex.
XneyStripped (11:42:18 PM): See that's thing... Does a movie with real sex automatically make it porn?
kuwdora (11:42:55 PM): Well, one has to define porn first.
XneyStripped (11:43:31 PM): If real sex equals porn, then Risky Business is a porn because many people in the crew claim that the leads really had sex. It's hard to define porn.
kuwdora (11:43:38 PM): Generally porn is considered anything that stimulates arousal, erotic feelings in a person, with the full *intention* of making somebody aroused.
kuwdora (11:44:11 PM): there's like an awareness behind the deal that's like "Yes, this is supposed to turn you on."
kuwdora (11:44:55 PM): Real sex isn't for show, it's intetention is for their partners arsoual and no one else's.
kuwdora (11:45:10 PM): real sex turns into porn when people do the voyouer thing and webcam themselves for the world to see.
XneyStripped (11:45:29 PM): Hmm, I've been thinking more on the terms of sex and art, sex and pornography, etc.
kuwdora (11:45:56 PM): I think those are different sides framing the same picture.
XneyStripped (11:46:13 PM): Speaking of webcam porn, there's an art thingy that someone did where they took all the shots in online porn where the people look at the camera.
XneyStripped (11:46:18 PM): It's creepy.
kuwdora (11:46:25 PM): :-/
XneyStripped (11:47:37 PM): Out of all the porn sites that I looked at, only one was cool.
XneyStripped (11:48:27 PM): Seriously. Where is the good porn people?

XneyStripped (11:53:48 PM): The only cool site I found was http://ifeelmyself.com/public/main.php

kuwdora (11:54:11 PM): Do you know of ... oh, shit, what's the name of the website..
kuwdora (11:54:31 PM): It's the one where people submit videos of themselves masturbating, but it's only video of their faces and nothing else.
XneyStripped (11:55:03 PM): Ohhh, looking at the site, I've totally heard of Blowfish. I saw a documentary that meantioned it.
XneyStripped (11:55:19 PM): beautifulagony?
kuwdora (11:55:21 PM): OH there's an ad for it on the website you just gave me. Beautiful Agony.
kuwdora (11:55:32 PM): Yeah, I thought that one was interesting premise.
XneyStripped (11:55:36 PM): yep, that one was interesting too.
kuwdora (11:55:40 PM): Actually makes it kind of good reference when writing porn.
XneyStripped (11:56:01 PM): I know! I totally used some it for my Femslash day porn.
XneyStripped (11:56:31 PM): I was like, "oh, so that's interesting", then I took out the spitting.
...
kuwdora (11:56:37 PM): LOL spitting.

It's entirely odd to see her username with a strike through it. Strikethroughs make the baby Jesus sad... And onto the meta porn.

Comments

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

OMG. That vid was kind of like a three minute orgasm. I am having trouble expressing myself clearly right now, but I love this on so many levels. First of all it is UNUTTERABLY HOT. And then it has all the commentary on gaze and objectification with everyone wanking to everyone else and staring at themselves and performing for each other and mirrors and being bemused and elated by the weirdness that is sex. And commodifying it for the movies and the viewers and the money and each other. And that would be a pretty satisfying (heh) vid all on its own.

But THEN there is the media. Not only the filming of sex and watching it on screen but the editing and cutting and vidding of it, the video for Jamie that is the video you cut and edited and made and we are watching. We see our own, vidders' and vid fans', erotics of media manipulation overlaid on the bodies of the hot people having sex.

Which THEN (or, I guess, first) you meta up another level with the soundtrack and its connection to fandom and vidding and porn-splicing and media indiscretion! The implicit lyrics about breaking and desecrating and fucking (with) a person/a source, the implicit visuals and story of the ST vid to "Closer" getting out of hand, closing the circle of erotic mediation...

Well. I'll be in my bunk. Writing theory.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i'll just say word to heyiya's analysis/description (she has a tendency to articulate what i can't :) I love the way things are alluded to only, the way it sits smack in a discursive community that doesn't even need the text to Closer to have tons of connotations.

Theory is hot is definitely my own personal subtitle to this.

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

I was worried it would be unsubtle and hit people over the head with a 2 by 4. I still think I went a bit far, but I tried to hang back on it at least a little.

I like your subtitle. :)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Well--it is and isn't subtle. I think the obvious porn/voyeurism theme's pretty clear, but using a different Closer version's a real nice touch and all of that alluding to the way we do or do not become voyeurs in fandom....

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

I'm as subtle as David LaChapelle's photography. :)

Someone who isn't familiar with fannish theory could get something out of it, hopefully, and not feel left out by not understanding all the theory.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

that's always the sign of a great crossover text for me--you get a layer even if you know little about the context...and then yet another layer if you do!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I keep on thinking about the porn!=erotica and where do we fit in discussion. And my realization that I used to be able to let my kids watch vids where I had to be careful to not let them see my fic, but that's not the case any more...

And the visual/written porn distinction with its potential genderedness...

If porn is meant to arouse--can something be other than porn and still arouse???

[And why can't I get shortbus at Blockbuster? Or should the more interesting fact be that I can get the other two there? :)]

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

I rarely show vids to my family and I've stopped showing them mine all together. I have a stepfather that thinks it's the coolest thing ever, but he is never seeing my most recent ones. Or my next one.

I honestly don't understand the line between porn and not porn.

I think I got Shortbus when I still had a Netflix account. I thought it was weird that Blockbuster had the other two and not Shortbus. I think Shortbus is the most well known compared to the others.

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

why can't I get shortbus at Blockbuster?

Shortbus is the only one of the films I've seen, and it may be paranoid for me to say this, but--having imdb'd the other two it seems like they're straight, or at least based around as straight storyline, whereas Shortbus is (to coin a phrase) queer as fuck. Wasn't there some kind of scandal with Shortbus and erect penises or something? Blockbuster does seem to trade on the so-called 'family' thing...

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think paranoid at all! It's the most recent of the three, but I also wondered if it was queerer....it's amazing what you can't get at BB!!!

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

That very well could be. The other two films had all straight storylines.

I remember an issue with Shortbus being that it was considered porn by a lot of people and wouldn't be shown in mainstream movie theaters. And there was trouble finding a DVD distributer, I think. Blockbuster used to not get unrated versions of movies to preserve their "family" image. I'm pretty sure they won't get NC-17 ones either.

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

My job here is done.

I've been reading so many academic papers, but I lack the ability to express myself in written or verbal form. But vidding I know how to do. So this is my response to all the thought provoking meta and academia I've been devouring.

The Closer track fit exactly with what I wanted to do. I did have brief doubt because I thought using it would be soaked in hipster bullshit, but I think it worked well. There's a lot of baggage that comes along with the song I hope that comes across.

I am so very pleased that these things come out for you. I was hoping that at least a fourth of what you got from the vid would come across. So YAY!

And I'll be in my bunk. Reading your theory and making porn vids. :)

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I love the interaction between theory and art a whole lot. :)

And after reading your comments above now I can't wait for your next vid!

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

I love watching meta vids, so I hope this one came out well.

Ohh, I have no idea when I'm going to finish my next vid. I've gone crazy lately.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

And I'll be sitting here WATCHING you two :D