I'd like to consider defining pornography not from a place of lack, but from a place of presence. It seems to me that porn, especially hard-core porn, is denigrated not only because of what it lacks but because of what it offers. By this, I do not mean the shock or schlock most people associate with the genre, but a gratuitousness of a very specific kind: the iron-clad guarantee of an orgasm. Porn is porn not because it is cheap and tawdry, racist and misogynist, devoid of eros and beauty, but because we are assured of a final destination where everyone cums. Sometimes again and again. It is a fantasy world of climaxes without conflict, of unassailable happy endings. A pornographic film is a promise that is always fulfilled.
"I'd like to consider defining pornography not from a place of lack, but from a place of presence."
By this reasoning, films like Shortbus, Romance, and In the Realm of the Senses are not porn. Nor are films by directors drawing directly from porn like Bruce LaBruce's The Misandrists (2017) or Jean Rollin's Requiem For a Vampire (1972). Not because any of these films have artistic merit, but because you're not guaranteed a single orgasm.
We can take this reasoning further by considering the films of Vex Ashley's Four Chambers project, a series of hardcore shorts hosted online that aim to expand the visual vernacular of pornography, confront and subvert norms in mainstream studio porn, and blithely ignore any ostensible conflict between the goals of artistic expression and sexual gratification. With these films, there is no lack of creative effort. Sometimes there's a sense of psychological interiority, motivations, conflict. But barring a few exceptions, like the first-person film-essay, A Cyborg Manifesto (2020), Four Chambers' body of work never fails to make, and make good on, the promise of an orgasm.
You watch a Four Chambers film to watch people cum, and as such, visual and aural evidence of climaxes abound. As in mainstream studio porn, such evidence is up front and centre: in addition to cries of ecstasy and close-ups of orgasmic facial expressions, you have your spectacular money shots. So far, so typical. Yet Four Chambers pushes this promise to its extreme, featuring fluids oozing everywhere for good measure. The ejaculate of all genders goes without saying, but there are also copious amounts of spit, breast milk, blood, and urine (though films involving the latter two have been removed due to–surprise!–demands from a payment processor.) If bodily fluids cannot be sourced, not to worry. In a Four Chambers film, there is no lack of water, mud, juice, egg yolk, lube, molten gold, tar, sparkly ooze, sluicing or smeared over the actors' bodies. All orifices and enclosures are slick and slippery, dilated and down to fuck, ready to cream and be creamed, all the time. In fact, every conceivable surface and texture–chrome and glitter, nylon and latex, leather and hair, chalk and grease–is transformed into an erogenous zone. Light is sexy, smoke is sexy, sex lives everywhere. In addition to all this, actors' orgasms are not withheld to the end, but are sprinkled throughout in a queering of narrative structure (notably, Four Chambers films also typically close with an outtake of the cast and crew joking on set.) In this way, I find these films far pornier than what most people would consider the porniest of pornos.
Four Chambers also exhibits formal playfulness. Any given film may feature disruptive editing techniques, different aspect ratios, split- and multi-screen formats, loose narratives, and other unexpected visuals. Some films are self-reflexive, and a few, like the Divine Rites series, could be described as hybrid docu-pornos. These films are not beautiful, artistic, and experimental in spite of being pornographic–they are beautiful, artistic, and experimental because that is all part of fulfilling the promise of a good fuck.
"Only porn offers us this most honest of happy endings, an honesty that costs us nothing and is within easy reach."
I personally tend to dislike predictable happy endings in movies. I can find them too pat, too pandering, too easy in their closure. And yet, there is something I appreciate about the certainty of the sexual climax in porn. Perhaps because the pornographic happy ending is not a mirage of a happily ever after fairytale, but a consummate happiness sanctioned by one's flesh. The actors may be faking it, but what they're faking we know to be true. Only porn offers us this most honest of happy endings, an honesty that costs us nothing and is within easy reach. And as the prospects for the film industry grow grimmer under the pressure of artificial, algorithmic forces, it seems to me that these days, the porn ending might just be the only kind of cinematic happy ending we can really count on.