The more the board cuts (from sex videos), the less customers can be
fooled into thinking they are watching sexual reality, and the more producers have looked
for a new ploy to attract their customers. The answer has been to package reality into the
narrative itself, to stage what look like real encounters with ordinary women on the buses
and street corners. In Italy cable TV discovered the same gambit a decade ago with
programmes featuring housewives stripping. The UK video equivalent is a shrewd
professional version of home made porn, or what examiners have referred to as camcorder
sex.
For British release, these camcorder sex videos are tailored to 18 guidelines,
avoiding explicit genitalia and devoting a high proportion of the video to the mating
game, ie flirting persuasion, seduction, bribes by installment, and whatever other
pressures can be brought to bear on the female short of force. This social context is
thought by some examiners to be less honest and more sexist than frank hardcore porn,
since its acceptability reflects a disparity of gender status in society. After
discussion, an entire sequence in one of these videos was refused classification because
of the seduction techniques were felt to be offering lessons in the corruption of
innocence.
Even more of an issue was the extent to which such videos import porno values into
what purports to be the viewer's own neighbourhood. By porno values, examiners mean the
sexualised universe in which every person is fair game for sex and no one acknowledges
social constraints or personal commitments. Traditionally this universe has been treated
as fantasy land, but camcorder sex brings right down your street, so the neighbour greeted
on the bus every morning may begin to inhabit that sex fantasy. Is this what 18 videos
should be about? The questions go far deeper than mere explicitness of visual
depictions".
This again shows that the BBFC is aware that their policy of excessive butchering of 18
sex videos to the point of near sexlessness is having undesired side effects. See also
BBFC Policy: R18 Sex Videos where the BBFC fear that their policy
is driving sex video sales under the counter.
Perhaps the BBFC are also demonstrating a little naivety in thinking that camcorder
videos have developed just to side-step their regulations. Perhaps they should take a trip
abroad and have a look around the adult industry there.Here are a few of the series that
they may find:
- Ugly George (US) was getting girls to strip for his camcorder at least 17 years ago
- John Stagliano's Buttman series (US) are probably the original hardcore camcorder
videos. Noted for being the most cut releases for the UK market. Buttmans Wet Dream was
cut by 98 minutes.
- Steve Perry's Ben Dover series (UK) is released in a butchered format in the UK but is
released in hardcore in the US and Europe.
- The Excuse Me series from the Netherlands would certainly give the BBFC kittens for its
bullying techniques.
- Strassen Flirts, Street Life & Teenager Live are all extremely popular in Germany
- Sacrees Coquines is a recent series from France where amateur sex videos seem to be a
passion. (along with participatory amateur sex, there are scores of swingers clubs in
Paris)
