[Greta Christina] Tears
As promised last week: my exegesis on crying in spanking porn, and what makes it so hot.
I was writing last week about acquired tastes in sexual fetishes. I was writing about how being repeatedly exposed to certain images in porn can inspire you to pick up a fetish — not a true, clinical, “can’t get off without it” fetish, but a more casual, peripheral, “I really like to do this/ see this in my porn/ think about this when I whack off” fetish. I was giving, as an example of one of these pornographic tropes that I’ve acquired as a personal fetish, crying. Specifically, crying in spanking porn.
And I started wondering:
What’s that about?
Other standard tropes of spanking porn make more obvious sense to me. The classic implements, the classic outfits, the classic roles being played — they’re mostly pretty straightforward, and they don’t take an expert in semiotics or psychology to analyze where they come from and why people find them hot.
But the crying trope is, at least on the face of it, a little more unsettling. It’s the sort of thing that rabid anti-porn activists point to when they’re trying to prove that all porn actresses are forced into the business, either by financial hardship or at gunpoint. I mean, if the actress in a spanking porno is dressed as an underaged schoolgirl . . . well, even if you find the fantasy disturbing, you can always remember that this is adults consensually playing out a fantasy they both enjoy, and not actual child abuse. But if the actress or actor is actually crying, the line between “acting out a fantasy” and “genuinely upset” is a whole lot more blurry.
And it occurred to me:
That’s the point.
The point is that it’s real.
Crying in spanking porn is like cum shots in regular porn.
Not in the sense of “a trope that’s become so ubiquitous it’s now just part of the background noise.” That’s not what I mean. It isn’t. (I actually wish it were a little more ubiquitous, since I find it really hot.)
Crying is like cum shots because it’s proof that what’s happening is real. It’s proof, not only that the actors are physically engaging in the sexual acts they’re portraying, but that they’re feeling them.
There are lots of analyses out there about why cum shots are so ubiquitous in porn; why heterosexual men are so fixated on watching other men ejaculate, to the point where they won’t be satisfied with porn unless they see it. But the most convincing analysis I’ve seen is that the cum shot is proof that the male actor was really feeling it. It’s proof, not only that the sex was real, but that the sensations were real. (The man’s sensations, anyway — which is what hetero porn aimed at a male audience tends to prioritize.) It’s proof that the arousal, the excitement, and of course the orgasm, all felt real to the man having the sex. Which makes it easier for the male viewer to project himself into the fantasy.
And that’s what crying is in spanking porn.
I’ve seen plenty of spanking porn where the spankings themselves were obviously real — you could hear the sounds of the slaps, you could see the impacts and the reddening bottom — but where I had no idea whether the person on the receiving end felt anything at all about the matter. I’ve seen plenty of spanking porn where the recipient was so silent, so stiff, so unresponsive, that even with the sights and sounds of the smacks, I still had no idea whether the performer was feeling helpless, or defiant, or turned on, or anything at all except bored. The sights and sounds might as well have been done by special effects. The only reason I trust that they weren’t special effects is that special effects are a lot more expensive than just paying someone to get their butt smacked.
But if the recipient is crying . . . I know they’re feeling it. Not just that they’re feeling the physical sensations of skin or wood or leather striking their skin. I know they’re feeling it inside: the helplessness, the fear, the shame, the pain. The good stuff.
And that makes it easier for me to project myself into the fantasy. Regardless of whether I’m fantasizing about receiving the spanking or giving it. If I’m fantasizing about receiving it, and if the actress or actor is crying, I can project myself into their helplessness, their fear, their shame, their pain. I can feel these emotions and sensations myself. If it’s a really good video, I can practically feel the tears welling up in my own eyes. And if I’m fantasizing about giving it, I can project myself into how powerful it feels to make somebody else feel all this: to make someone else feel so helpless, so frightened, so ashamed, so much in pain, that I make them cry.
You know. The good stuff.
It is sometimes unsettling. If a spanking model is crying, then that means the fantasy of helplessness and fear and shame and so on have crossed over into some sort of real feelings of helplessness and fear and shame. And that can be a little unsettling to watch in a total stranger. If you’re the one who’s crossing that line, if you’re the one who’s experiencing these difficult emotions and who knows exactly how you eroticize them — or if it’s your lover or fuckbuddy or whatever, the person on the receiving end of your chastisements and whose blend of arousal and suffering you’re reasonably familiar with — that’s one thing. If it’s some spanking model you’ve never seen in your life . . . then that’s a little unnerving. It is to me, anyway.
But that unnerving quality — the place where fantasy crosses into reality, the place where pretend situations conjure real emotions, and where difficult emotions cross their wires with intense sexual arousal — that’s a huge part of what makes kinky sex interesting. To me, anyway. It’s a huge part of what I get out of my kinky sex life. It’s a huge part of what I think about in my kinky fantasies. And it’s a huge part of what I look for in my kinky porn.
And crying is what shows me that it’s real.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, 18 November 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Wednesday, 18 November 2009 at 5:31 am Cand86 wrote:
I’m so glad you wrote about this! I’ve long been trying to put into words this kind of phenomenon, but I never could really express it right.
A while back, I found myself getting really into gangbangs of the brutal, multiple-men-on-one-girl variety, and I had to admit that it was freaking me out. What if the anti-porn people were right, and I was progressing deeper and deeper, requiring more and more hardcore porn down a rabbit hole inevitably leading to the really abhorrent, disgusting, and even illegal stuff? The idea of being desensitized like that really upset me, and yet I was having difficulty actually proving it was happening- because I could still get off on and fully enjoy softcore porn, too.
What does it mean if a few years ago I would have shut off a particularly filthy Cody Lane gangbang in disgust, but now watched it avidly? And if the answer is “You’re becoming desensitizied.”, then why could a Tony Comstock filim full of gentle lovemaking create the exact same response? And the key to understanding it is seeing the thread between them, instead of their categorical differences.
I wanted reality. I didn’t care if it was a tender, loving, romantic reality, or a trying ordeal of one, but I wanted- want, really- to see something that doesn’t have porn’s all-too-common artifices. I’m tired of seeing girls fake their orgasms, and while the feminist in me loves that female pleasure is given a priority, the rest of me would rather bypass it, forget the pretense, and just give me honesty.
The thing that links together all of the porn I own, seek out, and rate highly isn’t its “level of extremity” (softcore vs. hardcore), its style (gonzo vs. plotted), its class (indie vs. mainstream), it’s quality, or anything else like that- it’s how the participants’ reactions captivate me in their honesty. And that can be through laughter, or tears, or cumming, or even expressions of disgust and hatred. It’s why I can watch nearly identical Kink.com scenes and find one amazing and the other bland. It’s why I can get the same level of enjoyment out of a very simple/short BJ or a rough, forced deep-throating, but oftentimes can’t connect with a perfectly decent blowjob that lands somewhere in the middle of those two- a long scene with a skilled mouth that nonetheless does nothing for me.
And yes, it’s kind of scary to realize that I can get off on one of the “negative” emotions (fear, shame, anger, disgust, hatred, etc.) . . . but in the end, I think that it’s a GOOD thing. I refuse to let the sex I enjoy watching become nothing more than automatons going through the motions; I want my participants to be human, you know?
Anyways, great post, one that I think will resonate for a lot of people. In fact, the first thing I thought of when I read the title was of this thread on the ADT forums, where, once again, deeply felt, real emotions are what people are seeking, even if the result (or cause) of said emotion sounds like a moral injunction. It just goes to show that “Your honor, these people are sick, they want to see girls crying in their porn or ______’s doing _(insert something reprehensible here)__ during sex!” is never as black-and-white or clear-cut as society makes it.
on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 4:36 pm Noah wrote:
I really like this. It lays out something I’ve known for a while, but never had the opportunity to vocalize. I don’t know what your thoughts are on the more extreme porn out there, but I’d say that this, and the utter helplessness of the models is why I like Insex so much. The older I get, the more feminist I become, but regardless of how I act in the rest of my life, I still cannot find anything hotter than that extreme BDSM porn.
And Cand86, your last paragraph is also excellent.
Noah
on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 4:52 pm Valhar2000 wrote:
Hmm. Maybe this is why I like the Beautiful Agony videos so much.
on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 9:37 pm Zirc wrote:
I know they’re feeling it inside: the helplessness, the fear, the shame, the pain.
But you don’t know that. It’s completely possible to fake tears without resorting to anything fancy or expensive. Tears aren’t proof of any particular emotion… all they’re proof of is that someone is crying.
on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 9:42 pm Jethro wrote:
Quiet Zirc, you’re ruining it!
on Saturday, 21 November 2009 at 5:16 pm Noah wrote:
But you don’t know that. It’s completely possible to fake tears without resorting to anything fancy or expensive. Tears aren’t proof of any particular emotion… all they’re proof of is that someone is crying.
True. But the tears allow for a higher degree of verisimilitude than otherwise attainable. The same with FX and CGI in movies. I know it’s not real, but it helps to believe it’s real for the purposes of my enjoyment.
Noah
on Saturday, 21 November 2009 at 9:10 pm Jeffrey wrote:
I’m sure Greta and some of you have read this already, but this article reminded me of the best essay I’ve ever read on the topic of the porn industry. David Foster Wallace wrote an essay called “Big Red Son” and it was originally published in Premier magazine (I believe), but is in his essay collection book “Consider the Lobster.” He talks about seeing into a person’s eyes as they orgasm as being the “most real” element of porn. Obviously, females can fake orgasm, but he talks about the reality of a person that comes through at the moment of orgasm. Good stuff as always. Thanks Greta.
on Monday, 23 November 2009 at 6:13 pm Hanzo M wrote:
You know, I had a similar experience, only it wasn’t with crying… in fact, it was something which DIDN’T appear in the movie I was watching, something that made it real. I was watching a bondage movie, and it was obvious from the editing that there was a point during the filming that what was happening was so intense and real that the safe word came out (because the way this company shoots, the whole event is generally one take with two cameras in split screen so you can see the face of the model and the acts being done to them), so there was a strange kind of reality to the whole thing that might not have been there otherwise (and this is a site that does have tears as well).
Cand86: You know the weird thing… when you mentioned Cody Lane, whose work I am not entirely familiar with, but I think I have indeed seen that particular scene you are talking about (if it begins with her having a chat with the cameraman while standing as he has his hand around her throat).