The Blowfish Blog

The Pro Circuit: Billing For Perversion

We’re very pleased to introduce the new column by Thomas Roche, The Pro Circuit. We’ve wanted to have an industry column in our blog for some time, but hadn’t found just the right person to write it. Then, in a flash of inspiration, we realized that person was right in our back yard, as it were! Look for this column every Tuesday.

BellaVendetta.com Suffers Necrolepsy, Still Looks Hot

Fans of gothic, freaky, alty-arty tattooed weird chicks may also be fans, whether they know it or not, of Bella Vendetta, who’s posed for many of the great photographers of fine-art perversion.

Bella’s site, BellaVendetta.com, is a refuge for such spooky topics as blood play and nekrofetishism, sexy horror-movie terror and erotic dental work. Bella has rather famously pushed the envelope when it comes to keeping the edge in porn and the ick in Gothick, not to mention the milk-soaked “blood orgies with gay men and porn stars” she promises in “mainstream” films like Troma’s Meat Weed America. As Bella told Abby Ehmann late last year, her favorite activities are “a bit edgy. I love knife play and weapon play, and of course I get completely turned on by blood” — of course! who doesn’t? — “I’ve always loved medical play and playing the part of an evil nurse, but I’ve recently become a bit obsessed with vintage dental equipment and playing dentist!” Porn’s Dangerous Dame Emeritus, Belladonna, was reported to observe “You do some freaky shit” upon spotting Vendetta at the recent AVN Awards in Las Vegas.

There’s more, oh, so much more; this is one freaky goth chick! But Bella’s obsession with weird sex is far from the cry for attention a disapproving aunt might claim it to be; Bella’s a genuine perv. For six years since the launch of her site, Bella has been the alternative to the alternative, providing perversity while everyone else in the alt-porn counterculture was out getting a new tattoo. And being an actual freakazoid is apparently how Vendetta pissed off the bankers.

In an announcement on BellaVendetta.com, Bella disclosed that the site had lost its billing provider due to the outré nature of its purveyances. In deciding whether to continue, Bella realized “I cannot show the blood play, nekro fetish and other ‘Extreme Content.’  . . .If I remove all that content and keep the site gong as another fetish or glam site, that would just kill me inside. There’s already plenty of those sites all over the internet.” Vendetta’s decided, therefore, to take down the site, absent any censorship from web hosting providers or pressure from government or law enforcement.

(For the record, I don’t believe there can ever be too many naked, pierced tattooed freaks on the internet . . . every budding Morticia who appears on Bella’s site or elsewhere is one fewer to fuel the giant death engine of SuicideGirls — but I digress.)

Vendetta is far from the first creative victim of billing restrictions. Hardcore bondage porn fans may remember the plight of legendary site Insex.com, which also “did some freaky shit,” to put it mildly. The site, which featured seriously extreme bondage and humiliation of females — and later spun off a site with male bottoms — reportedly felt it was running potentially afoul of U.S. federal law enforcement after a Justice Department initiative in August 2005 in which sadomasochistic content would be targeted for obscenity prosecution. A posting on the site said that “while [Insex.com producer] Intersec is certain that a potential prosecution would have no chance of success . . . the staff is unwilling to fight a lengthy and expensive court battle only to emerge victorious but bankrupt.” Insex.com’s content, about 500 films, was sold to a Dutch company for an undisclosed sum, and can now be accessed as the “Insex Archives.”

It surprised pretty much no one in the industry that Insex went out of business, given that it constantly pushed the limits of what had ever been shown in porn. Whether or not Insex was to run afoul of the G-men, it’s widely murmured in the industry that the sale was precipitated not by legal pressure but because Insex lost its biller — same as BellaVendetta.com. In neither place did the cops come knocking at the front door, as they did with DVD producer Extreme Associates; Insex and BellaVendetta.com lost their viability not because what they did was illegal, but because they couldn’t get paid.

Anyone who’s run an online porn site knows that billing is king — if you can’t get your credit card billing up and running, you don’t have the money to operate a site. The idea that artists, especially erotic artists, should create stuff because they love it and should not expect to get paid, used to be pervasive in certain circles. That idea is not so popular nowadays — pervs are more likely today to see their perversions as potential commodities, and everyone wants to get rich.

But merchant banks and credit card billing companies hold the keys to the kingdom. Most explicitly ban adult content (as do eBay and PayPal), and those that permit it restrict how far one can go. My current employer keeps its billers happy (despite an oeuvre that includes some pretty edgy stuff) by emphasizing consent and safety, and providing explicit shooting rules to be followed by all productions. These rules make sure everyone, even the densest viewer, can access reassurances that this is all safe, sane and consensual, that it’s entertainment, not abuse.

Which is all well and good, but does a scene involving the ever-lovin’ and consensual fun of pervy nekrofetishists deserve any less consideration than an episode of consensual BDSM?

Of course not. That’s why goth-damaged freaks and oversexed horror fans everywhere should shed a bloody tear for BellaVendetta.com — the alternative to the erotic alternative, felled by the Satanic recitation of sixteen-digit numbers.

Bella won’t rest in peace, surely, because the pornographer’s grave is neither fine nor private.

Thomas Roche is the Public Relations Manager at Kink.com, an instructor at San Francisco Sex Information, and blogs about sex, drugs, and cryptozoology at www.thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 25 March 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Industry. 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.