The Blowfish Blog

OTAKU MAnKO: Virtual Porn: Wake Me When It’s Over

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I grew up having strange erotic fantasies about femmebots, sex machines, artificial intelligence and smokin’ hot alien bootay. Similarly unsurprising is the fact that every time a so-called “interactive” or purported “virtual reality” DVD crosses my path, I drop what I’m doing and stuff it in the DVD player.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not a complete idiot, just an exceedingly thorough one. I’ve reviewed literally thousands of DVDs, and at least a few dozen have fallen into the genre of interactive porn. It’s a genre that’s generally, to me, as routinely disappointing as late-night pay-per-view made-for-Skinemax softcore after a few bottles of Wild Turkey from a hotel room minibar.

Seasoned porn viewers may recognize the formula: titled things like “Making It With Savannah Sluttzz” or “Real Sex With Adrianna Suckkit,” these disks trade both on the star power of their titular celebrities and on the promise of a virtual erotic experience that’s as close to Savannah Sluttzz engaging you in a filthy mambo as the typical porn-buying consumer is likely to get in this lifetime (which is quite possibly a good thing).

To yours truly, who grew up believing that the age of robotics and computers would free me from the unpleasant task of having to deal with other people (which it largely has) or, to put it more positively, would enable a whole new brand of interactive sexual experience (which it also has) and would allow me to finally — finally!! — fuck my computer (which, really, it has not), these disks represent the dream of sexual technology in its purest form, and every time I see them, I get all excited. Some not-so-quick-on-the-uptake part of me is utterly convinced that if I slide this baby into my laser-emitting slot, I will shortly thereafter be having sort-of-imaginary, sort-of-real sex with Antonia Caresse, which I’m also convinced will rock, even though I may have no idea who she is.

Having read Japanese comic books, seen Strangedays an d read William Gibson (the science fiction writer, not the author of the Helen Keller bio — though there’s more crossover than you might thing), I know that in an ideal world I pop on a helmet or better yet plug a jack into my brainstem, and next thing you know I’m there, banging the starlet (and/or star — more on that later) of my choice in whatever manner befits a gentleman (or lady) of my stature.

Promised the world, what does one get with these “interactive” disks? Sadly, not a lot. In most cases, an interactive porn DVD features maybe twenty minutes of porn footage of the female star in question, with a partial view of a male body doing stuff to her (or she to it). It’s footage that could have been repackaged from anywhere (though it’s typically shot for the project). Using the DVD remote controls, the viewer makes selections like “Missionary,” “Doggy Style,” “Cowgirl,” and “Oral” — which almost always means “Blowjob.” You make your selection and that’s the footage you see, for about a minute or two, and then it loops back and replays the same footage, presumably until you finish masturbating or move on to another position or activity — “on demand.” Often, though not always, there’s a button that says something like “POP!” that you cursor your way over to when you want to see the fertile issue of porn star seed upon the body of your chosen starlet. A more recent development in some titles is the addition of an “ORGASM” button, which causes your video vixen to perform an invariably faked, usually badly-faked — yes, that’s right, ORGASM — on cue.

Generally these disks are meant to be shot “POV” style — that is, with the camera more or less where the viewer’s head would like to be, while the starlet sweet-talks you about how well endowed you are and how much she loves this. Sadly, on this latter point, not everyone’s gotten the memo, and many interactive DVDs cross my desk that in fact feature no POV angles at all — this is virtual fucking, she’s looking at me, and yet there I am, disembodied and grotesque as if I were having a postmortem moment while the zombie virus takes over my body and bangs some bored-looking chippy from uptown. Only small (though growing) percentage of the disks offer garden-variety kinks like anal sex, and if your sex-with-a-computer fantasies run any further from the last time I saw an interactive porn star in restraints or a gag, her name was MacPlaymate.

How different is any of this from the typical “gonzo” porn movie? The answer is not very — less footage, a bit more menu design, and, if possible, an even greater level of creator cluelessness. How much does it matter? Maybe a lot, maybe not at all, depending on how truly interactive you need your porn experience to be. Quite a few porn viewers, after all, depend on the repetetive viewing of a single sexual act, whichever one turns them on the most in that instant, while they wank. An interactive disk with just a few minutes of footage can do that as effectively as a feature or a four-hour compilation, if the footage provided works for you.

But is it truly interactive? Not really — at least, no more than a well-designed erotic DVD. In fact, the features of interactivity appear with increasing frequency on “regular” porn discs. You’ll see the “POP” button in the corner of a few studios’ gonzo releases, and most mainstream porn releases now have an activity menu, sometimes bizarrely called a “fetish” menu, that allows you to jump to a particular activity or sexual position from a given scene in the movie.

In my recent review experiences, I’ve run across only one great exception to the interactive-DVDs-suck rule. Teravision’s InTERActive is a story-based interactive DVD that’s along the lines of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books I recall with such fondness from my misspent youth. Lucky enough to spend a day with bored housewife Tera Patrick, you get to do all sorts of nasty things with her and her neighbors, and maybe get beaten up at the end; it’s an actual adventure, not exactly Casablanca, but a reasonably fun diversion. It also happens to be the only DVD in this genre that Blowfish carries, which I like to think is an example not of Blowfish cleverly using me to provide viral marketing, but of great minds thinking alike.

What makes InTERActive different than most other supposed virtual reality DVDs is the presence of a story — which is a great innovation and can result in a satisfying viewing experience, but isn’t at all what I’m after. Other discs in this genre may provide fairly lame mini-vignettes — for instance, letting you choose whether your starlet is a secretary, a MILF, or your cleaning lady (oh joy). All of that is basically sex-setup, not sexual activity; it’s all window dressing, and not terribly exciting to me in this context. InTERActive may satisfy me as a choose-your-own-adventure, but if I really had my druthers I’d be having a whole ‘nother sort of adventure.

The shortcomings of the virtual reality porn genre are based on both the lack of sexual variation showcased and the limitations of the technology. But they’re also based on the cluelessness of an industry that can tell me on the cover “You Are In the Driver’s Seat!” and then show me a DVD shot from oblique right angles without even a nod toward the POV format — that can tell me “Have Her Any Way You Want Her!” and then provide every possible sexual choice for my interactive entertainment, including and limited to “having Her” as a MILF, schoolgirl or French maid, in either doggy style or missionary position with a pop shot on demand.

As with so many things in the porn industry, the limitations of technology are enhanced by the limitations of the industry’s erotic imagination. Some day someone’s going to blow the doors off this interactive porn genre, and I only hope I’m not busy having dull virtual reality sex with Lorena Lushiss when it happens.

Thomas Roche is the managing editor of Eros Zine, teaches at San Francisco Sex Information, and also blogs on sex, drugs and cryptozoology at thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Technology. 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.