Everyone's A Porn Star

December 09, 2002

By Rodney Chester

TO SOME people, they are the perfect accompaniment to a child's birthday party. To others, they make a great sex toy.

And, it seems, many people use their home video camera for both. The important thing is not to get the tapes mixed up.

Making home porn movies is hardly new and, if the world of celebrities is a reflection of the rest of us, it's also rather common.

There have been plenty of high-profile people who have seen a video camera as a sex aid and been caught out. Along with the occasional high-profile Australian who has had sex tapes leaked on to the Internet. The list of amateur porn stars includes Pamela Anderson, Rob Lowe and home-video-porn pioneer Bob Crane.

There are countless websites where amateurs sell, show off or swap photographs and videos of themselves getting down and dirty.

It's not illegal in Queensland to make your own sex videos. However, if you plan to distribute that film, be it on the Internet or simply showing your mates at the pub, you have problems with film classification laws and have a legal requirement to respect the right to privacy of both parties.

Sexologist Dr Gabrielle Morrissey, who has released a new sex book called Urge that contains the chapter "I Wanna Be a Porn Star!", says part of the attraction is with the emphasis on "star" rather than "porn".

"There aren't porn actors, there are porn 'stars', " Morrissey, who heads the sexology program at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, says.

"So people who make home porn often have the desire to either be an amateur porn star, but more commonly, want to be a 'sex star' – a person who is so good at sex, who enjoys it so much, that it feels like 'they oughta be in pictures'. "

Morrissey says filming yourself having sex is something "regular" people do, with video cameras now in the top-20 list of sex toys.

"It was probably once considered fringe or edgy but it's less so now," she says. "You can never tell what your next-door neighbour is doing in their bedroom.

"There's definitely very 'average', run-of-the-mill lovers enhancing sex with a little bit of video action."

But there is a danger in hitting the record button as part of foreplay. What happens to the video after the film's climax?

"Modern technology has made it possible for nearly anyone, if they want, to be a porn star in their own home. While filming oneself having sex was once considered edgy, it's now hardly risque at all," Morrissey says.

"While it may not be as risque as it once was, that doesn't mean it isn't risky. With cameras so cheap and so small, cases of people being filmed while having sex without their consent happen more frequently.

"This is the modern techno-voyeur: someone who films a partner, gaining titillation and sexual excitement out of the knowledge that their partner doesn't know they're being filmed, coupled with the ability to re-watch the secret tape without them ever having known the tape was obtained."

Sex researchers have recorded the growth of "Gonzo porn" – porn which is designed to look amateurish rather than the cliched, silicone world of regular porn, which is in part seen as a desire to cash in on the desires of a technologically literate generation who want to see "real" sex.

Making a porn video is just one step. What to do with it is another problem

While making your own porn video might seem like a reasonable idea in the heat of the moment and after a few glasses of wine, watching the video in the cold light of day the next morning may not be quite as erotic. Making a porn video is just one step. What to do with it is another problem.

There can be a high price to pay for a brief titillation or a momentary lapse in judgment.

In a recent tragic case of overexposure, 24-year-old Nepalese actress Shrisha Karki hanged herself four days after a newspaper printed pictures of her naked.

Although she tried to explain her side of the story, her fiance severed the relationship and the final straw was said to have come when a woman working in a beauty salon said to her: "You're in a well-covered dress today. It seems you're used to being naked."

Karki told police that the photographs were taken without her knowledge although the newspaper that published the pictures says the photographer paid the actress a modelling fee for the images.

Consider the divorce rates before bringing a camera into the bedroom.

Boston-based sex therapist Dr Aline Zoldbrod, who has written several books on sexuality and has been a psychologist and sex therapist for 30 years, says the Karki case highlights the dangers of having sexual photographs or videos hanging around from the past. Zoldbrod warns people to consider the divorce rates before bringing a camera into the bedroom.

"If you had a crystal ball and you knew that this relationship was completely safe and nothing would ever happen, you could guarantee that your true love, who you think is so wonderful and has pledged to be true to you forever, is going to be true to you forever, then I can't think of a single bad thing about it," she says.

"If you knew that it was going to stay in your home and your kids weren't going to find it and no one was going to sell it.

"If it's not illegal, if you wouldn't be mortified if it got out, if your kids are grown and it couldn't be used in a custody battle – then it would probably be fun for people. But there are a lot of 'ifs' in that statement."

Zoldbrod, creator of the sex therapy website www.sexsmart.com, says that none of her clients has ever confessed to a fondness for using a video camera.

"Maybe people don't tell me," she says. "I honestly don't think it's that rare. It's just a step above taking nude pictures of yourself which I think a lot of people do."

The sort of people who are likely to grab the video camera after a romantic candlelit dinner are probably the sort of people who are not opposed to reflective surface in the boudoir.

"I would assume that people who do it are generally feeling pretty good about how they look," Zoldbrod says.

"I think that the fun of doing it is that it is a little risky and risque. But I'm not so sure that people wouldn't enjoy the playing back too, if you like to look at yourself. It's the same thrill as mirrors on the ceiling.

"For a lot of men I think it's probably very exciting."

Morrissey says people making their own porn videos probably should follow the lead of other sexual experimentation practices, such as sadomasochism, for which people lay down the rules before they lay down.

"Accepted rules should be established first," she says.

"What acts, how much nudity and close-ups, faces or no faces showing on film; who may or may not view the film; how long to keep the video; when to erase it, whose responsibility is it to erase it, erasing without knowledge, whether to trust the other person to not make a secret copy; and, especially if children are in the house, where to store the tapes."

The trouble with rules, Zoldbrod says, is that when relationships break up they often are broken as well.

"In the best-case scenario, rules would be great," she says. "In the worst-case scenario, rules would be useless."