"Blow Bang #4" was in the "mainstream" section of a local adult video store. For a research project on the content of contemporary mass-marketed pornography, I asked the folks who work there to help me pick out typical videos rented by the typical customer. [editor's emphasis] One of the 15 tapes I left with was "Blow Bang #4." "Blow Bang #4" is: Eight different scenes in which a woman kneels in the middle of a group of three to eight men and performs oral sex on them. At the end of each scene, each of the men ejaculates onto the woman's face or into her mouth. To borrow from the description on the video box, the video consists of: "Dirty little bitches surrounded by hard throbbing cocks ... and they like it." In one of these scenes, a young woman dressed as a cheerleader is surrounded by six men. For about seven minutes, "Dynamite" (the name she gives on tape) methodically moves from man to man while they offer insults that start with "you little cheerleading slut" and get uglier from there. For another minute and a half, she sits upside down on a couch, her head hanging over the edge, while men thrust into her mouth, causing her to gag. She strikes the pose of the bad girl to the end. "You like coming on my pretty little face, don't you," she says, as they ejaculate on her face and in her mouth for the final two minutes of the scene.
"Blow Bang #4" is: Eight different scenes in which a woman kneels in the middle of a group of three to eight men and performs oral sex on them. At the end of each scene, each of the men ejaculates onto the woman's face or into her mouth. To borrow from the description on the video box, the video consists of: "Dirty little bitches surrounded by hard throbbing cocks ... and they like it."
In one of these scenes, a young woman dressed as a cheerleader is surrounded by six men. For about seven minutes, "Dynamite" (the name she gives on tape) methodically moves from man to man while they offer insults that start with "you little cheerleading slut" and get uglier from there. For another minute and a half, she sits upside down on a couch, her head hanging over the edge, while men thrust into her mouth, causing her to gag. She strikes the pose of the bad girl to the end. "You like coming on my pretty little face, don't you," she says, as they ejaculate on her face and in her mouth for the final two minutes of the scene.
this is something that no one I know does in their own bedroom or kitchen. nor do I know -- over a long life in which I have known many women friends well enough to talk about intimate matters -- even one who ever said to me that she had the slightest desire to allow a group of strange men to ejaculate on her face.
this is, however, a patriarchal disciplinary practise of long standing -- known as bukkake in Japan where it was used as a public humiliation and punishment for women found guilty of adultery; if you google for it you will find that it is a fetish with an astonishingly large "fan base" online -- hundreds of sites, videos, alleged "home movies", textbased fantasies, etc. [now why, we ask ourselves, should thousands or millions of men be sexually fascinated and fixated on a practise originally calculated to shame and humiliate a woman for rebelling against male authority? could this have anything to do with a panicky backlash against the advances in women's status in the industrialised nations during C20?]
yes, these are Z (let alone C) movies -- total drek. but they are also a mainstay of the US porn industry, with millions of rentals per month. (McDonalds food is also pretty darned awful, and it is still the most popular "restaurant" food in the US.) as Jensen coolly notes, Even a cursory review of pornography reveals that great camera work is not a requirement for success. "Blow Bang #4" is one of 11,000 new hardcore pornographic videos released each year, one of 721 million tapes rented each year in a country where total pornographic video sales and rentals total about $4 billion annually. (that's more cash flow than the "legit" film industry, btw -- so much for the idea that the trade is "suppressed" in any practical way).
For many of the women who feel so defeated by knowing, the most distressing part doesn't seem to be simply learning what is in the videos but knowing that men gain pleasure from what is in the videos. They ask me, over and over, "Why do men like this? What do you guys get from this?" They want to know why the mostly male consumers spend an estimated $10 billion a year on pornography in the United States and $56 billion around the world. It is an important question with, no doubt, complex answers. What does is say about our society when men will take home a tape like "Blow Bang #4" and watch it, and masturbate to it? What does it say about our society's conception of sexuality and masculinity that large numbers of men can find pleasure in watching a young woman gag while a penis is pushed into her throat followed by six men ejaculating on her face and in her mouth? Or that other men, who might find that scene too extreme, prefer to watch one man have sex with a woman that begins with tender words and ends with "Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?" and ejaculation on her breasts? What does it say that such a video, made for men to masturbate to, is considered classy and upscale? I think it says masculinity in this culture is in trouble.
It is an important question with, no doubt, complex answers. What does is say about our society when men will take home a tape like "Blow Bang #4" and watch it, and masturbate to it? What does it say about our society's conception of sexuality and masculinity that large numbers of men can find pleasure in watching a young woman gag while a penis is pushed into her throat followed by six men ejaculating on her face and in her mouth? Or that other men, who might find that scene too extreme, prefer to watch one man have sex with a woman that begins with tender words and ends with "Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?" and ejaculation on her breasts? What does it say that such a video, made for men to masturbate to, is considered classy and upscale?
I think it says masculinity in this culture is in trouble.
some bitter old cynics would say that masculinity in this culture is doing just great -- adhering to good ol' patriarchal values familiar for millennia -- and that it's women who are in trouble.
Prof. Jensen's freelance articles on the convenience-sex industry. Author of books The Heart of Whiteness and Citizens of the Empire. Professor of Journalism (mostly investigative, one suspects) at UT. Articles on US politics, imperialism, corporate power, Bush regime and related topics The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
