Early Porn Cinema

A free Ride, Early Porn CinemaEarly Porn Cinema is quite similar to early cinema itself. Continuity of room and time was not so important, it was rather more about movement. The stories (if there was one) were not very different to what we find in today’s Netporn: Short intros leading to the sexual interaction. A big difference though is that unlike today it was more about sexual arousal than sexual satisfaction. „Getting on“ was more important than „getting off,“ if you want to put it that way. What we know as „Cum-Shot“, the external ejaculation as proof of orgasm, which is the central element of porn nowadays, was the so called „Meat-Shot“ back then. The proof that there was penetration taking place.

That also has to do with the difference of how porn was consumed. Unlike nowadays, where supposedly most people watch porn at home by themselves and use it as a masturbatory aide, which makes it understandable that it focuses on orgasms, the use was very different back then. Porn was mostly watched in brothels and „gentlemen clubs“, where women were excluded as an audience. It was used to arouse people and encourage them to buy sexual services.

One famous example is „A Free Ride“. The origin isn’t clear. It wasn’t legal to produce porn, so producers tried to stay anonymous. The credits they used in this example have quite funny names that were made up, like „A. Wise Guy“ or „Will B. Hard“.

 

The rather simple and crude films from early porn cinema were just a sibling of early cinema in general, but it took them much longer to evolve. They stayed that way when common cinema had already become quite elaborate. It was much later than Hollywood when the Golden Age of Porn took its place.