The Emotional Ingredients of JAV

Big Feelings
I consider JAV to be works of art. While we could go into a long philosophical discussion on what makes art and yadda yadda yadda, but hey this is a porn site so let's not get too deep into the woods. My opinion is that there is enough here in JAV that constitutes for it to be considered to be Art. As a quick introduction and to cut the long story short: Art is a work of human craftsmanship that evokes an emotional reaction primarily for their “beauty” or creativity. There are varying degrees of emotional responses for Art from mundane feelings to sublime revelations. But when it comes to JAV, Let’s be clear: we’re not talking about Citizen Kane or Guernica here, we’re talkin about hot Japanese girls fucking on camera. But there are artistic merits to JAV that I feel warrants some interesting discussion.
How does that make you feel?
When we’re appreciating any piece of art, whatever it’s medium, we first see it through our senses: usually our eyes and ears appreciate whatever forms or colors are presented to us. Then we appreciate it through our own experience whether its logical, semantic, visceral, etc.. and after that comes the emotional reaction that comes from within. In the case of JAV, the primary sense is vision, then audio, and then whatever narrative that we understand from what we just witnessed. And whatever feelings evoked by JAV are kind of basic as well, often owing to it’s bare primal and instinctive content.
With JAV often having talents and productions of various levels, and it being a very prolific content oriented medium, often times the outputs are like soap operas with hammy performances that are still entertaining in their own right. I really like the analogy that Porn is to fucking as Professional Wrestling (ie. WWE and its ilk) is to fighting. It’s all emulated, exaggerated, gendered, soapy performances. But Porn has its own deep charm that owes to its content(sex) being an important facet of human nature. JAV incorporates these specific emotional ingredients to enhance its appeal and create a deeper connection with the audience and fans. And once you start comparing Western Porn to JAV, you can actually notice that JAV is a bit more advanced in this manner, owing to the vast and prolific amounts of JAV being released, as well as the production values often mirroring the budgets and sets of an actual movie production.
The Four Emotional Layers
With JAV and Porn, I have actually narrowed it down to three major emotional layers that are the most conducive to the subjects and themes that come into play in JAV. I have chosen these as the “main” emotive components but these actually work as a spectrum of emotions that are not simple black and white qualities, that can be mixed and matched, and that carry within them the varied colors of the human experience.
Love vs Lust
Dominance vs Submission
Honor vs Shame
Comedy vs Drama
You’ll notice that I didn't choose the usual terms like happy, sad, mad, or confused. Those are more generalized psychological terms more fitting for personal application. When we’re talking about media and art, we try to dig deeper into the very nature of the topic so that we can analyze its content. The emotional ingredients of JAV can vary widely depending on the genre, theme, and intended audience as well.
However since we are talking about porn here, the list is not as diverse or complex. When it comes to Porn and Art, there is a metaphorical wall of differences between them that Porn simply cannot cross over to, as Porn is made with different intentions as Art. Purer forms of “Art” is made for its own sake, and carries with it the human expression of skill, emotions, messaging, and what have you. Porn, on the other hand, aims to create a product with some artistic qualities but its purpose is making a commodity to sell and make $$$$.
Let’s look deeper into the types and genres of JAV that cultivate these emotive aspects.
The First Level: Love vs Lust
The easiest, primal and also most important layer as it touches on the experiential level of Sex that we all know and love (or lust). We could say it all boils down to a tug-of-war between these two, encompassing the happy giddy exciting feelings of love and the thirsty jealous delirious feelings of lust. While Porn, in general, generally caters to the Lust side of the spectrum, with desire being a key ingredient in every single release. JAV is actually a bit more open with the Love side(compared to western porn) as far as I can tell with certain popular genres, as they’re not afraid to show off the lovey-dovey cuddly kawaii cutesy side in the gendered dynamics of sex with an emphasis on tenderness and emotional connection.
Genre Examples:
Lust: Literally every single JAV
Love: Girlfriend Experience, Debut films, Wife Cohabitations
The Second Level: Dominance vs Submission
The next layer deals with the hierarchical nature of relationships and the power dynamics that wrap us all within them. This deals with the proud, greedy, all-powerful feelings of dominance and the humble, trusting, openness and generosity of submissiveness. Of course the classic power dynamic of them all is the Male x Female dynamic is immediately apparent. As human beings we evolved with sexual dimorphism, the physical and biological differences between men and women also translate to personal and social hierarchies between the sexes. There is a bit of limitation here as this layer relates more with the smaller sphere of personal relationships and gender roles. The interesting thing about JAV, there is also a lot of turning of the classic dynamic over its head with women holding dominance over submissive men. So it just makes sense that a lot of the narratives and themes in JAV delve heavily into who dominates who and who submits to whom, as it naturally mirrors many common fantasies in a lot of men’s minds.
Genre Examples:
Dominance: BDSM, Gangbangs, Male/Female Boss, Corruption, Bukkake
Submission: BDSM, Shibari, Virgin Men, Degradation, Humiliation
The Third Level: Shame vs Honor
This level is the most complex of the three as it deals with the level higher than simple relationships: society. Shame plays a special part as a major string in the way that society takes it’s hold in everyone’s beliefs and behaviors. Dealing with the complex interplay of morality, propriety, guilt and all the social baggage that comes with these, the Shame level is especially potent and often acts as that strong narrative spice that brings it all together (and conversely, the Honor side is not as prevalent.) . Sex is a loaded topic no matter where you are because of how intrinsic it is to the human experience. Especially in Japan, socially they are an honor-shame type of society that values honorable acts and condemns shameful behavior. This actually explains why a lot of the themes and narratives that emerge over time reflect Japanese culture and values (or lack thereof). Many JAVs play on transgressive themes of varying degrees of shamefulness to evoke excitement from breaking social norms and engaging in the forbidden. In fact for some, the more shameful and problematic the bond, the more emotional qualities that it can evoke from the audience.
Genre Examples:
Teacher-Student, Boss-Employee, Familial Bonds, NTR, Public Sex
The Fourth Level: Comedy vs Drama
The last layer is actually not as consequential as the other layers. Whereas the other layers contain the meat and potatoes of where JAV derive the emotional content, the final layer is more akin to just simply the packaging and how it’s presented. Whether it is a Comedy or a Drama is more about the tone of the subject matter, but the real emotional core lies in the experiential narrative qualities of how JAV reflects the whole of society writ large. Yes, that light hearted step-sister comedy was a bit funny at times but content wise, the NTR narrative is much more important in terms of creating a shameful erotic fantasy.
Putting it all Together
So knowing all this, we can start deconstructing some of our favorite JAVs and see how and why they create different sorts of emotions for the viewer. Are you watching a light hearted wife cohabitation film? You’ll feel all the cutesy giddy lovey dovey feelings. Are you watching an NTR domination gangbang? You’ll feel all the darker heavier grim emotions. Whichever emotional core the JAV is accessing, the end goal is Catharsis which is the process of releasing all sorts of pent up and repressed emotions you have within you. Think of it like an emotional orgasm.
But of course, it all depends on how you interact with JAV. Because frankly, sometimes you just don’t give a shit and you just wanna see ass and titties. That’s fine, you do you fam. But as with anything, the deeper you engage with it, the more it gives back to you. So the further you engage with the fantasies that JAV offers, the more you touch base with the emotional core, you begin to engage with the fantasy and eventually it will lead to a certain type catharsis that only cums with.
As usual, that’s all from me for now. Thank you for reading. See you in my next article!
What do you think about the article? Hit me up in the comments!
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