All comments of User Senior Ranger

Art? Yes, adult video entertainment can absolutely contain artistic expression. Thank you for saying so. I would have two points of contention. First is the comparison with entertainment wrestling. That blight on society is intended as pure spectacle using fully contrived scripting that glorifies aggression — selling it as justified by anger and rage. There is nothing societally healthy about that. Relating it to the sensual arts seems like saying you see a Rodin sculpture in a soft-serve ice cream cone. Second is the great letdown — I expected specific films to be named as examples. Instead you wimped out simply citing possible genres. Allow me to make up, in small part, for this shortcoming. I will place one of my favorite JAV films, “The Penis Cafe” in the “art film” category. It is beautifully rendered and elucidates a world where women have absolute sexual freedom. It is critical and disruptive of patriarchy in as matter-of-fact a way as could possibly be. Pure art. Another film I can’t name, but it portrays growth and communication between couples as foundational to relationships. The couple is enduring some hardship because the husband is out of work. A neighbor recommends the wife in the relationship for a job as a bar waitress. The bar also functions as a sort of public house of sex, and the wife is convinced to allow herself to be used. It’s then she discovers her husband also works there, and they have to face this truth together — finally strengthening their relationship. It has convincing sex, both hetero and lesbian and excellent, emotional acting. Sort of in the comedy genre, I’d place a film shot in a retail store where people are shopping. Dicks unexpectedly pop out of walls, counters, refrigerated cases, etc. and women suck them off. It is so casual, bizarre and yet commonplace that it’s suggestive of society where all sorts of things are going on in front of us that we never notice or even acknowledge. I could go on, but that’s enough for a comment. Perhaps in another blog post you could suggest more titles that conform to your concepts of art.

Wages of Sin? It would seem impossible to argue against JAV (Japanese Adult Video) being more intimate, more nuanced in relationships, more real feeling than WAV) Western Adult Video. It’s plainly why I prefer it. However, more interesting is causation. I think it’s sociological — fundamentally different cultures. Western culture is deeply uncomfortable with sex. Murder may be the only thing more traumatizing. I’d go so far as to say sex is characterized as a necessary evil. Sex has a power that nothing else in the culture can match. Anything openly sexual can instantly brand you a “pervert,” a sexual deviant, a slut, someone not worthy of civilized society. It must be hidden away, and its only acceptable justification is procreation. Sex as recreation is abhorrent. That’s what we tell ourselves. I believe this stems from religion. For centuries, religious leaders have used the power of sex to manipulate people — shame, guilt, embarrassment, criminality and social shunning — the “registered sex offender.” Marketers use sex to sell you beer. The bishops use it to keep you under their thumb. Since sex is generally verboten in Western culture, creating and watching WAV is doing something wrong, doing something you shouldn’t be doing, doing something that would get you in trouble. An actor on a set fundamentally feels this. So does the director and the camera operator and the lighting folks. It’s impossible to make intimate, heartfelt sexual scenes when you can’t believe in what you’re doing. That’s why all the falsity and craziness happens. The current tilt toward “step” sex reflects this. Let’s show step relatives having forbidden sex to step up the game. And more of the falsity shows in the insane obsession with giant dicks. Any man with a normal size dick in WAV is relegated to loser, cuckold, object of derision status. And the women must act like size queens and often endure pain to perpetrate this silliness. Japanese culture, as I've come to understand it from the outside, takes a more natural approach to sex. It’s treated more as a normal bodily function that everyone accepts. We all eat, we all breathe, we all have sex. Nothing exceptional about it, just part of being human — although a powerful and pleasurable aspect. JAV therefore is more natural for those producing it. They can fashion more realistic art in the process because they can feel good about what they’re doing. For me, that is one more great thing about the wonderful culture of Japan.

While AI may be our current reigning distraction from the real world, it seems questionable to test it against an area so constrained by age, political and societal barriers. You are asking what is essentially a sophisticated search engine to deliver results where it has tremendously limited access. Bu then, I am someone who endured many years of column deadlines, so I understand the temptation. I resist AI rather vehemently, yet I also pay attention to it's development. The best thing I've seen about it for writers was delivered a couple of days ago in The New York Times. Yale University professor Meghan O’Rourke wrote an op-ed about her experiences with it. She found both positives and negatives. The best of it came when the model told her: “Style is the imprint of attention. Writing as a human act resists efficiency because it enacts care.” This could sum up your experience here --- the Zenra writers deliver something worth reading because they care, and the machine obviously does not.

In response to ZENRA 's comment

I wouldn't want reality to intrude upon my fantasy. Maybe I'll have her do George Washington!!

Your dick in your hand is the only true reality. -Brilliant Bill JAV, reality or fantasy — which do I prefer? Of course, I side with fantasy as JAV has no ability to create or deliver a reality. The concept of a JAV “reality” would seem to be based on the likelihood of a scenario actually occurring or having occurred to you in your perceived actual experience. Your mileage may vary. For me, a poor likelihood of reality would be time traveling to Egypt around 40 BC and eating Cleopatra’s pussy while she sucks off Alexander the Great. Perhaps it happened in a different life, but I could see it now as not only fantasy but truly fantastical. On the other hand, watching a beautiful Japanese office woman sucking her demanding boss is clearly realistic (and well within my personal experience, Japan aside), yet still only on screen; it’s fantasy. Watching a parade of well-ordered pixels march across a digital screen can send a message to my brain, and that may trigger a chemical reaction that prompts an orgasmic ejaculation if I’m manipulating my dick in an effective manner. The only genuine reality is the dick in my hand — and the cleanup afterward. I was intrigued by the writer’s conjecture: “...ethics and morality are less of an issue for questionable fetishes when they are set in an obviously artificial context with exaggerated acting and cartoon logic.” I would have to agree, but I’m not experienced enough to imagine any genre where some “fetishes” might be tolerable. There are very few consensual “fetishes” I have not personally experienced, yet on the “realism” side of JAV, I have to question the chikan phenomenon and its cousin, the time-stopping scenarios. They seem popular in JAV, but I don’t recall Zenra publishing any of them, to their credit. Watching JAV, it’s wise to remember that we are all imposing our own personal fantasy on every scene we see. Nothing is real, regardless how likely it may seem to any individual. To view it any other way might invite mental health challenges — and that’s an unpleasant reality none of us need or want.