Porn in the USA

How many times have you stood uncomfortably in an adult bookstore staring at what seemed to be literally thousands of adult movies, your clueless expression revealing that while you know you enjoy films of this persuasion, the difference between Sodomania 15 and Sodomania 28 escapes you. And while you may be brave enough to rent Rocco Ravishes Russia from the silent clerk behind the counter stacked with lube and condoms, can you look him or her in the eyes and inquire what title a person who enjoys naturally busty women in outdoor love scenes should purchase? AVN—Adult Video News—is here to release you from your frustration with its humorous tome The AVN Guide to the 500 Greatest Adult Films of All Time.

With just more than two decades of experience as the leading trade publication in the adult industry, AVN guides us through 500 films it’s chosen from the history of pornography that are noteworthy for their content or context. The films, listed alphabetically, are from a wide variety of genres that envelop everything from Hollywood spoofs to Gonzo fetish films; after all, different strokes for different folks. The opening title, Paris Hilton’s 1 Night In Paris, sets the mood for the rest of the book; the editors know what this is, and they never attempt to make it into something artistic or apologetic.

AVN’s guide is about pornography in all of its dirty, sick, perverted and often humorous filth. The editors do not hold back in detailing why Whack Attack 2 garnered the 1999 AVN Award for Best Gonzo Video—yes, the adult industry has its own form of the Academy Awards, in which, since 1984, statues, often referred to as Woodies, have gone to the Best Film, Best Director, Best All Girl Sex Scene and numerous other categories. Much like Hollywood movie guides that chronicle the Oscars, this volume includes a listing of the AVN Awards at the rear of the book.

You may feel inclined to trace the trends of the adult movie industry, examining what sold as eroticism in the 1970s compared with what sells today. Fetishes, beauty and passion all have been continuously redefined through the past few decades. Titles that are labeled as “ethnic-themed” in this book are largely absent before the early 1990s; a separate AVN Award category was created for “ethnic-themed” titles in 1995 and expanded into three subcategories—Asian, Black and Latino—in 2004. An award for boy-boy videos is not given; girl-girl videos have been recognized by AVN since 1990.

The most appealing aspect of this book is the humor separating movie reviews. With Top Ten lists on dos and don’ts for male porn stars and a mathematical approach to the amount of semen never given a chance to fertilize an egg because of its ill placement, the laughs do not stop from beginning to end. While titles such as Quantum Deep and Edward Penishands provide light chuckles, it is the matter-of-fact reviews composed of phrases like “as usual for this popular series, a gangbang winds things up” that emphasize the dual nature of the amusement pornography provides to our society: one of humor and sexuality. Pornography bares as much resemblance to our actual sex lives as WrestleMania does to the Summer Olympics. Horribly written dialogue is spoken by painfully unaware actors in breaks between the meat of the film: a self-indulgent fantasy designed, in its flawless nature, to supplement the sometimes awkward stumbling that intersperses our own sex lives.

There is no mistaking that this book is built to provide those who enjoy pornography with a list of must-see films, but at the same time, AVN puts a mirror up to a society that produces almost 12,000 adult films a year, making us look closely at what we view as eroticism in our culture.

Incidentally, while Sodomania 28 made the list, Sodomania 15 was nowhere to be seen. Now the choice should be easy.