Gfoxx has been paying close attention to the
controversy featured over on Fleshbot today around (white) porn director Will Ryder's sequel to
Not The Cosbys, Not the Cosbys 2. Lux, one of the commentators and editors of the site, made an issue of the cover art and the content, claiming that there just weren't enough black babes in the sequel. She then went on to castigate (no, that's not dirty) Ryder and the porn industry in general about the "porn ghetto" black flicks endure.
In Big Porn, it seems, all-black movies are seen as niche fare and are rarely given the push needed for them to be accepted by a more mainstream audience. And interracial movies have grown from the black-on-white standard (usually a big-dicked black stud and a nervous white chick) to include Asian, Latina, and other ethnicities. I spoke to a friend of mine who works for Big Porn (one of the larger companies, actually) and he explained it to me like this: all-black is usually terribly exploitive and ruthlessly hard because that's what the paying customer wants to buy. If they wanted to buy porn flicks featuring gay left-handed redheaded Eskimos (no offense meant to my Inuit homies) then that's what Big Porn would make. But since America (the biggest porn buyer by far) still has a plurality of white customers, the Big Porn marketers shoot for the widest audience they can with any given flick. Period. And while a strong minority enjoy all-black fare, then a strong minority of films will be all-black. Sure, there's racism out there, but in the final analysis the goal of Big Porn is to get you to buy what they're selling.
I have to take Ryder's side in this. The Cosby Show, like one of the commenters pointed out, wasn't an exclusively black show, and it wouldn't be right to portray it as such. It was a show about a upper-middle class black family living in a racially mixed neighborhood in Philadelphia. As any brothas in Philly can attest, there's pussy of all persuasions up there, once you peel off the thick outer layers necessary to deal with the cold. Seeing the Huxtables humping a bunch of Asians, Latinas and white chicks falls well within the interracial genre, however, and both movies never claimed to be all-black.
I've read
Fleshbot for a while, and I admire Lux and what she does. And she's right, there is a porn ghetto for black movies; they never get the push the mainstream (read: "white") movies do. The black chicks never get the screen time, money or the billing that their white counterparts get (Jada Fire and Marie Luv might be exceptions), but by the same token (no pun intended) the white studs in mainstream porn are almost never celebrated, get paid far less than their male
and female counterparts, while the black studs are the
stars of black and interracial porn. You might know the names
Lexington Steele,
Jack Napier and
Mandingo by heart, but could you picture, say,
James Deen in your mind right off the bat?
Randy Spears?
Tommy Gunn? Lex likes a white piece of ass and it's a dream and a pleasure to pay good money to watch him do it -- but what about
Mark Davis' love of the brown suga?
For that matter, if Lux hit
Not The Cosbys 2 so hard, what did she think of
The Jeffersons parody? That had some great all-black scenes and stars (including the above-mentioned Jada Fire and Marie Luv), and it parodied a beloved ethnic TV show, too. And since it was parody, one assumes that it had some cross-over appeal that most interracial or all-black flicks just lack.
As I said in my previous post, race is a complicated issue when you mix it with sex. And interracial sex is among the most complicated and controversial, whether you live in the Deep South or in the wild white world of Nebraska. But porn producers are selling fantasy, not racial justice. As much as I would enjoy seeing more well-made black and interracial flicks, the fact is that the exploitive component all-too-often seen in "regular" black porn wouldn't be there if it didn't sell. The inner-city thug might be a gross stereotype, but he is also a character of sexual fantasy (especially, apparently, among white gay men. Don't trust me? Search "thug" on Xtube and watch what happens.) as is the sexually-explosive sista ready to fuck anyone -- even a white dude. The uptown affluent, well-educated black doctor, on the other hand, just isn't lustful fantasy material for the average black porn buyer -- unless that doc has a ten inch dick and likes to screw his blonde secretary in the ass, and even then it's a stretch for the common whacker.
I've heard a consistent complaint from black folks across the land and social strata that there are just no "good" all-black porn flicks. By "good" they usually mean something filmed outside of a dingy hotel room in South Central LA. The all-black features I've seen (the ones with a "plot" -- and I've seen most of the ones that came out in the last few years) usually struggle for an audience after release and hit the bargain bin so fast it hurts. The scripts usually suck, and while production values are usually better than the more-typical gonzo flick, they still seriously lag behind the big studios on technical issues. Either black folks need to start buying more porn retail and demanding better stuff, which would send a message the studios would love to hear, or the traditionally all-black studios need to bang out a hardcore hit that crosses into the mainstream. Good luck with that.
But I do take Lux's point, that there is a kind of black ghetto in porn. It would be great if we saw more women-of-color in mainstream porn flicks, without having the whole thing be considered (gasp!) Interracial. But there have been plenty of men-of-color (Tyler Knight springs to mind, featured in two upcoming Adam & Eve flicks this year: Tigger Wood and The A-Team parody) who have made appearances in mainstream flicks, so the ghetto seems to be a little one-sided.
There are plenty of pitfalls, pity parties and market forces at work when it comes to black and interracial porn, but the fact is the public is going to vote with their pocketbook, and if a movie isn't seen it doesn't matter how racially positive it is. People whack to what they like, and if there was more hue and cry for good, non-exploitive black porn out there, you can better believe that Big Porn would pay attention. The only color they care about is green. Making a porn flick that isn't going to make money is a luxury few can afford.
And honestly that's how it should be.
