A special case, where nudity, though not permanent, is physically necessary for the art to be created and observed, is body art which uses the skin as the medium (like a painter’s canvas) upon which the markings are created. While the techniques used, such as tattooing and scarification, are often used in a more artisanal way, as most body markings have less of an ?sthetic than a social and/or communicative purpose (e.g. initiation rite, fun, macho or sexy signal, various traditions), some clients carefully select artists and designs for artistic beauty to decorate significant skin surfaces, preferably co?rdinating the different designs — some like displaying them in public, others rather keep them hidden except in select company, accordingly preferring to mark body parts that are commonly clad. A few artists use live animals as (obviously involuntary) canvas cloland gay.
Pornographic films are the latest in a long series of erotic or pornographic depictions.
Pornographic motion pictures are nearly as old as the medium itself. According to Patrick Robertson's Film Facts, "the earliest pornographic motion picture which can definitely be dated is A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge", made in France in 1908; the plot depicts a weary soldier who has a tryst with an inn's servant girl. Robertson notes that the Argentine pornographic film El Satario might be even older; it has been dated to somewhere between 1907 and 1912. Robertson notes that "the oldest surviving pornographic films are contained in America's Kinsey Collection." One film demonstrates how early pornographic conventions were established. The German film Am Abend (c. 1910) is, as Robertson writes, "a ten-minute film which begins with a woman masturbating alone in her bedroom, and progresses to scenes of her with a man performing sex, fellatio and anal penetration." (Robertson, p. 66)
Pornographic movies were widespread in the silent movie era of the 1920s, and were often shown in brothels. Many pornographic films were made in subsequent decades, but given the usually clandestine nature of the filming and distribution, details of such "stag films" are often difficult to obtain. It is probably reasonable to assume that many sexually explicit films made before about 1950 are lost forever.
[edit] 1960s and 1970s: Changing laws, changing attitudes
In the 1960s, some attitudes towards the depiction of sexuality began to change. European movies like K?rlekens Spr?k (1969) were sexually explicit, but were framed as a quasi-documentaries, which made their cloland gay legal status uncertain.
One important court case in the U.S. was Miller v. California. The case established that obscenity was not legally protected, but the case also established the Miller test, a three-pronged test to determine obscenity (which is not legal) as opposed to indecency (which may or may not be legal).
[edit] Porn chic
More permissive legislation permitted the rise of "XXX-rated" movie theaters in the United States in the 1970s. There was also a proliferation of coin-operated "movie booths" in sex shops that displayed pornographic "loops" (so-called because they projected a movie from film arranged in a continuous loop).
At that time, pornographic movies even approached acceptance into the mainstream movie industry, with films such as Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door, Boys in the Sand and Gerard Damiano's 1972 film The Devil in Miss Jones being shot on film with high production values, and grossing substantial amounts in movie theaters. These helped establish "porn chic" as a cultural trend.
[edit] 1970s and 1980s: New technology, new legal cases
With the arrival of the home video cassette recorder in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the pornographic movie industry experienced massive growth and spawned adult stars like Ginger Lynn, Christy Canyon, and Traci Lords. One could now not only watch pornography in the comfort and privacy of one's own home, but also find more choices available to satisfy specific fantasies and fetishes. Similarly, the camcorder spurred changes in pornography in the 1980s, when people could make their own amateur sex movies, whether for private use, or for wider distribution.
It has been suggested that, among other things, Sony Betamax lost the format war to VHS (in becoming the general home video recording/viewing system) because the adult video industry chose VHS instead of the technically superior Sony system. Other attempts at innovation came in the form of "interactive" videos that let the user choose such variables as multiple camera angles, multiple endings (e.g., "Devil in the Flesh", 1999, Private Films), and cloland gay computer-only DVD content.
1987 saw an important legal case in the U.S. when the de facto result of California v. Freeman was the legalization of hardcore pornography. Ironically, the prosecution of Harold Freeman was initially planned as the first in a series of legal cases that would have effectively outlawed the production of such movies.
[edit] 1990s
Two technologies became prominent in the 1990s that changed pornographic movies: the DVD offered better quality picture and sound, and was embraced by pornographers just as enthusiastically as it was embraced by major Hollywood studios and by private consumers. Erotic film producers are expected to play a major role in deciding the next DVD standard: large outfits tend to support the high-capacity Blu-ray Disc, while small outfits generally favor the less-expensive HD-DVD.[citation needed]
However, the internet arguably changed the distribution of pornography more than any earlier technology: rather than ordering movies from an adult bookstore, or through mail-order, people could watch pornographic movies on their computers. Rather than waiting weeks for an order to arrive from another U.S. state, one could download a pornographic movie within minutes (or, later, within a few seconds).
The internet also complicated legal prosecution of obscentity cases: if someone downloads a video clip that no one else in their town sees, are community standards violated? If a pornographic movie is produced in one U.S. state and downloaded in another state (after having been routed through half-a-dozen states via an internet service provider), in which jurisdiction should the legal case be introduced? These and related questions are still cloland gay being sorted out in U.S. courts.
In the UK attitudes to censorship are becoming more relaxed. It is not illegal to make or to perform in pornographic films in the UK. Films with sexually explicit content have been shown on national TV.
[edit] 2000s
Attitudes to the portrayal of sexual activities on film and on television have become more open on this decade.[citation needed] For example, the film The Idiots, a Danish film made in 1998, was shown on UK TV in the early part of this decade. It includes nudity, an orgy scene, and a full sexual intercourse scene complete with close-up footage of the act. The camera viewpoint was from the ankles of the participants, and the close ups left no-doubt as to what was taking place. These scenes were included when the film was shown on the national TV channel, BBC2. The film has won many international awards for best film and various other film industry awards. Pornography movie is also known in eastern Asia as "Panu'.
[edit] Legal status
Main article: List of pornography laws by region
[edit] Sub-genres
Main article: List of cloland gay pornographic sub-genres
Current pornographic movies can be divided into a number of sub-genres by the sex of the performers, the types of sex act portrayed, and the intended audience.
[edit] Criticism cloland gay
