The Sexploitation Of Racial Taboos In Porn
STEREOTYPES
The Sexploitation Of Racial Taboos In Porn
IN A TRIBUTE TO BLACK HISTORY MONTH, AVN, the adult entertainment monthly, called it's cover story Black Humor. The subtitle: "Is stereotyping in the service of sales okay in the year 2009?" (Talk about a euphemism!)
I've often wondered that myself.
First of all, I have a slight problem with the article being called Black Humor. I'm not sure most African-Americans find much humor in titles such as I Can't Believe You Sucked A Negro or My Daughter Is Fucking a Negro.
But the article explores a subject I've never seen written about before.
No doubt there are what I shall call "normal sexual relations" between the races in the movies. Boy meets girls, there's some foreplay, in and out and nobody gets hurt, at least most of the time.
And these movies are like that too. But, they're racist.
The image of the large, powerful, well-endowed black man dominating the pale, frail, blonde is certainly alive and well and ingrained in the culture.
I remember many years ago sneaking peeks at the Mandingo books my mother read. The genre was obviously quite popular at the time if it was purchased by my romance loving, dime-store paperback purchasing mother.
These movies remind me of those books. Tales of Massa's wife cavorting with the virile, black field hands while Massa helped himself to the females slaves. It harkens back to when cotton was king and the white man was the master of all he surveyed. "Ahhh, the good old days," is now a fetish.
In the article, actor Lexington Steele, a tall, handsome black man seldom seen without his sunglasses, says, "It's the white producer that tends to hold on to those elements of age-old taboo."
Whoooaaa, buddy. Steele is a talking contradiction.
On the one hand saying he'd never put out a product such as Blackzilla. (As in Hush Hush Entertainment's My Daughter is Fucking Blackzilla, one of the movies that made a star of Shane Diesel, another massive, handsome black man.) But Steele has a series titled Silverback Attack, as in Silverback gorilla. He also correctly notes that many of his other titles such as Lex On Blondes are not incendiary. But still, you know the real deal. He puts it plainly and to the point when he says " At no point does anyone forget that it's a big, black motherfucker fucking a white girl."
As a black woman working on the editorial side of the adult entertainment industry, the stereotypes have bothered me since I entered the field. I cringe when I see them.
Do I push back my revulsion because I have to make a living, the company is cool, and I like the people? Because there is still racism other places, in other situations? Because it's really not hurting anyone? Is it?
SexyChattyCatty comments at CrabbyGolightly.com on porn and TV, America's favorite snack food.
Tags: Pop Culture
