The Encyclopedia Of Smut: The Indie Porn Appendix

As our lovely and talented guest editor Courtney Trouble mentioned earlier today, NoFauxxx/Indie Porn Revolution has been around for ten wonderful years. We thought we'd take this opportunity to answer a question we're often asked, a question we like to ask ourselves from time to time: what is indie porn?

The Dotcom Cometh

Producing porn was an arduous process before the internet came around. If you wanted to get your stuff out there, you not only needed to film and edit your smut, but you had to be able to physically reproduce it on VHS or DVD (or whatever people used back in the stone ages), package it, store it, distribute it, and promote it. If you personally couldn't do that, then you needed connections to people who could. Needless to say, there were a lot of obstacles to overcome before you could call yourself a pornographer.

Around the late '90s/early '00s, people started realizing they could skip all of the physical media nonsense and most of the expensive overhead costs by buying a website and some server space, offer whatever or whoever they want, and make a few bucks off of it in the process. Obviously this appealed to big studios who sought to cut down costs, but more importantly, it allowed would-be pornstars and producers to fuck and film whoever and however they wanted without worrying about adhering to the tastes of the mainstream porn world. That freedom of expression is the essence of independent porn.

In short, indie porn is outsider porn. It's the work that examines and responds to the traditional narratives and imagery of pornography and says, "Yo, I see what you're doing over there, but I'm going to present things my way."

[Above: Ned and Maggie Mayhem being all nasty and whatnot, via Queer Porn Tube]

Alt Line Slippage

Indie and alt (terms we use interchangeably) is by no means gone, but they've gone through some changes since the dawn of internet porn. Are they good changes? Bad changes? Both, naturally.

First the bad, or better yet, the detrimental changes. In 2002, Visa and Mastercard decided to ruin everyone's fun by categorizing all adult sites as high risk for chargebacks and introducing new fees for payment processing: it was $750 to register for their services and $375 annually after that. It wasn't the biggest blow that well established porn companies ever faced, but it hurt a bunch of indie producers and probably discouraged countless others from giving the whole porn career a try. Around the same time, the government decided to be stricter about 2257 record keeping--the documents that assure them everyone involved in porn is eighteen or older--and, among other things, they require that you keep hard copies of performer IDs and release forms in a location with regular office hours so the feds can stop by and check whenever they want. Again, even if you make really good porn in your studio apartment, the challenge of adapting to new regulations may put you out of business.

Now for the good changes, or instead, the changes that show how the adult industry is a creature of adaptation. Many of the hallmarks of early indie porn--bodies of different shapes and sizes, tattoos, certain fetishes, etc.--have gained wider acceptance in mainstream circles. Sometimes this was the result of change in a big company, such as in February of 2006 when Vivid Entertainment got directors like Eon McKai and Dave Naz to make movies for them under their brand new Vivid-Alt imprint. Other times, indie folk simply found themselves getting bigger and more powerful, such as the people behind Suicide Girls (to be fair, the founders had previous dotcom experience and business expertise helping them out). The most heartwarming way in which indie porn becomes mainstream is through audience appreciation. How did Jiz Lee, a queer porn icon, end up in Digital Playground movies? How did Skin Diamond go from Burning Angel to Elegant Angel? Their fans love them and the mainstream takes notice.

[Above: can you imagine there was a time when nobody in mainstream porn had tattoos? Thank goodness we live in a world with "Alt Nation"]

Every Night Is Amateur Night

It's hard enough figuring out what delineates indie porn from mainstream porn, but how do you separate it from amateur porn? After all, if the core value of independent smut is outsiderness, what could be more outsidery than a single woman with a camera filming herself masturbating?

From our standpoint, amateur porn is the homegrown material people post to PornHub, Queer Porn Tube, and other such sites. It's usually a one-off deal without any cohesive vision.

However, the lines blur from time to time. There are definitely certain users on tube sites who consistently produce quality smut and have collected a following because of it; do we call them amateurs or independent pornographers? Take Violet and Rye for example: we found one of their videos, then another one, and now that they're regularly tantalizing people with their pics and films. At what point did they stop being amateurs? And since XTube hosted some of their first videos, does that make XTube an indie porn website?

Friends, these labels confuse us to no end, but that's not why we bring this up. We're simply wondering where independent porn is going. Will we see more empowered couples put things together like The Art of Blowjob and Pornographic Love, or will new pornstars be elevated by the masses from tube sites like Queer Porn Tube? And how will this affect the mainstream industry, especially now that most big companies are losing money to piracy?

The only way to get the answers is to keep watching porn.

[Above: the first Violet + Rye video, still a favorite, via XTube]

[At top: Courtney Trouble and Johnny Love, via courtney trouble tumblr landia (courtneytrouble.tumblr.com)]