Ethical Porn: It’s not about fair-trade pussy or organic dicks, it’s about human rights.
I hope I am not the only one that feels like shit after watching porn. Did the actors take drugs, did they have fun, did they get paid right?
But since I know Erika Lust Films, I know that porn can also be made under good conditions for everyone involved.
Here Erika Lust tells us more about ethical porn.
Giada Armani: When did you discover that ethical porn would play this big part in your life?
Erika Lust: It came little by little, I guess.
In the beginning, when I made my first short film, I didn’t really have the ambition to become who I am today.
It was kind of an experiment, to be honest.
I wanted to see if I was able to make that kind of film based on my values.
During all these years of work now I have little by little understood the impact of ethical porn and the work that we are doing.
How important the love and the energy is that we are putting into the process of making these films.
Sometimes, when I’m talking to people who are kind of against porn and who are talking about the foreigners and what an ugly genre it is that’s upsetting to most women, I do remember how misogynistic and racist a big chunk of porn out there really is.
But we have to remember that porn is not a monolithic category where everything is the same.
If we were talking about the food industry, and we would say, hey I went to McDonald’s or Burger King or whatever to get some fried chicken and I hated it, you could think that this is the only representation of fried chicken.
You wouldn’t go for it another time.
But obviously, these aren’t the only places that sell it.
There are also small family-owned businesses and restaurants that have a different way of making it.
I always tell people that they have to separate the mass-produced parts of the industry.
You have to differentiate between big companies that don’t really care about their products and small, independent companies, where people are really into creating something that has value.
That’s how I think about our films, our ethical porn.
They deliver that extra value.
They are not only beautiful in a cinematic way, but they are telling diverse stories about human sexuality.
These stories need to exist, and they need to be out there to help people understand their own sexuality.
Giada: When I think about your films, I think about sex and art.
How do those two things fit together?
Erika Lust: Well, I think that they fit perfectly together.
Art is a medium that is reflecting every possible aspect of life.
Sex is a part of life and needs to be talked about and needs to be created in an artistic way.
Sadly, what happens right now is that many people don’t see pornography as art.
They have been used to the mass-producing tube sites where nobody really cares about the content.
Because it’s not really about the content.
It’s about putting up as many strong gynecological images as possible.
But nobody cares about how it’s made, if it’s ethical porn or what it is communicating, or if there’s even a storyline behind this.
For me, there are aspects of context that I missed in most of online porn.
I really like to know a little bit about the characters.
Like who are they? How did they get to meet?
Why are they attracted to each other?
What’s happening there for me?
All this background knowledge helps me to identify with them and take part in their erotic joining.
And I think that is very beautiful.
It doesn’t have to be like that all the time.
I think that porn can be so many different things.
I know that people enjoy amateur porn, and I think that’s OK, and it doesn’t have to be artistic.
It doesn’t have to be cinematographic. It doesn’t have to tell an exact story, etc.
Porn can be so many things.
What I want to do with my work, with my films, is to use the language, the tools of cinema to get you as an audience inside of my storytelling.
I want you to feel with the characters.
I want you to feel what it feels like having sex.
Not only sit there and watch but to feel it. I think that is the powerful thing about it.
Giada: Why, when we do all this fantastic and ethical art, do we get censored all the time?
What’s the problem with censorship? Why does society have this fear of sex, even artistic sex?
Erika: That is a long story, censorship was there before pornography was created.
These special values of our society started with patriarchy and Christianity.
The two big forces that had us held down.
If you check up on some historical events, you can see how people perceived sex.
In the Victorian era when this English archaeologist from the English upper class, came to Italy, Pompeii and they started to excavate and see what was under the volcano, they found images from another time that had them in complete shock!
They found traces of a late society that permitted orgies, prostitutes, and general felicitous habitat.
They were shocked, so the first thing they thought was “we need to protect the world from this, from all these sexual images”.
So, they took most of it back to London, ceramics and pictures and stuff that they had found, and they put them into a museum.
Then they decided that the only ones who were going to be able to watch this were white rich men.
It had to be hidden from women, children, and poor people because they were afraid of the power sex had.
These values are still around us.
If we looked at censorship, we have to look at the owners of these social media platforms.
They are the people who are not letting us show the kind of images that we would like to share.
Their platforms are based on their values and their values are clearly biased.
They decide what’s sexy and what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable.
The problem is that we are so used to the male gaze.
We are used to the male way of objectifying women and of objectifying sex, that their version is almost universally accepted.
But what we as women sometimes find sexy and interesting and what we would like to share from our female gaze, is not being accepted.
Giada: What do you recommend to young artists, who are victims of censorship?
Erika: It’s very difficult because it’s hard to play their game because there is no way in there.
We have to remember though, that the internet is not only Facebook and Instagram etc.
I would recommend them to create their own worlds.
To create their own sites where they are the owners.
And where they can decide what they want to show what they don’t want to show.
And if you can’t do that go out and search for places where you are allowed to share your vision!
This is something I deeply care about.
5 years ago, I started a project for guest directors, because I have the privilege and the opportunity to finance and produce films from other directors.
I have an open call going on for upcoming filmmakers, crew members, photographers, and everyone loving and wanting to work in the erotic industry.
I tell them to apply and see if they have the guts to do these films and to share their vision of sexuality with the world.
That’s where the real power lies.
If you are not happy with the official version of what’s sexy or sexual is supposed to look like, then you cannot just sit back and complain.
We must create our own visions and narratives and then share them.
That’s why I want to support upcoming artists who have ideas, especially if they are not the hetero cis white male.
I want to give opportunities to people who don’t get them on the regular out there, like women, BIPOC, and LGBTQI+ members.
