Frustration Friday: The Porn Is Not Surprising

I'd like to talk about pornography. Good, now that I have your attention, read on and become distinctly non-titillated.

One of the strangest trends I've noticed in media is that there were pornographic parodies of all sorts of properties–many of them geeky, such as comics and Star Trek. It seems every few weeks that I see some news on a science fiction or comics news site about yet another XXX take on something belatedly geeky.  Perhaps the ultimate achievement is a film titles, seriously "PR0N" which if you can't guess is a "Tron" parody.

(And if you couldn't guess that, I weep for you).

Amusing? Funny? Me, I find it ironic. Do you know why?



Because this is old hat for geeks, fans, and otaku. Do you know what all of this is?

It's erotic fanfic.  it's dojins.  It's parody fanart.  It's the kind of racy material that fans, geeks, and so on have been creating publicly or privately for decades. Hell, who knows what people were writing about Sherlock Holmes and Watson knows many decades ago?

And now, it's apparently a pretty big business and adult entertainment.

What makes this a Frustration Friday is when I read people writing about this trend and they seem surprised.  Honestly, did the authors think people had no sexual interest in the characters on the shows they watched?  Do they think people are so mentally chaste they don't speculate and wonder – and write or do art?

At times I see shock from fans themselves.  Seriously, where have you been since . . . forever?

This isn't a surprise, people, stop acting like it's weird.  When you do that we can analyze this fascinating trend easier as opposed to just staring at it.

I think at times people have this "oh wow" reaction to some sexuality in media because they don't want to follow the trains of thoughts it inspires – which is usually that people like sex.  For some reason, that's hard for many folks to confront or write about.

But they do.  And now that we have this trend, maybe it's time we analyze it deeper – something that was often not talked about as much in public is now part of a major industry.

Seriously, there's "Seinfeld" parody pornography.  I want to know what kind of trends caused that . . .

– Steven Savage