Were porn movies better in the past?

The period from 1969 to 1984 is often referred to as "The Golden Age of Porn", and yes, porn films were significantly different then than they are today.

Swedish Erotica

Although short clips have been released since the invention of the movie camera in the 1960s, pornographic films have largely been longer films. These pornographic films were shown in special cinemas. At that time, sex shops mainly sold clips, including the popular 'Swedish Erotica'. You could watch these 8MM films if you had a projector and a screen at home, or at least a bare white wall. Porn films were relatively expensive and time-consuming to produce compared to today and they had a plot, no matter how thin, dialogue, no matter how cheesy, and production standards even if lower than those of mainstream Hollywood productions.

Video killed the porn star

The arrival of the video recorder and later the Internet brought change. The VCR and movie rental business model allowed viewers to watch porn at home without having to go to a special movie theater. Demand increased and the number of pornographic films and short films produced and distributed exploded.

Then came the Internet and the video camera and then the digital camera and the cell phone. Now anyone with a few hundred euros could produce porn. Competition increased and anyone could produce porn anywhere in the world and distribute it anywhere in the world via the Internet. The money earned was attractive and around the 2000s, relatively attractive girls and women, desperate for money, became the basis for a booming industry in Eastern Europe.

Porn films in 2024

Today's porn, due to the viewer's age, short attention span and desire for instant gratification, consists mainly of 'clips' ten to twenty minutes with little or no plot or dialogue, filmed with a handheld digital camera and posted online within hours, rather than weeks or months later.

So yes, porn is completely different than during the 'Golden Age' that brought us Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, Behind the Green Door, Debbie Does Dallas, The Opening of Misty Beethoven and dozens of other 'classics' yielded.

The rise of female-friendly porn: Porna

A positive development in recent years is the rise of feminist porn. Work by female directors, such as Erika Lust, Anna Span and Petra Joy, is characterized by carefully cast actors and high production standards.

These female-friendly porn films, also called porna, are extremely popular, and not only among women. An important difference with traditional porn films is the attention for both women and men. This makes these films particularly popular with couples, but also with more and more men.

More and more women are discovering porn. The search traffic with the term 'porn for women' is increasing and 35% of viewers are women.

As many as one in three women watch porn at least once a week. By the way, they are just as turned on by porn as men are. However, women who watch porn usually do so secretly and are ashamed that they have watched a sex film.