The new HD media Matt Richtel explores in his New York Times article calls into question definitions of “sexy” and “arousing.” Pornographic movie studios “have discovered that the technology is sometimes not so sexy” Richtel explains. Perhaps the problem with sexy is that it’s not obvious. Often, sexy is demure, coy, veiled, mysterious and able to build anticipation and arousal. HD, on the other hand, might be sexy’s opposite--bold, clear and obvious. As adult film star Stormy Daniels comments, “I’m not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD.” HDTV certainly makes porn more vivid and contains more visual information to stimulate the eye. Theoretically when we increase clarity of the image we make porn a more stimulating erotic experience—“realer” genitals, nipples, mouths, fluids etc. However we also increase the clarity of actual flaws such as the “tiny ill-placed pimple,” on adult film star Savana Samson.

Another adult film actress, Kirsten Price embraces the increased clarity of high-def technology explaining that, “People just want to see what’s real.” I’m dubious about this notion of high definition as being somehow “realer.” Pornographic video has never been “real;” thin plots, editing techniques and make-up create a sexy idealized situation. High-definition seems to compensate for the inherent "unsexiness" of its crisper image and hyper reality in an effort to maintain that sexy atmosphere. Ms. Price, for example, received cosmetic surgery to decrease the appearance of unsightly veins and high definition post-production technologies “digitally soften the actors’ skin tone.” So what happens when we increase the ideal and continue to cover up flaws? Perhaps we simply up the standards of the “ideal.” Ms. Price seems to assume that HD represents a move toward the “real,” when in fact HD technology presents the viewer with a “hyper-reality,” packed with more information than the human eye or ear can process and images of bodies even further from our own.

Richtel’s article did not touch on the surge in the amateur porn industry or the thousands of hits the infamous poorly lit Paris Hilton sex video has received. Perhaps these other trends represent a high-definition backlash toward grainy, pixilated, low quality pornography with “real” people.
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I haven’t had many (any) theory or production classes but I’ve had a number of creative writing classes (in playwriting and creative nonfictions) which I think would serve me well in writing treatments for pitches. I’ve also studied some gender theory and I’m excited to find the intersections between that and media. I was raised (for better or worse) on a strict diet of public television and documentary films as my mom worked for public television. My parents, perhaps contradictorily, treated TV as a necessary evil and as a result I’ve always been fascinated by the way media, especially television and film, manipulates the mind and the eye. I’ve interned with a documentary production company, mostly pushing papers and logging footage but I gained a fascination with the way filmmakers manipulate and construct narrative in documentary film. I remember one afternoon while I was taking inventory of about 1000 master-beta tapes in the editing room I overheard to a conversation between an editor and a producer about creating “a story arc” and building “tension” and “drama” on their documentary about “extreme engineering.” They kept moving index cards around on their storyboard—manipulating time and sequence and I thought to myself, “wait…but isn’t that sort-of…lying?” I realize of course how naïve my idea of the truth of documentary film was. However, the play and moral tension between fact and narrative continues to fascinate and elude me.