A Music Video Highlights the Disturbing Reality of the Porn Industry [NSFW]

Obviously, no one watches porn videos, but the adult industry represents 30% of internet bandwidth with a greater visitor count than Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined. The French artist Hierophante, who specializes in social satire, made a short video depicting all the cliché of porn videos.

The two-minute video starts with women walking in an office before moving to a bedroom. Hierophante then shows the typical phases of a porn film from start to finish. The dark soundtrack is composed by the artist himself.

Beside the biological function of sexuality, the title of this video, “Reproduction,” makes a clear reference to the formulaic aspect of the pornography creation, its lack of originality, and the constant degradation and objectification of women.

In its annual review, the Pornhub site described some of the regular trends observed on its platform. In 2018, “Pornhub’s servers served up 30.3 billion searches, or 962 searches per second. To make sure there was always fresh content to satisfy those searches, Pornhub’s amateurs, models, and content partners uploaded an incredible 4.79 million new videos, creating over 1 million hours of new content to enjoy on the site. If you were to start watching 2018’s videos after the Wright brother’s first flight in 1903, you would still be watching them today 115 years later!”

But the most searched terms on Pornhub appear desperately cliché, such as "lesbian," "hentai," or "teen." The video shows this reality with actresses dressed as schoolgirls and a combination of various hentai scenes.

Once again, Hierophante delivers a scathing social critique. In one sense, the mass consumption of pornography is simply the result of a schizophrenic society full of contradictions that sexualizes everything for commercial purpose but demands respect and dignity, like these Instagram models who pose half naked all day long while a former teenage Disney princess turns into a softcore porn star with choreography that clearly elevates the condition of humankind. Meanwhile, some of the top 10 Instagram celebrities are made out of nothing but leaked sex tapes. Eventually, we end up with a president who boasts about grabbing women by the intimate parts, the Harvey Weinstein atrocities, and a surge in porn consumption. The adult industry is just a reflection of our society, and what we see in this dark mirror is pretty disturbing.

You can follow Hiérophante's work on his Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.

Oliver Kmia's picture

Oliver Kmia is specialized in time-lapse, hyperlapse, and aerial videography. He also works with several drone manufacturers as a marketing and technical consultant. He is the lead brand ambassador of Hello Kitty camera, his favorite piece of equipment. Most people think Oliver is an idiot and they are probably right.

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31 Comments

Oh, get off your high-horse. It's obviously not your type of content. Then, don't look at it. It's been there way before you were born, and it'll be there way way way after you're gone.

No, that's totally my type of content! Porn is not wrong, many people watch it (the intro sentence is ironic) but it's always the same and quiet boring. I wish there could be more diversity instead of the usual scenario: an innocent-virgin-teen girl walk by, she gives BJ, have sex, shot in the face at the end...

I think we watch different types of porn...

I only watch German porn from the 70s with hairy performers (men with mustache is a plus).

I can recommend hairy midget porn :D

Cool dramatic Morty sacrificed himself into the giant portal so your Pornhub page could be filled with Incest porn.

No one watches porn... lol . They've only taken into account hetero porn, not homosexual(and no 'lesbian porn' is not actual porn for lesbians) or alt... meh. But besides that, what does this have to do with photography? They chopped up porn videos. This is should be on BoredPanda not Fstoppers.

I also want to add that as a woman, women can choose to do porn on their own accord. They are not degraded when they are willfully doing it.It is that woman's choice on what type of porn she does. Men on the other hand get paid less(unless in homosexual porn) than their female counterparts and are seen as 'props'. So who's really being degraded and objectified? That said, the jabs at Miley Cyrus and Kim K. are amusing af when you're trying to denounce degradation of women, yet you're degrading them for being sexual.

So, women are not free to be sexual, is that it? Because it might degrade them or female-hood as a whole? This is why the whole slut shame movement came about. The whole POTUS pussy grabbing thing is another topic not related to women's sexuality or porn.

30%.... considering that this 30% includes women and considering that women watch much less porn than men, one could say that at least 50% of men watch porn.
Hmm, 50% of men *admit* it......
What is the proportion of men who do not admit watching porn, but do it?
Closer to 100% than 0%, I guess...............

I was taking a jab at him for writing that no one watches porn :P I forget the article, but quite a bit of women do watch porn(equal to if not more)...we just choose not to admit it because of the stigma associated with it.We're also watching porn for DIFFERENT reasons than men are, and very different porn as well. We're sexual creatures, we're just forced by societal expectations and the patriarchy to not show our sexuality for fear of being labeled a slut.

"Obviously, no one watches porn videos"
This is obviously ironic. Of course a lot of people do and there is nothing wrong about that. I'm not a puritan. But the video is interesting because it shows all the cliche related to porn. The traditional sequence: innocent-virgin-teen girl, BJ, sex, shot in the face. Would be nice to see different stuff a little bit. That's all and I believe that's also one of the point behind the video title (Reproduction).

"No one watches porn". It's ironic obviously.

For the rest, as you said, women are free to do whatever they want, including getting face shot at the end of the majority of porn video. I don't find this super classy but I'm not trying to be the vice police neither (and I would be the wrong person to do so). I just think that there are a lot of contradiction in our society about sex in general. It's glorified and repressed at the same time.

"That said, the jabs at Miley Cyrus and Kim K. are amusing af when you're trying to denounce degradation of women, yet you're degrading them for being sexual."

Um... not really. I'm not patronizing women or anybody in general. I just find it fun that Miley Cyrus went from pristine Disney girl to doing explicit choreography, we find similar stuff in porn video (the fantasy of teen and virgin girls). As for Kim K, she only owns her celebrity because she did a sex tape, some people think it's deplorable (being famous for nothing), other think it's cool. Beyond that, I don't really care much about these two persons. They can really do whatever they like.
The rest is up for interpretation, personally I do think that there is a between "grabby by the pussy", "porn" and the constant use of suggestive sex for commercial purpose. But again, feel free to disagree. This article is labelled as opinion. My opinion is just one of many and it's not better than yours.

"a schizophrenic society full of contradictions that sexualizes everything for commercial purpose but demands respect and dignity"
Totally agree... this is the hypocritical world we live in today... not only for commercial purposes, but also for political purposes

Post EXIF data pls. Thanks. =)

What scathing critique? That looked like a porn website commercial.

Unknown artist unironically objectifies and dehumanizes sex workers to sell her music and calls it "critique"...

What does this have to do with photography?

What's so disturbing about that video?
And oooh, such sharp and poignant critique. Big news people! Society revolves around sex!

Thanks

I like what you said in that last paragraph Oliver. Very insightful and true!

Just my opinion but a many people disagree, which is fine. It's a hot topic ;)

Blame it on evolutionary pressure. Evolution coerces towards a horny species.

I found the music as irratating as the article. Sex sells period or there would not be an industry. To each their own as long as it does not infringe upon me.

I've heard better music in actual porn than this...

I think both videos were very creative and well done. As with most things in life, it's all up to personal interpretation.

The most disturbing thing about pornography is not the sex, it’s the way women are usually portrayed as vulnerable creatures to be exploited, and said exploitation is celebrated. The premise of all of the “casting” sites (mostly fake) is that these are desperate women who are going to be tricked into having sex with fraudulent promises about jobs. That’s pretty dark.

Choking women in porn is no longer only a fetish, it’s gone mainstream. It’s just a part of porn now without being categorized as violent. Maybe consent to choke takes place before filming, but if it is, it’s not being portrayed.

Then we have the rise of incest porn, abuse porn, etc... Again, these are not in dark corners of the internet, they’re mainstream now.

I’m not one for censorship, but self-censorship isn’t such a bad thing. If you think this is a positive outlet for your already existing dark fantasies, that’s not really how the brain works. We’re wired to seek more and more intense stimulation. That’s how we have gambling addicts, video game addicts, etc...

You don’t have to be ashamed or in denial of your dark side, but be careful with it.

What is ... Porn?

It’s a species of bird indigenous to South America

Awesome!! Then I definitely want to take photos of porn.

How on Earth did people miss the sarcasm?

Yeah well y'know, I'm sorry, Evan, that the Coen Brothers don't direct the porn that I watch.

I love how Weinstein's non-consensual activities are lumped in with Trump bragging about what pageant contestants allow. You would think someone writing an article would read a transcript instead of jumping on a sound bite.