Introduction
I have actually been thinking about this article for a very long time, but due to the seriousness of this issue, I hope to collect more complete information before publishing it. But what happened in Tangshan some time ago made me feel that it was imminent, so I had to finish this article quickly.
Please imagine a scenario: There are some Asians who are willing to play slaves in movies. Slaves are humiliated and beaten to please their white masters. At the same time, many white people like to watch this kind of movie, and many people use this desire to make a lot of money. This form of entertainment has gradually become a widespread consumption, but in fact it has affected the attitude of white people towards Asians, causing Asians to be discriminated against everywhere. You may think this is ridiculous, and this is indeed a scene I made up, but this kind of movie is active in our world in another form.
A few months ago, I watched a Netflix TV series called "The Naked Director" out of curiosity. This TV series is adapted from the autobiography of legendary Japanese AV director Toru Muranishi. Some people watched this TV series to see a passionate entrepreneurial story, and some people saw many unknown interesting things hidden in the filming and production of adult movies, but what I saw was a story about the bottom line of sexual morality and the sacrifice of women’s rights step by step because of the huge benefits brought by the AV industry. In order to have a deeper understanding of the development story behind this, I decided to study the development history of AV first.
Background of AV
Most people may think that Japanese law allows shooting AV, but it is clearly stated in Article 175 of the Japanese Criminal Code:
Article 175 of the Criminal Code provides for the promulgation and public display of documents, pictures, and electromagnetic records in recording media. If the person is punished by a penalty of less than 2 years, a fine of not more than 2.5 million yen will be imposed, and a fine of less than 2.5 million yen will be fined. Telecommunications transmission system and electromagnetic recording system are paid and published (Item 1). The provisions of the preceding paragraph are the same as those held by the above-mentioned items, and the same items as the electromagnetic records and storage units (Item 2). The Yuan regulations were enacted in 1907 (Meiji 40), and were banned in 2011 (Heisei 23), and the records of electromagnetic records were banned and corrected in shape.
Whoever disseminates or publicly displays obscene documents, drawings, recording media related to electromagnetic recording, or other materials shall be punished by imprisonment with labor for a term not exceeding two years, or by a fine or penalty not exceeding 2.5 million yen, or by both imprisonment and a fine. The same provisions shall apply to persons who transmit obscene electromagnetic or other records by telecommunications transmission (paragraph 1). The same provisions also apply to persons who possess items mentioned in the preceding paragraph or who keep electromagnetic records mentioned in the same paragraph for the purpose of distribution for a fee (paragraph 2). " This article stipulates that the original provisions were promulgated in 1907 and revised in 2011 to include electromagnetic recordings within the scope of control.
At the same time, the interpretation of "obscenity" in Article 174 of the Criminal Law is called in judicial cases:
- Arousing or stimulating sexual desire
- Damage to the normal self-esteem of ordinary people
- Things that violate good morals
Obscenity is explained in the judiciary based on the above three points, but in practice, as long as the genitals are not exposed, it is not considered obscene. This obviously contradicts the interpretation of obscenity in the criminal law. But it is precisely based on this judgment that Japan has so many "legal" adult films.
The review of the video is handed over to the Japan VIDEO Ethics Association. The Japan VIDEO Ethics Association is a "censorship agency" that inspects the location and degree of coding of the video. This review agency is not a government review agency, but is organized voluntarily by the first few large adult companies. Its role is to prevent crude interference from administrative authorities and has no legal rights in a substantive sense.
However, taking advantage of the implementation of the Customs Business Law in February 1985, the Japanese police issued an administrative opinion stating that any video that has not been reviewed by the VIDEO Ethics Association may be considered an obscene video and be held accountable. The police issued the notice without hesitation. There must be "mutual cooperation" between the two behind it. At the same time, in the postscript of his work "People in Adult VIDEO", industry journalist Tokiyuki Adachi also wrote that "retired police officers one after another have occupied the VIDEO Ethics Association Secretariat."
In this era of "legal compliance" with the tacit approval of the police, a large number of AVs have emerged in droves. But the initial AV was not what we see today, but was formed because competition or "innovation" constantly lowered the moral lower limit.
The first adult films were not performances with live ammunition, but used flesh-colored seals to cover the actors' genitals, and then used post-coding to perform misaligned performances. Since there are "legal" coded videos, many underground uncensored videos or thin codebooks that do not meet the coding requirements of the Japan VIDEO Ethics Association have naturally sprung up. The lack of mosaics or very thin mosaics forced the actresses to perform "real-life" performances, which paved the way for the emergence of hard-core pornographic episodes later. In terms of shooting formats and themes, due to the need to constantly innovate and compete, many companies have begun to add SM elements (sexual abuse) and construct themes to satisfy the professional sexual fantasies of different identities. These themes also include series of female high school students that evoke associations with underage girls, etc. Although the Japan VIDEO Ethics Association banned the use of words or patterns referring to minors such as "sailor uniform" or "girl" on the cover and packaging of video tapes on June 5, 1988, this regulation was only made to prevent the AV industry from being condemned by public opinion. Today, you can still see many AVs referring to underage female high school students.
AV in the Internet Age
I think the subject matter and the concepts conveyed by these AVs will bring moral uneasiness. Some people will refute me and say that these are just themes in the film, just to satisfy people's curiosity. But is this really the case? In the 20th century, the cost of AV shooting was very high, and the only way to obtain customers was to go to a video store to rent. However, with the emergence of the Internet and smartphones, the cost of AV shooting has been greatly reduced, and obtaining AV has become easy. In China, where sex education is severely lacking, AV has almost become the only sex education resource. This kind of educational resources is full of incorrect concepts of gender relations and incorrect sexual behaviors. This kind of education has a subtle influence on people's gender concepts. I can say without hesitation that I have been affected by this influence to a greater or lesser extent.
In order to prove whether these AVs have influenced people's ideas, I chose 91Porn, the largest selfie porn website in Chinese, to analyze how people affected by this kind of education embody their ideas in practice. I did not choose Pornhub because, after Pornhub experienced a crackdown, most of them are now officially verified bloggers. They shoot pornographic videos in order to make money through the number of views, so naturally their titles and themes will cater to the "taste" of the audience. However, most people on 91Porn simply shoot videos to gain praise from "comrades" on the website, and there is no obvious profit relationship (although there is also some behavior of selling videos through Twitter, but they have almost disappeared after a series of people led by "Mr. Qin" were attacked), and naturally they can more truly reflect the thoughts of the photographers. I scraped the titles of about 100,000 videos from 91Porn since its establishment in 2009, and then used some simple natural language processing to show the style of this website.
(This paragraph is to prove that the data source is accurate, and it is mostly technical details. You can skip the analysis. Use Python BeautifulSoup to retrieve the video title HTML elements in 91Porn, and collect a total of 94991 video titles. Then use the Chinese NLP library jieba Decompose the words in the title and assign the part of speech. Obtain the word frequency of each word in all titles. The following analysis basically displays the word frequency by part of speech classification.)
Overview
Before 2020, the total number of video uploads to 91Porn was only about two to three thousand. However, since the beginning of 2020, because Pornhub was sanctioned by Mastercard and Visa, 91Porn's video volume has surged. The number of video uploads in 2021 has reached 38,414. At the same time, this year, the number of video uploads has reached 32,924 in just half a year.
noun
Among the top twenty nouns with word frequency, there are obviously insulting nouns such as "bitch", "slut" and "cunt".
Preposition
The two prepositions "being" and "given" appear in the medium and high frequency of preposition words. By going back and looking at the original titles, most of the titles containing the word "being" are usually in the format of "What kind of women are treated by whom", while most of the titles containing the word "give" are usually in the format of "What kind of women are treated by whom". This can be reflected in the 91Porn sharers’ belief that men should be the subject in sexual behavior, while women should be the object that provides services to the subject.
Location words
Location words should not appear in the results of this analysis, but I unexpectedly found that some words that should not be classified as location words were classified as location words by jieba. For example, "mouth", "mouth", "face", I think everyone can understand the reason.
In the history of AV development, there were many actresses who could not accept the behavior of "facial cumshot" at the beginning. Bukkake was accidentally discovered by Toru Muranishi during a shooting. The actress was very disgusted with this behavior at first, but he "keenly" discovered the business opportunities in it, and it was really well received after it was released. In today's AV, facial cumshots have already become almost a must-have part of every movie. These parts are still affecting people's sexual behavior today, and they are also shown in these titles.
Adjective
What is worth noting among the adjectives is the word "contrast". Although this word does not rank too high overall, it first appeared in 2019, and then began to be used a lot in 2020, and more and more people use it as time goes by. The contrast technique is used by the video uploader to create a feeling for the viewers that some women look cold or innocent on the surface but are very coquettish behind the scenes. In this way, they can satisfy the special psychology of the viewers.
The adjective "saucy" appears in all videos from beginning to end. Most of the time, "saucy" is used to describe women, but at the same time it is difficult to think of a word that corresponds to "saucy" to describe men. There may be "romance", but romance is sometimes considered to be a manifestation of superiority. For example, being charming and suave is welcomed by many women.
Identity
The more common identities in daily life will appear in the title as the subject of the video. As for the identity in the video, no one has delved into the reality. But under the stigma of such videos, these identities or professions have gradually become strange. Most of the themes are also derived from common themes in Japanese AV, such as "teacher", "student", "nurse", "stewardess", etc.
Through the above analysis, we can see that most of the videos more or less imitate the plots or sexual behaviors in Japanese AV. This can largely explain that when AV is used as a sex education resource, it will have a great impact on people's gender concepts and sexual behavior. Different from other gender issues (such as prostitution, surrogacy), AV seems to be too easy to obtain, and viewing AV has become a universal situation, and the huge harm behind it has been ignored by the public.
Summary
At the beginning of the explanation, the Japan VIDEO Ethics Association has also mentioned that the Japan VIDEO Ethics Association has a deep relationship with the Japanese police. At the same time, Japan’s ambiguous attitude towards AV also shows that this is an unshakable industry and a huge industry that can bring in an output value of trillions every year. This high profit has also attracted many women to voluntarily participate in this industry in the hope of earning huge income.
In my opinion, AV is like a curse that is forever imprisoned on women. AV continues to instill unequal sexual concepts into teenagers, directly exacerbating the concept of misogyny, and women in this patriarchal cultural industry have to adapt to this system. After I saw these facts clearly, I felt helpless. I knew where the problem was, but it was difficult for me to challenge the system on my own. This situation is like the old proverb adapted by Alan Kay: "In the world of the blind, the one-eyed person controls everything, but the two-eyed person suffers." Most people think that AV is something they are accustomed to, and everyone can talk about it at the dinner table. Some companies have seen through this and seek huge profits by selling desire, but what they pay for behind these profits are the basic rights and interests of all women.
This article is just a small contribution I made to gender equality. This is a problem facing the entire world system. It is difficult for me to make any huge changes alone. However, I hope this article can change the minds of some readers. I also hope to use a more correct way to promote gender equality instead of stimulating gender opposition. This is not just a problem for women. If you are a man, I hope you can realize that while you are in an advantageous position, gender inequality also brings a lot of unnecessary pressure to you. "Respecting" the women around you can already bring about great changes.