At the end of the summer, LA’s David Kordansky Gallery made William E. Jones’ seminal 1998 film The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography available to view online alongside an in-depth interview with the artist. It gave an insight into Jones’ working process putting together the piece, as well as the context of the footage making up the film. Ranging from cityscapes resembling tourist information videos and bustling market squares, to impoverished people with hands outstretched to the camera begging. This acts as a set up for screen tests, interviews and casting for performers showing varying degrees of discomfort and coercion.
Describing the wave of Eastern European gay pornography that flooded the US market following the dissolution of the USSR, Jones said:
“They were products of a crude imperialist enterprise: cheap and nasty looking, with an atmosphere of coercion and cultural misunderstanding pervading them. Customers adored these videos, and expressed their breathless admiration whenever given the chance”
The Fall… opens with a short clip of a young man in profile, undressing. He looks uncomfortable, alternating between staring forward and glancing in the direction of the camera, his eyes showing a mix of discomfort and contempt. Jones’ voiceover states: “even in an unlikely place, it is possible to find traces of recent history” followed by b-roll taken from the aforementioned porn films including maps of the former USSR, market scenes, beggars and street footage. Their purpose in the aforementioned films appears to be part exoticism and part poverty fetishism, attempting to show the former glory of the Eastern nations as an emphasis on their subsequent fall. They’re an essential part of the set-up, speaking directly to what made this genre of pornography appealing to a western, primarily American, market. It’s easy to comprehend the mixture of exploitation and exoticism that made these videos popular in the US, but Jones goes further, aiming to establish a firm link between the booming Western economy and a more global, less visible form of exploitation.
The latter half of the film compounds the atmosphere of coercion, focusing specifically on the casting and screen tests of performers. The voice from behind the camera probes the subject on their sexual preferences, their motivations for being filmed:
“I’m doing it for the money”
“That’s a very good reason”
Western audiences were turned on by the idea that the performers were under some form of duress—the ostensibly straight man either consuming their sexuality through the guise of pornography, or in the case of several scenes, the performer showing visible discomfort at either the sex or the presence of the camera. The films are low budget, low production value and low brow—by intention, rather than necessity.
Jones speculates that the developing Eastern European sex industry, with the influx of Western producers and a Western market in mind, could be seen as an indicator of fertile ground for fascist ideologies—an aspersion confirmed by the global rise of far-right ideologies in tandem with the economic pressure of late-stage capitalism, a point at which more contemporary comparisons can be made.
It’s possible to map an aesthetic of late-stage capitalism through the content and marketing of contemporary internet pornography.
In the twenty two years since Jones’ film, the porn industry has changed dramatically. With the ubiquity of high speed internet, our consumption of pornography has been hypernormalised. Attacks on sexually explicit material feel less common, save for transparent and obviously baiting hot takes from morons like Ben Shapiro, we are more accepting and open in regard to sex work, although this openness tends to apply more to digital forms of sex work and less so to IRL ones.
This development comes alongside the establishment and subsequent consuming of stable working life by the gig economy. Film or cyber-sex work, when concealed in the shiny aesthetics of the late-capitalist rulebook, has been gathering more widespread acceptance – the least invasive forms of which could be considered cam sites like Chaturbate and subscription services like OnlyFans. While this doesn’t account for the significant stigma, risk of violence and criminalisation of sex workers IRL, it does create an augmented social perspective on digital sex work.
In the same way that Jones pointed to the Western exploitation of the USSR through the production and exportation of pornography, it’s possible to map an aesthetic of late-stage capitalism through the content and marketing of contemporary internet pornography.
The non-hierarchical potential of platforms prioritising user-generated content has been mitigated by the competition of an unregulated market. Those with the skills and time to spend marketing their channel are more likely to reach a greater audience and market share, meaning performers incapable of doing so have their labour devalued, working more for a lower income.
The non-hierarchical potential of platforms prioritising user-generated content has been mitigated by the competition of an unregulated market.
Even at this early stage, we can see a democratised industrial structure falling prey to capitalist tropes. Cross-marketing between Instagram, OnlyFans, cam sites and the pre-existing porn industry creates the potential for diversified streams of income but equally instigates the potential for exploitation of performers and sex workers. As the description of content creator becomes more applicable, the content created becomes of less importance—the structure begins to mirror influencers, with growth and engagement becoming paramount. In the case of OnlyFans we can see musicians, comedians and designers utilising the platform’s subscription based payment structure to reach potential audiences, oftentimes mixing NSFW content alongside something more traditionally associated with influencer culture on Twitter or Instagram.
Herein lies the pervasive issue of capitalism and the effectiveness of contemporary internet pornography as an aesthetic marker for it. Those with the largest following will generate the largest income (speaking generally, there will always be room for creators satisfying niche markets) and a set of guidelines on how to reach said larger audiences will be established.
The same class discussion applied to the arts could prove useful here. Having time to learn, fail and grow oneself on these platforms necessitates a level of freedom to be able to do so in the first place. The free market illusion is omnipresent digitally, the idea that non-heirarchical structures are possible is underwritten by the caveat that the aesthetics and attitudes of late-capitalism are pervasive.
This guideline will come alongside a dominant aesthetic, as well as sets of sub-genres with their own aesthetic. The democracy of the work environment is corrupted and the worker’s relationship to their own labour is irrevocably altered.
In the same way that the fall of communism was exploited by the West, the financial and social insecurity of a generation living in recession, under permanent austerity, is exploited now. The aesthetics utilised in Jones’ film are still broadly present, albeit perhaps in a slightly altered form, now accompanied by a new visual language born from a culture numb to being told to “like, comment, share and subscribe”.