‘We live in the past with Kari’: memory, fandom and online porn histories

ABSTRACT

In this article, I consider the role that private memories play in researching historical media objects. I argue for the inclusion of embodied and personal investments in scholarly research. I back this claim by outlining my methods in studying mainstream online heteroporn. Contemporary film theories of the senses can be employed in researching media objects, particularly for older media such as ‘vintage’ online porn. I articulate the history of a retired porn star, Kari Sweets, through FreeOnes.com forum users’ memories of her. By doing so, this article helps us to better understand the functions and uses of online heteroporn and its unofficial history as told through its most knowledgeable proponents: the fans.

KEYWORDS:

• Online pornography
• porn stars
• pornography history
• online communities
• fan studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Linda Williams notes that women began appearing solo in stag reels in the early 1960s and increased their level of sexual activity as the years went on (1999, pp. 96–97). The industry descriptions of these films – ‘beaver’, ‘split beaver’, and ‘action beaver’, respectively, – could similarly apply to the solo performers in the twenty-first century. Throughout this article I will refer to ‘solo girls’ when making general claims about the niche; I refer to the individuals working in this niche as solo performers. I require the industry term ‘solo girls’ because it more precisely positions performers with specific sets of characteristics, marketing, and networked productivity within the larger body of online porn. The label ‘solo girls’ is an infantilizing coinage, capitalizing on the success of the teen porn subgenre. Additionally, by retaining the usage of ‘solo girl’, I implicate myself and the niche’s fans in a somewhat suspect prurient interest in performers who, at times, resemble teenagers. For more on the use of teen porn discourse in the solo girl niche, see Bordun 2018b, pp. 289–290.

2. Today’s solo performers create more videos than in the past and few exclusively rely on non-nude performances. For instance. Ariel Rebel has been performing since 2004. She began with partial nudity, built a fan base, and in the later part of that decade, her performances began featuring masturbation and hardcore same-sex sexual activity. Ariel remains active and has no plans to retire anytime soon (personal communication, 13 November 2018).

3. Since some of Pornhub’s profits do not directly go to the porn performers, ethical porn scholarship would require us to purchase memberships from performer/production sites, purchase DVDs, and pay porn performers for their time if we interview them. Ethical/feminist porn has received a lot of attention in terms of production, but less so in terms of consumption. Scholars need to ask themselves if they can conduct their research while simultaneously financially supporting the research subjects.

4. For some brief remarks about online pornography and its future as ‘vintage’ pornography, see Church 2016, pp. 211–213.

5. On webcam pornography, see Bleakley 2014, Kibby and Costello 2001, White 2003, Senft 2008, Paasonen 2011, Webber 2012, Reece 2015; Bordun 2018b.

6. On parasocial interactions with celebrities on social media, see Marshall 2010.

7. The KariSweets.com website administrators have disappeared as well. I joined KariSweets.com in June 2018, but could not access the Ultimate Collection. I did not receive a reply to my emails. I did access some of the photosets by other means.

8. Similar posts, comments, and discourse can be found on many of the retired ‘babe’ threads at Free Ones. Reddit users provide similar comments, but there are simply fewer of them (2018).

9. Phad did not take criticism well, as paying KariSweets.com members harassed him about the lack of updates on both the forum and in personal emails, and perhaps this is why he sold the content to RaifPanda.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Notes on contributors

Troy Michael Bordun

Troy Michael Bordun is a contract instructor in Art History, Sociology and Anthropology, and Communication Studies at Concordia University, and Sociology and Cultural Studies at Trent University. His Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema: Film Theory at the Fringes of Contemporary Art Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan) was published in 2017, and his most recent publications can be found in Mise-en-scène, Porn Studies, Offscreen, and Senses of Cinema, among others. He has a forthcoming chapter in ReFocus: The Films of Carlos Reygadas (Edinburgh University Press). Bordun has also written for the sex and relationships website Slutever.