Lights! Camera! Action!

SAM SHARPE

As we enter a new year and the end of the “naughts”, I’ve been reflecting on how the world has changed over the past 10 years or so. I’ve been thinking about the ubiquity of the Internet and social networking sites; the rise of the blog and the viral video phenomenon; and the sheer speed with which information can be disseminated. In this day and age news travels fast people.

Hand in hand with these developments is the rise of the sex tape. It seems like you can’t open the newspaper, turn on television, or use your favourite search engine without hearing about so and so’s sex tape. And thanks to folks like Perez Hilton (parasite) and sites like TMZ (seriously people, have you ever watched TMZ. I did. Once. It made my blood curdle. I just don’t get the obsession with hounding A, B, C, all the way to F list celebrities, and mocking them for trying to live their lives. Those people over at TMZ are bloodsuckers). Just today I overheard coworkers talking about the possible existence of a Tiger Woods sex tape. Last week, I think I read something about Rihanna having one.

All this talk bores me. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to criticize some C list celebrity who’s made a sex tape,  but I have to say, that the danger, the cachet of having a sex tape is lost. It’s no longer illicit. And thanks to sites like YouPorn and PornoTube celebrity porn has to compete with Regular Joe porn. And I don’t know about you, but I think I’d much rather watch the amateur stuff. (Important note here. Though celebrity sex tapes are ostensibly “amateur”, I don’t view them as such. Celebrity porn is professional porn as far as I’m concerned. Most of these people guard their images so carefully that when a sex tape comes out you have to assume it’s intentional. Seriously people, it’s easier for me to go on the internet and get a close up of Britney Spears’ cooch than it is to get on Ticketmaster’s website and get a ticket to her show – but I digress).

Anyone who’s seen the Ray J and Kim Kardashian sex tape knows what I’m talking about. As Skye discussed in The Rise of The Starfish Ms. Kardashian is pretty immobile. My coffee table moves more. She does make some nice sounds though. And she makes some pretty faces. Plus, I will give “eat the Jimmy Kimmy” points for doing an Akinyele and “putting it in her mouth”.

What must it be like to be a teenager growing up during this era? In my time, taping your sexual exploits was a different proposition. You would have to convince one (or more) of your boys to hide in the closet and film that shit on a stealth tip (not that I have any actual experience hiding behind a pile of Cross Color gear trying to focus a camcorder or anything). Now, it seems like people are making these tapes in the casual manner in which we used to go over to a friend’s house after school and play Super Nintendo. Man, if the Internet was running things when I was coming up, I can’t even imagine the kind of crap we would have done.

But maybe things haven’t changed that much. As long as people have had the means to record images, they’ve been recording images of people (themselves?) having sex. We all know someone, if not ourselves, who has done the old fuck it and film it. Maybe we all want to have our own close up, or live vicariously through those who have memorialized themselves on film or video.  As they say in showbiz: “Lights, Camera, Action!”

Your thoughts good people?

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