Venus Berlin Show Report – Porn

Europe’s biggest sex fair, Venus, takes place in Berlin every October. For four days, 5 halls at the enormous Messe conference centre are crammed with companies selling everything from niche porn DVDs to $5,000 sex machines. We were there on the trade day last Thursday when the fair is only open to the sex industry – the public are allowed in for the rest of the weekend. And this is what we saw…

Visiting Venus is an almost surreal experience, thanks mainly to the proliferation of video screens which mean you’re never more than 10 yards away from a 42 inches of hardcore pornography. German distributer Magma Film had a few tastefully designed topless standees to help promote films – nay, classics – like Anal Kommando and Kleine Spermaschluckerinnen.

The first reaction when confronted with this barrage of super-sized genitalia is to not to know where to look. Or to put yourself. And initially it’s hard to hold a conversation with someone when some seriously hardcore fucking is going on 3 feet over their right shoulder. And it’s even harder to look them in the eye when you realise that they’re actually taking part in said fucking.

Then it’s impossible not to be agog at the jaw-dropping displays of human sexual activity, especially because you’re confronted with things you may have heard about but most likely have never seen. This year for me that meant some three-way gay anal rutting, the like of which isn’t currently (and probably never will be) part of my movie collection. But hey, different strokes for different folks (quite literally in this case).

As you walk the floor, you gradually become slightly desensitized to what’s on show and occasionally catch a glimpse of something that you might even find vaguely stimulating – and that’s when you get caught out. That seemingly innocuous (and hesitantly attractive) lesbian scene can quickly turn into a nasty dose of watersports and coprophilia. It’s enough to put you off your bratwurst.

And what makes visiting Venus so surreal is that all of this sex is presented in such a matter-of-fact way. As Donald Trump would say, it’s not personal, it’s business.

Dusedo, a “1-stop distributor a gay erotica”, has a stand that is typical of the numerous porn companies at the show. Men in suits munch nibbles and sip drinks while discussing DVD distribution deals in front of plasma screens showing a variety of XXX-rated fisting, fucking, squirting and spanking. All in a day’s work at the business end of porn.

Around the corner from Dusedo, a screen was showing a 3D-rendered movie which looked like something the guys from Industrial Light and Magic might have knocked up after too many beers at the Episode III wrap party. Sorry, but I don’t know what this film’s called so I can’t link you to Adult DVD Empire to see if it’s been released yet.

A buxom computer-generated heroine somehow found herself stark naked in a swimming pool, with only a shimmering green see-through alien for company. The exact plot escapes me, but one thing soon leads to another and before long he’s putting his probe where the computer-generated sun doesn’t shine.

I just don’t get CGI porn. What is it about rendered sex that turns people on more than seeing the actual fleshy kind?

Our first encounter with a fisting film came about 30 minutes after we had got there. And just for good measure, it was on a screen which measured about 8 feet by 6. It didn’t leave an awful lot to the imagination – I just hope everybody was having a good time.

Soon after I took this picture, the other hand found its way up there as well. Gnnf.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is too much porn in the world. In the show catalogue, HotMovies.com, a porn video-on-demand service, was boasting that it’s adding 500 new movies every day to its online streaming catalogue. Where’s all this stuff coming from?

Production costs and production values have come down so much that anyone with a video camera can make a movie. All they need is someone who’s prepared to take their clothes off and shove something up themselves and they’ve got a porn franchise in the making.

As a result the market is massively over-supplied with product. On the floor at Venus, wholesalers and retailers were there trying to shift thousands of titles catering to every conceivable pecadillo. In the trade area, bulk buyers could get the latest titles in bargain basement bundles like these – 25 DVDs for as little as 1 euro 25 cents (about 85p) per DVD.

It also means that producers are increasingly going super-niche to carve out a market for themselves. And, inevitably, performers are being asked to do increasingly bizarre things.

And if DVDs have a trade price of just 85p each, how much are those performers getting paid?

The ingenuity of the porn producers really does know no bounds, and they surpass themselves when pandering to every possible male fantasy.

One poster advertised the undoubtedly excellent Fuck Me And My Sister Too – the poster promised that they were real sisters and we didn’t hang around to argue.

I think they could be heading for trouble with that franchise, though, because when the time comes to release the inevitable sequel, they’re going to be stuck for a name Fuck Me And My Sister Too 2 doesn’t have a very good ring to it. Maybe they’ll plump for Fuck Me And My Sister Again.

Far and away the best DVD title that we came across was Fuck That Midget 2. I didn’t look to see if it’s midgets having sex with other midgets, or normal size people having sex with midgets. Sorry.

In many ways the film can be seen as a microcosm of the porn industry and the challenges facing it.

FTM2 has a sexually aggressive title that’s typical of many porn films. The makers might argue that this is a tongue-in-cheek marketing ploy – a kind of Jackass gone (extremely) bad – but it’s also grist for the mill for anyone who argues that porn promotes a misogynistic attitude that objectifies women.

In an attempt to carve out some sales, the makers have targetted a pretty tight niche – people who like watching midgets have sex. But FTM2 is a sequel, so not only was there demand for a midget sex movie, the original must have sold enough copies make a sequel worthwhile too. Who’d have thought?

[Aside: when we were at the Internext porn convention in Las Vegas in January 2005, we overheard two Webmasters discussing the relative merits of getting their porn via the Internet or DirecTV. The arguments were pretty well balanced until one observed: "You don't get midgets on DirecTV." Anyway, back to Fuck That Midget 2...]

FTM2 also ably demonstrates the trend for porn films to become more like freakshows than erotica. We didn’t have a chance to watch FTM2 so I have to admit to opining from a position of ignorance, but I’d bet a pound to a penny that providing erotic entertainment for people of small stature was a long way from the producer’s minds when they put out the first casting call.

To keep the midget sex interesting, they have to get a whole load of new midgets in each new movie — fresh young midget blood if you will. After all, nobody likes seeing the same old midgets get fucked time and time again.

And it’s no good just showing regular fucking time after time with each new release. Eventually there’ll be pregnant midgets, midget watersports, strap-on midgets, barely legal midgets, MILF midgets, GILF midgets and lots more besides.

But I digress… There’s a lot more to Venus than midget porn and I’ll show you more tomorrow.