‘It was entirely unplanned on my part and, I think, on his: although whether any bloke with a camcorder acquired it with entirely pure intentions is a debatable point.”
Molly, now 28, was a year into her relationship with John when a quiet evening in, drinking wine and fooling around, culminated in the pair filming themselves having sex.
“I did want to do it, but Dutch courage definitely played a part. John managed to set up the camera and link it to the TV so that we could watch ourselves on screen as it was taping.”
From the excruciating scene in British novelist Martin Amis’s Money, where John Self realises that the ugly man in the home-porn movie is himself, to the candyfloss innuendo of a recent episode of Friends, the making and misappropriation of intimate videos has regularly proved a compelling creative device.
It has similarly been a staple of tabloid scandal: an explicit honeymoon video featuring Pamela Anderson and her then husband Tommy Lee made $85-million when it was distributed on the Internet, despite the couple’s desperate attempts to prevent its circulation.
A number of other celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez, have fought through the courts to suppress similar material.
But while the humiliation of those thus exposed and exploited does not diminish, there is a prevailing sense that society has lately extended the parameters of what constitutes acceptable — consensual — sexual experimentation. And that more and more ordinary couples are turning their video cameras on the sort of activities that are not likely to feature on You’ve Been Framed.
“I think filming yourself is quite normal,” says Molly. “I was talking about it with female colleagues and about a quarter of us had done it.”
As the requisite technology becomes more accessible, has the private taping of sex become the contemporary equivalent of the mirrored ceiling? In his most recent novel, Porno, Irvine Welsh documents what he sees as a burgeoning subculture of porn made by ordinary people in their own homes for their own consumption.
“The Internet and digital video have changed the whole face of porn,” he said in a recent interview. “Home-made porn is everywhere. It’s easy to get a knocked-off DV camera in a pub, and shoot your own stuff and put it on the Net. It’s become a massive operation. And because it’s been taken away from the backstreets, you get more women consumers involved. It’s become a mainstream thing.”
Dr Petra Boynton, a psychologist specialising in sexual relationships at London University, says: “There are some people who will do it as a one-off and keep it to themselves. Others do it more regularly and there is quite a trend on the Internet for swapping tapes or even broadcasting live using a webcam. Then, some do it to sell.
“Problems arise when people are not aware that they are being taped, or when they make the tape in the bloom of a relationship and later regret it.”
For Molly, the experience of making the film was the source of excitement: “The feeling of being watched was the turn-on, but being able to see the TV screen out of the corner of my eye and knowing the writhing figures on it were us was a bonus.”
The growth in videoing sex at home is evidence of a rebellion against the unrealistic images and unappetising associations of mainstream porn, argues Amory Peart, porn director and presenter of Britain’s Channel 4’s Future Sex. “People are fed up with the traditional porn-star look –silicone, long hair, big muscles. Late teens and twentysomethings have lots of different street images that they want to see represented.”
Peart notes that the most popular contemporary pornography is “Gonzo porn”, which is deliberately amateurish and naturalistic in style. “It’s a lot more intimate. You see a vulnerability that doesn’t come across in more professionally made films, and it’s also very cheap to make.”
The impulse to watch and be watched, to be seen to be desired, is elemental to sexual fantasy. What do you look like when you’re having an orgasm?
On a more mundane level, technology has transformed sexual etiquette. E-mail and text messaging have evolved as a new forum for flirtation-at-one-remove. And for some, filming doesn’t lead to intimacy but to a side space, where the theatrics of sexual contact can be explored without the emotions.
But with more erotic templates than ever before, are we really any better at understanding what we want and why? One of the great ironies of society’s saturation with sexual imagery and detail is that it doesn’t tally with any great rolling back of inhibition.
Perhaps the camcorder is providing people with a safe and satisfying method of reclaiming and recreating public images of sex for their private pleasure. And with that comes a better understanding of the potential of desire — that we might transform ourselves into anyone and anything. — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002
Additional reporting by Lucy Mangan