Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Porn: Some Research Questions

Here are some possible research questions. Or maybe they would be more appropriately labeled as unexplained differences between Hollywood and the Porn industry.

1. Why does sex no longer sell in Hollywood, yet it sells better than ever - and it has become more explicit than ever - in the porn industry?

2. Why does the average Hollywood movie lose money, yet the average porn movie makes money? Are power laws at work in Porn as well?

3. Why did Hollywood produce 500 movies last year, yet the porn industry produced 10,000?

4. Why does Hollywood continually resist new technologies, while the Porn industry embraces them?

5. Stars are not valuable to Hollywood Profits, what are the value of Stars in the Porn industry?

6. What are the value of Awards in the Porn industry?

7. Hollywood makes too few G movies, are there any genres in Porn that are over/under produced?

8. Hollywood is currently typified by project by project contracts which are usually fixed fee plus participation for the talent, but used to be typified by long term contracts without participation. The Porn industry is typified by project by project (actually scene by scene) fixed fee contracts, with no participation. The Porn industry has recently moved a few actresses to a contract reminiscent of old Hollywood. Why?

9. Marketing does not pay in terms of profitability for Hollywood. Does marketing pay for Porn land? More specifically, do those box covers really need to look that professional?

10. There is evidence that Hollywood is over screened, is Adult entertainment under screened? I doubt it, but to what degree have zoning regulations changed the nature of Porn?

There are many more interesting questions that could be asked, but these are a few of the immediate ones swimming in my head.

Keywords: Porn and Research

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It might also be worthwhile to compare to the film industries in other countries. The Indian film industry, popularly known as "Bollywood" (because it was based in Bombay/ Mumbai), produces more than twice as many movies each year as Hollywood and (due to the number of Indians) sells a lot more movie tickets. Of course, in many respects Bollywood is the opposite of the porn industry, because of its infamously conservative attitude toward on-screen depictions of opposite sex relations. The last Indian movie I saw in full, Yuva, had characters who lived together before marriage, and a married couple in which the wife got an abortion, not to mention Kareen Kapoor looking like she was having an orgasm at the beach -- but there was STILL no kissing.