by ELMORE TERADONOVICH, Alternate Reality News Service Film Writer
Have you ever wondered why all porn films seem to have the same story? According to cultural theorist and crustacean fetishist Rex Wilmington, you're not merely jaded and only half paying attention: all porn movies follow the form of a single narrative.
In fact, this year marks the 27th anniversary of the publication of Wilmington's seminal (not to be confused with semenal, although, given the subject matter of his work, you can be forgiven for your confusion) work of cultural analysis and authentic Chinese cuisine cookbook The Heroine with 1,000 Vaginas.
The book was the culmination of thirty years of research not only on pornographic films, television series and bubble gum cards, but also erotic cave paintings (some of the oldest of which were found three caves down from Lascaux), illuminated manuscripts from the Dark Ages that could only be kept under the monks' desks so that minors couldn't see them and oral histories that were not passed down from generation to generation. Lucky bastard.
What Wilmington found was that all pornography at all times and in all places (especially Venice in 1729) has essentially the same story with several branches. He called this "The Heroine's Journey," because calling it Lucinda would only confuse people.
"It was a brilliant insight," moped feminist cultural critic and dud at potluck dinners Naomi Wolf. "Lucinda is old-fashioned, with connotations of mustiness - or possibly fustiness - but, definitely unjustliness. You couldn't get a narrative theory called Lucinda past a PhD committee in those days. Of course, these days, even if you just quote somebody named Lucinda, your research will be considered suspect…
"Oh," Wolf added, "the whole Heroine's Journey thing was pretty clever, too."
As explored by Wilmington, the Heroine's Journey has many facets. The phone call. The rejection of the phone call. The acceptance of the phone call. The acceptance of the phone call in the bedroom. The acceptance of the phone call in the bathroom. The acceptance of the phone call in the girl's locker room. The acceptance of the phone call in the back of a '65 Chevy. The acceptance of the phone call in the cockpit of a 747 jet. The acceptance of the phone call in a room off the street in Pamplona where the bulls are being run. The acceptance of the phone call in the boy's locker room. Among others. Many, many others.
Wilmington's work would probably have remained of interest only to academics and door to door used shoe salesman had he not collaborated with journalist Bill Moyers on the series Rex Wilmington and The Power of Sex on PBS. "We, uhh, had to clean the ideas up a little," Moyers recently admitted. "Still, popularizing Rex' thought was the right thing to do - I mean, that show got better ratings than Ernie and Bert's marriage!"
Of course, it didn't hurt that Wilmington's ideas had an influence on popular culture. Star Whores director Dick Wiggleyhead has gone on record as saying that he structured the movie based on concepts out of The Heroine with 1,000 Vaginas. "When she is first approached by Oboy One Kengopi," Wiggleyhead explained, "Lucy Skyjerker refuses to leave her home planet of Doodooine. Well, even though it's done in person, that's the refusal of the phone call right there, isn't it?"
He also pointed out that the tension between Handjob Solo's technical approach to mating with the Death Store contrasted with Skyjerker's more mystical application of the Forceps. "This is like Wilmington's contrast between rural and urban mythologies," Wiggleyhead enthusiastically explained. "And, things blow up!"
Oh. And, here, we thought the inspiration for Star Whores was Akira Kurosawa's 1958 classic The Hidden Mistress. "That, too," Wiggleyhead allowed. And, the 1933 Marx brothers film Duck Stoop. "Sure," Wiggleyhead agreed. "Everybody knows that." Oh, and we mustn't forget Christopher Marlowe's 1594 rip-snorter Dido, Queen of Carthage, or What the Butler Saw IV: The Maidenhead's Revenge. "Look," Wiggleyhead exasperated, "we could fill a book detailing all of the influences on the production of Star Whores, but that would just undermine the market for the book detailing all of the influences on the production of Star Whores that I am currently producing. Can we just take it as given that there were a lot of them?"
Consider it given. Or, taken.
So, the next time you're surfing the Internet and you come across Raw.one, Parasexual Activity 3 or The Latex King 3D, remember: if the plots seem identical, it's because of Rex Wilmington's grand design and not merely a need to get through the lazily written story elements quickly in order to get to the naughty bits.