As I think you might be able to tell from the title of this post,
this programme shows some sexually explicit content. If you are under the age
of 16 and feel comfortable witnessing and hearing about this, or if you're over
the age of 16 (and similarly feel comfortable to do so) I would urge you to go
and watch the show. I will also warn you that there is a mention of rape and
rape fantasy towards the end of the show, so, if that is triggering for you,
skip from 43 minutes to 46 minutes.
Similarly, this post will be discussing
the explicit content of the show, so if you are uncomfortable with this, you
can read my last post about what I do to my hair!
This show comes from a slightly 'laddy'
perspective - not so much in the information it's giving (although, I'd say it
tends to focus on boys watching porn and the female porn stars, rather than
girls watching porn) but rather in the little clips of Tyger which appear to be
there because the writers of the show are aware this could be an awkward topic
and are trying to play it for laughs. This irritated me, particularly at the
start of the programme as I was afraid that this was going to be a show which
was created as an excuse for the BBC to showcase a 'cool' star, and these clips
felt very self conscious.
Happily, however, the main content of the
show was, for the most part, very thoughtful, insightful, and, most
importantly, well-rounded. Throughout the show, Tyger was very open and frank
about his own experiences with porn, as well as his own sex life, and how he
thinks the former may have influenced the latter. I should also mention that
Tyger grew up in a home very open about porn, as both his parents worked in the
industry. Aside from the 'put your cock away' jokes with his Dad, I thought
this was an interesting and insightful aspect to the show, as not many teens
can say they grew up in a house that was open to porn. I certainly didn't
(although, I should mention that porn has no appeal to me, and I've never
really watched it except from when a guy put it on at a house party - much to
the disgust of most of the party goers).
The show did a relatively good job of
interviewing both men and women equally when it came to the broader surveys
about porn consumption, however when it came to the effects porn has on an
individual’s sex-life there was a definite focus on men. This might be simply
because it is men's expectations of sex which are most heavily impacted by porn
- although this being said it takes two to have sex and this show was entirely
focused on heterosexual porn and relationships, so you would think it would
impact on women too (and the one occasion when he did interview a women about
the impact of porn on her relationship it was particularly disturbing and
troubling). The interviews he did with some of the men whose sex-lives had been
most heavily impacted by porn were very revealing: they were only turned on by
the porn-star look, they expected porn-style sex, they expected their sexual
partners to do all the things porn stars would do and they weren't very good as
discussing sex with their partners. I was particularly interested when he
re-evaluated his own porn consumption and subsequent sexual expectations, as
this opened up for a discussion of what is 'too much porn' and made the
suggestion that if you say 'I watch porn once a week' that is still an
addiction.
However, the moment in the programme which
I most enjoyed was Tyger's interview with Cindy Gallop, founder of the 'Make
Love Not Porn' campaign. Cindy's discussion was the real turning point in the
show for me, and opened up the discussion I was most looking forward to - we need to equally blame the porn
industry as well as society’s
reluctance to discuss sex when we are looking to explore the negative impact of
porn on my generation's experience of sex. Sadly, this discussion wasn't
taken much further in the programme, though I think it is the most important
discussion the how had, and I partly feel this was because they wanted to keep
their audience profile entertained, so decided instead to show porn being
filmed.
Whilst showing the porn being filmed was
helpful to de-romanticising porn, I wonder whether or not the show could have
found the time to more fully discuss the how impact of sexual education (or
lack thereof) works in tandem with an ever expanding porn industry and ever
increasing availability of porn. I also was expecting to have a fuller
discussion of how the online free to view porn sites were impacting on the
professional porn industry, which never really became fully realised.
Over all, the programme was useful as a
springboard for discussion, and I'm looking forward to seeing the next in the
series of Tyger Takes On.
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