What I learned from Vintage Erotica and Mainstream Erotica

I forget exactly how I first stumbled upon Vintage Porn, an online compendium of vintage smut. But soon after digging around the landing page I found myself enraptured by a humorous erotic scene, from 1970s France.

The silent short opens with a small mustachioed man just waking from a nap, only to find his unruly erection has jumped right off his body and is wiggling itself antagonistically in his direction. A chase ensues, and eventually the tomfoolery comes to an end with Mr. Big Cock finding his prized part, giving it a small kiss, and then sticking it through a hole to be welcomed home by a sensual looking cow.

It’s a weird, perverse, delightful little video that, while not quite mentally or physically arousing, somehow captures the hijinks of a man who thinks, well, with his dick.

To me, the film seemed more self-deprecating, open to the fumbling failures of heterosexual masculinity, than contemporary porn. More playful, and surely more surreal. I continued to poke around the site and go through Classic Porn Videos.

In the 1970s short “She Cums From Outer Space,” a babely humanoid alien wearing nothing but a giant triangle zaps into the home of a young earthling, who has clearly had it up to here with the Sex Education for Young People book on his lap. “Did you float out of some disco or something?” he asks, before she invites him to experience her “out of this world" body. The bow-chicka-bow-wow background music, low-fi production and kitschy-yet-futuristic aesthetic conjure a mixture of nostalgia and arousal that’s absurd and exotic.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Swinger porn, opting instead to fast forward to my favorite sexy scenes on Netflix or peruse softcore erotic Tumblrs. And after spending time with Delta of Venus, I couldn’t help but ask myself: Is good porn, like good wine, best served super old? Is vintage erotica the holy grail of sexual representation? Or was I simply fetishizing these historical gems -- enchanted by the same sepia tone of an Instagram filter or Lana Del Rey music video?

In the meantime, I also looked at Hotwife Porn Videos. My first reaction was, well, quite grossed out. The first video that popped up, via an advertisement plastered across the screen, bore the title “Small, Tiny, Teens Gettin’ F**ked!” Overlooking the unnecessary comma in the headline, I clicked, and was greeted by, yes, both small and tiny young women wearing nothing but the thick-framed “hip nerd” glasses you’d likely encounter at a Librarians-and-Barbarians-themed frat party. A visual pastiche, if you will, of penetrative and oral sex ensues, clearly amping up the innocence, inexperience and gag reflexes of the women.