more perfect than perfect

i was reading this article on slate on how hdtv would affect viewing of not only standard television and hollywood fare, but also porn. while hdtv is a boon to sports, giving unparalleled detail and quality, it’s a little too detailed and revealing for the current production of television and movies, revealing things like makeup tricks and all the before undetectable little flaws of all your favorite (and previously glamourously beautiful) movie stars.

the article claims that this might hit porn even harder, as its actors are even less naturally beautiful, given that their main attraction also involves a more physical type of acting prowess. however, i’m not sure this is really the case. do we really want our porn stars to be that beautiful? some of them are, but most of them are really made up and surgically altered to an extreme aesthetic, thus the whole term of porn star boobs describing incredibly fake and pneumatic breast implants. i mean when someone stick thin as briana banks (careful, porn link) has huge grapefruit sized breasts that hang/float strangely (and yet in a porn star way, still erotically) from her chest, what standard of beauty are we trying to depict, anyway? maybe hdtv will reveal a greater level of exaggerated and amplified fake beauty, and it’ll be even more exciting because it’s even more fake.

however, HDTV has revealed that some glamorous stars look a lot more pedestrian than we’ve been led to believe. And the makeup tricks that protect the aging and less-than-perfect are easy to spot in HDTV. perhaps this will only thus threaten the traditional stars that we know and love. seeking perfect idols, will we accept the imperfections, or will we demand perfect specimens? maybe this will force cg-enhanced stars to cover all of the real flaws of nature. or maybe it will come to a point where you’re idolizing a cg construct, or maybe cg constructs of stars. much like movies where stars are playing cg versions of themselves (tom hanks in the upcoming polar express), we’ll only accept the perfectly rendered versions. everything coming back full circle from the talkie days, where the silent stars couldn’t make the transition, now it’s back to stars who can act and have excellent physical emoting skills, but who don’t necessarily have to be beautiful.

ok, probably not. but what if?

Posted at February 8, 2004 8:20 PM