New Hero: Erika Lust

Erika Lust created feminist porn. After many years of admiring her work from afar, AURORE finally caught up with the trailblazing director to discuss early days in the industry, her reading list for feminist porn scholars, and how to verify you’re consuming ethical pornography.

What were your early experiences with pornography? 

Erika Lust, feminist pornographer, opens the doors to new perspectives.

I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people grow up with a vague awareness that porn exists. It’s hard to know exactly where that comes from, and it can be difficult to identify a first interaction with it. That’s because it throws up the most pressing question: what actually is porn?

For example, the first experience of explicit sexual material for people in my generation is often not porn as we think of it now, but literature. Sexy books, or explicit paragraphs hidden deep inside otherwise “normal” writing. Is that porn? It’s hard to say, but for many burgeoning sexualities, it invokes some unfamiliar feeling of stimulation. Porn enters our consciousness through a kind of cultural osmosis. We all seem to know about it… somehow.

My first experience with visual porn was as a teenager. They were arousing, but for me, they were arousing in an incomplete way. The arousal I experienced came with some discomfort: I felt early on that something was wrong, both ethically, and in terms of content. 

One thing was obvious. Porn was made with a male audience in mind. So my early porn experiences were very formative, and I set out quickly to challenge the status quo.

What made you realize a change/new media was necessary?

No single specific event or experience, more like a slow burning realization that sex should be represented better. Just as journalism benefits from diversity in the newsroom, so can erotic media benefit from different and equal perspectives. I wanted to express my own perspective.

My very first erotic movie was called The Good Girl, released in 2005. It was a tongue-in-cheek take on the pizza delivery boy cliche in porn, but also of the misogynistic perceptions of what a “good girl” should be like, and how women “should behave”. It emerged out of a desire to take what I was learning in film school and apply it to an erotic indie film with a message. That movie just had to… come out of me.

What was starting out in porn like?

It was a conflicting time. The Good Girl received 2 million views in two months and I was getting emails from thousands of people all over the world telling me how much they loved it. So it was clear that I’d struck a nerve.

There was a huge amount of support. But on the other hand, there was a huge amount of resistance. Powerful people don’t usually like to share power, and the porn industry has been dominated by powerful male figures for decades. 

It was tough to get exposure for the brand I was creating, and for a long time a lot of people didn’t take it seriously. I was treated with the same dismissiveness as female authors were in the 17th and 18th Centuries, like it was a hobby, and men would look at me and go, “aww, isn’t that cute, she thinks she can be a porn director!” My early experiences, if they weren’t outright hostile, were patronizing at best.

But not from my growing audience. Women really understood what I was doing, and felt loyal to it. My brand is one born out of necessity, and driven forwards by a shared sense of common cause.

Who are your favorite directors/movies and what influence have they had on your work?

I’m a major advocate of the ‘female gaze,’ the feminist equivalent of ‘male gaze.’ That’s the perspective I shoot from. So Laura Mulvey is a major influence. She was the first feminist filmmaker to challenge the idea that “looking” was an active thing done by men, and “being looked at” was passive and therefore fulfilled by women. Her views are heteronormative according to my own values, but she really opened the door for a conversation about feminist porn to even be possible.

Jean Jaques Annaud’s L’Amant was influential to me as a sexual coming of age story told largely from a female protagonist's point of view. John Cameron Mitchell’s sense of mischief and fun is showcased in Shortbus, a movie that gives me confidence in my own storytelling. And then everything from cult classics like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! to modern smash hits like Blue is the Warmest Color all inform my work.

Today though, I have a lot of media that I enjoy, but I try not to let it influence me too much. I’m charting my own path, and the great thing about that is that I get to work with directors that inspire me every day.

How do you want people to feel when they view your work?

Sexual. Alive. Embodied. I want people to be exposed to fantasies that are not their own, in order to experience a broader horizon of sexual experience. I want them to be excited about sex, and to enjoy their own sexualities, and to feel represented, and celebrated.

How has the porn industry and content changed during your career? Are we getting closer or further to a more representative ethical place?

Tube sites have changed porn. Now everybody with an internet connection can access free porn, to the point that paying for it seems alien. I remember speaking to a male director just after I got started, and he said, “If you want to make a million dollars in porn, start with two million, and just throw a million away.” 

The tube sites changed everything. It stopped being porn, and became “content.” As time goes on, people are starting to reject that, and they’re starting to once again choose porn over “content”. We’re not there yet, there’s still not much respect for porn or for the performers, but businesses like mine and others in the space are working hard to show that it can be beautiful, creative, cinematic, and ethical.

What are you excited about right now in regard to sex positivity and new generations?

I’m most excited by the way new generations are confronting ALL of our traditional assumptions. Take sexuality. Younger audiences are far more comfortable exploring sexualities and identities in much more conceptual ways than older generations. They’re creating a new kind of sexuality even as they transcend it. 

That’s seeping into mainstream media too, where topics around sexuality and identity are discussed more openly than ever. 

One of my issues with mainstream pornography is I tend to wonder if the woman wants to be there/is enjoying herself. How do you ensure enthusiastic pleasure on set?

That comes down to casting. When we have a story, we look for a perfect fit for the roles. We get to know the performers through interviews, zoom calls, and in-person meetings. We want to see that they know exactly what we do, and that they truly want to be a part of it. 

Once we have the cast for a film, we arrange for the performers to get to know each other well in advance, if they don’t already. We hire for chemistry, between the performers, and between the crew, and that translates to the screen.

What have you learned about yourself/women/and people through your work? (Big question I know!)

I’ve learned the same lesson over and over again: if the book you want to read doesn’t exist, write it yourself. That is to say, just because no one’s done it before doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s taught me personally to be resilient against criticism, but open to people.

I’ve learned that most of the things we believe about female sexuality are false. We are expansive in our capacity to be sexual - and we WANT to be sexual.

Give us “Erika Lust’s reading list for the beginner feminist porn scholar.”

Read “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" by Laura Mulvey, and then read her more recent return to the subject in "Looking at the past from the present: rethinking feminist film theory of the 1970s."

But also read the work of performers themselves, like Stoya’s “Philosophy, Pussycats, and Porn.”

Linda Williams’ “Porn Studies” offers a good foundation, and the more recent “The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics Of Producing Pleasure” should equip you with all you need.

What’s a good checklist to make sure we’re watching ethical porn?

Here’s a good one. Check if the studio’s CEO is a public figure. If it’s not easy to determine who’s at the head of the business, there’s a good chance there’s a reason for that, and it usually implies a level of shadiness. 

Make sure representation is positive among the performers, and don’t be afraid to pay for porn. If you’re paying for a subscription, the business is likely more ethical than, say, a studio that produces extremely high volumes of “content.”