A New Wave of Porn, With Petra Von Schatz

Dany Niederhauser: Congratulations on your last movie, it was amazing! It was beautiful porn, and your acting was great.

Petra Von Schatz: Thank you, it makes me glad! The closed setting really simplifies relationships. I have a whole theory about acting in porn movies. I think bad acting is part of the porn culture. Bad acting is inherent to porn culture, which differs from traditional cinema. We tend to forget that porn has its own culture, heritage, and unique narratives like theater and classical cinema. Bad acting is part of porn's identity, similar to certain scenarios like paying for services or affairs with plumbers.  I think that by wanting to rehabilitate porn in the cinema, we also want porn to fit into the known mold of classic cinema. We judge it according to the same criteria, while we must accept that the codes of porn could be a release for classic cinema. Bad acting does not mean a bad movie. If a porn movie is too good, it becomes counterintuitive to masturbate. If a porn movie is too well made, see it as art and fall into contemplatism. Art is supposed to lead you to get you out of yourself, to make you forget that you exist. If a porn movie does that, you won't think to unbutton your pants and touch yourself.

D: That’s what happened in your movie, which is a porno made for the cinema, and is now going to be cut into shorter sequences.

P: Porn had always been feature films, up until the web's arrival and cassettes and DVDs' disappearance. We’ve lost interest and the habit of getting caught by surprise by porn. As of today, everything is done by precisely researching what you want to watch. You can type «blonde with big breasts who starts a career in fashion», whereas before, in porn, you went there and you did not know what you were going to see. This changed the ways we apprehend our sexuality.

D: Still, there's an evolution because we are speaking about ethical porn here.

P: The audience we had was mostly activists and queer people, and for them, a film like that is not that queer. The fight is interesting when the leaders of the media, of capitalism, and the great institutions feel obliged to do something and do it by obligation. Things are slowly moving, but in subtle ways, as the world is not yet ready for a major drop. For example, in «À mes amours» there is no ejaculation. This alone is phenomenal because that kind of shot makes money, people usually want to see that.

D: This was an interesting porn movie, because orgasm is no longer the center, only the pleasure matters. Are orgasms today a little overrated?

P: Linda Williams, who studied pornography, wrote a book called «Hardcore», in which she explains that the birth of photography triggered the birth of porn. We wanted to see what the human eye was not able to see. She says that this desire to see what the human eye cannot grasp is the foundation of pornography, because orgasm, especially clitoral, is not visible. And that’s why porn has such a surgical aesthetic, very close to the bodies with close-ups as if we were trying to see beyond the flesh, trying to understand what is happening inside.  "Are your orgasms true? Are you having orgasms?" I get these questions a lot, and I believe it doesn't matter. I think orgasm is important in porn because that’s what creates the dynamic, but today the orgasm is more of a narrative vector than an end in itself.

D: Not being in search of an orgasm allows you not to miss the whole part of the film about eroticism, touching, erogenous zones, and also the reality of sex, the laughs, and the accidents.

P: This is what I like about Anouchka’s way of filming. She gives the actors a time and some indications of acts, she will tell us very broadly what we need to do. There is no choreography, no cut, and no second take. She will guide us a bit during the scene and brief her camera crew, but this way of filming is great because it creates this very organic and natural dynamic.

D: You are playing Lola, who's a fulfilled woman, polyamorous and pansexual who finds herself facing a monogamous, heterosexual couple. How was it?

P: Anouchka gave me this role because she knew that Lola and I had a lot in common. I am bi and polyamorous in my relationships, which made it easy to identify as her. I love the place Lola takes in the film, how  Elisa and Samuelshe admire her, and that a big girl embodies this character for once.

D: In the end, everyone wants to be like this badass girl. The movie questions and deconstructs even the monogamous couple and the position of women in cinema.

P: That's what you get when a woman writes and directs. There must be more women or queer people not only on the screen but behind the camera. It’s in the technique, writing roles, and editing. That’s what changes the look of cinema. We've always seen women in movies, but it’s the way the characters are written that needs to change. As soon as you put women behind the camera, characters get more complex, wider.

D: Ethical porn is still not that common. What are the essentials points in an ethical porn movie?

P: The principle of ethical porn is to give an important place to consent in sex scenes. We are obviously never forced to do certain things if we don't want it. We will usually discuss the scene, and talk about what we like, what we don't, and what we have doubts about and a safe word will be set up. And most of the time, there's an intimate coordinator. They will be there during the whole process and will ensure that everything goes well. It's the person you'll go to in case of health issues, doubts, and questions.

D: What about the representation of bodies? Like everyone else, you grow up with mainstream porn. Did you feel represented?

P: I never did, because fat bodies, like many other bodies, don’t exist in mainstream porn. You'd only see fat bodies as a fetish tool.  When you start seeing through the prism of fatphobia, you realize that, unlike other marginalized bodies, society will always think that if you’re fat, it’s your fault and you should change it. […] In the collective imagination, it is impossible to love this body, to feel good in it.  […] It should be a body we want to leave.

This is one of the fundamental reasons why I wanted to be a porn actress. Even if I don't always have the best relationship with my body, I love it and I make the choice to love it every day and I want it to be displayed on screen. I want it to be seen having sex, moving, and having fun, but I don’t want it to be the subject. My body type was represented, but never a narrative vector. It's unusual in the porn landscape, and I love it.

D: It is also refreshing to see the laughter, the small accidents, everything that happens in sex.

P: We blame mainstream porn for being hyper-performative, with super-standardized bodies, and these standards come with commercial stakes. But it remains fiction. We need diversity and plurality in porn but we accept characters like Superman, the personification of the performativity of the body, and beautiful people who do cool things. We allow classical cinema to be purely entertaining, while there's always this idea that porn should be pure truthfulness. We get the porn we deserve. If you create a hyper-hetero-patriarchal society, do not be surprised if what works in porn is skinny straight white girls. Laws of the market.
When I tell people that I am a porn actress, no one around me watches porn. People are ashamed to watch porn because they are ashamed of what they watch. The public must accept to change its gaze and agree to pay for pornography, and this change must come from the public. We demanded a lot from the porn industry, all while feeding the system we deplore. Like every consumption, we must really think about it. This is also why I see platforms like Onlyfans as a step in the right direction. It gives back a monetary value to porn content, because people pay to watch and follow creators, and it values content creators for their content or their niche. People start to follow a person again for their work and perhaps consume less junk.

Image courtesy of Nina Ribstein