Blurring The Lines Between Porn And Mainstream Cinema Via Genre Movies

It seems porn is working very hard to be mainstream cinema, and in some cases, it's kind of working.

Cherie DeVille (who talked to us here) stars in a new science fiction thriller porn movie, called "Project X." With Digital Playground producing and just releasing the film, famous porn director Ricky Greenwood helmed a cast that featured Luna Star, Monique Alexander, Mick Blue, and Tommy Pistol (among others) who encounter, "a mysterious, ravishing woman known only as ‘The Entity’ (Star)” pulled from a spaceship’s wreckage.

As Digital Playground declared, with “Project X,” they were looking to "pay homage to the genre of sci-fi thrillers." While Greenwood said it felt to him like a blockbuster movie.

And he should know, with his impressive credits and seeing as just recently, another film Greenwood directed, “Alive,” is a porn musical the man might know blockbusters as well as why genre seems to work so well when attempting to make porn ever more mainstream.

Even when that is not a director, studio or producer's intent.

Genre anyone?

If one can judge by only these two recent films, rendering a longer porn narrative through a specific genre seems to as much bring viewers to the content, and fuel website press releases as it does push adult fare ever closer to what all people like to watch. With the aforementioned “Alive,” featuring original songs, and "Project X," dependent on some sure sci-fi tropes one could argue that this porn fare is infinitely more accessible to even the most casual of porn fans.

There is no mistaking how much Hollywood has been captured most recently by genre movies, as even a great director like Martin Scorsese has grudgingly admitted. It stands to reason then that mixing in some fantasy or a good ol’ country tune or two will work for porn as it does for the mainstream. And even make a porn movie mainstream, in the broader sense of the term.

The overall mainstreaming of modern naughty stuff

Genre or not, there is no denying that naughty material has slipped ever further into the mainstream over the past few years. Surely, what was once considering ‘softcore' fare can be pretty much viewed on any of our streaming services, with shows like “Bridgerton,” and the sex on display in the sure fantasy genre epic “Game of Thrones,” all too common and accepted.

And while porn has been known to traipse into genre fare with a fair amount of parody films. And directors like Kevin Smith have had fun with parodying porn in mainstream comedies, what Greenwood, Digital Playground and so many others are mining of musicals, sci-fi, fantasy touchstones, bringing us all ever closer in what we view and how we all view it.