Pornhub, the website you statistically visit a lot more than you think you do, is getting into the art exhibit business. Whether your baby boomer parents will admit it or not, porn in various forms has been around a long time. Pornhub went back a generation further and has dusted off your grandparent's old stag films to display them in conjunction with the Museum of Sex in New York City.
The exhibit titled "STAG: The Illicit Origins of Pornographic Film" will feature all your favorite stag films produced from the early 1900s to the 1960s originating from all over the world. Back in the day, your parents and grandparents used to gather in basements at the legion hall, smoke cigars and laugh and drink while watching stag films. Even as film technology advanced, the films generally remained silent and filmed in black and white, lending to the illicit underground pull of the pornographic industry.
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Pornhub, which has partnered with the Museum of Sex previously for a pop-up gift shop, wants to remind us that there is much more to the history of porn than what's in your browser cache. Stag films focused on humor, satire, social commentary and were the original subversive media of choice for many mild-mannered middle class suburbanites who pretended to be something they weren't. While socially unaccepted, stag films were the precursor to the idea that under the skin, humans are layered with insurgency and hypocrisy.
"We're proud to partner with the Museum of Sex in the presentation of 'Stag: The Illicit Origins of Pornographic Film,'" said Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub in a press release. "We wanted to celebrate the earliest depictions of sex on film and pay homage to the professional filmmakers and amateur producers responsible for this unprecedented time in adult entertainment."
The films will be presented to museum goers in a vintage theater open to the public from June 21st until October 21st for the price of general admission. The stag films, not actually pulled from your grandparents attic, will be curated by the Museum of Sex and are being displayed in order to offer some insight into the past in regards to how sexuality used to be displayed and ingested by the public. Even though porn, and how we consume it, has changed a lot thanks to sites like Pornhub, the history remains.
